making a wing wheel

On Jun 3, 8:26*am, Tony wrote:
I'm going to start making a wing wheel for the Cherokee here shortly.
I have some 9 oz glass cloth and some fiberglass resin from advance
auto parts. *I'm curious how many layers of glass those of you who
have done it used?

Tony, I assume you're talking about a wing cuff for a ground handling
wing wheel.

For a wing cuff, for reasonable durability I'd be looking for a
thickness of between .090 and .140". You might get by with less if you
tape end dams onto the wing to mold in stiffening flanges at the
edges. But it's a ground handling tool, so I wouldn't be too concerned
about weight.

It's really easy to figure out how thick fiberglass builds. You
generally get a little more than .001" of thickness per ounce/yd^2. So
with 9oz cloth you'll generally get between .010" and .012" of
thickness per ply depending on the weave, how much resin you use, and
whether you are doing heroics like vacuum bagging.

For the part at hand, you're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood
of 8 layers to get a nice durable part in 9oz cloth. You might
consider getting some 18oz woven roving instead; it will only take
four or five layers to be nice and stiff.

For a wing cuff, polyester resin from the auto parts store is perfect.
Just be careful with the MEKP catalyst; it is very harmful if you get
any in your eyes. It's easy to know how much resin is required: Just
weigh the cloth you need to wet out and mix that weight of resin. Most
epoxy and polyester resins weigh around 10 lbs/gallon.

Thanks, Bob K.