That sounds like the way Lancair parts are made. The Glasair, with
it's vinyl ester resin is just room temp. cured. I've done some work
wtih epoxy, and although I can tell it's a bit tougher, it's slower to
work with. It's cure time is a lot slower. I've had batches that will
gel pretty quick, but the time it takes before it can be sanded is a
lot longer. So it would have slowed me down if I had been doing my
project in epoxy. But epoxy is the dominate resin it seems, more so
than vinyl ester. If I ever were to build another composite, I'd still
prefer to do it in vinyl ester. Plus, I like the smell of it a lot
better. It's similar to polyester resin. It has kind of a sweet smell.
Some epoxy's stink, while others have almost no odor at all. Aeropoxy
is nasty smelling stuff. Whew, I'll never forget that smell.

On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:07:26 -0700 (PDT), BobR
wrote:



The parts were only vacuum bagged after everything for the completed
part was in place. They had it down to a very efficient though still
messy process that went quickly (out of necessity). I have seen
several videos of various fiberglass molding operations and most start
with coating of the inside of a female mold with a release agent.
This is followed by a gel-coat iif it is being used and the initial
glass layups. They may use pre-preg glass or not, it seems to vary
but they will be applying liberal amounts of epoxy as they proceed
using it to lay the glass down and hold any foam / nomex and other
parts in place. Next the inside skin goes down followed by peelply
and bleeder cloth. Finally the put the plastic covering and seal the
edges before pulling the vacuum. The final element may be the most
important, they move it into an enclave to cure.