Laying/Saturating veil and 'glass mat?

General Composites Discussions Composites Talk
#1

Just a quick question to follow this… check me out, here:

I’ve been re-examing a lot of what/how I do things. Yesterday, after the gelcoat “B” staged and I filled my corners, I laid a single layer of veil followed by two layers of 1.5 ounce mat. Each layer was just over 36"x48" (or, 1 1/2 yards, each).
To lay the veil, I brushed on a coat of tooling resin, laid the veil… rolled it out thoroughly, and then only used enough additional resin to just finish wetting it out by stippling w/ a brush.
After that, I did pretty much the same thing with each layer of the mat. Brushed on resin, rolled out, lightly brushed/skimmed on additional resin on top (before the styrene broke down the binder) and rolled/stippled again. No obvious wet spots/pools anywhere… almost to what appeared to be to the dry side of things, but there were/are no milky areas, voids or air bubbles.

Here’s my question:

That yard-and-a-half of veil took the better part of 16 ounces of resin, total. Each layer of mat took a little under three pints each. That’s 7 pints for the entire lay-up (1.5 yards veil, 3 yards 1.5 ounce mat). Does that sound right? The reason I ask is that, in the past, I haven’t always been too concerned about about avoiding an overly resin rich laminate. That’s different now, and I’m just trying to gauge my progress.

Thanks

#2

Youre striving for a 1 to 1 ratio in weight from cloth to resin in everything you do.

Hand laying anything is very unlikely to end up that way especially molds.

Prepreg and some very ingenious infusion will produce less than 1 to 1…but Im still pretty sure Im a tad resin rich

#3

For the record, I do calculate woven goods/resin by weight with an electronic scale. And, like you, I STILL wind up a bit on the heavy side, but I’m working on it. I try to roll and squeegee the excess in an area to drier spots, or off the laminate altogether.

More to the point, what I was asking was… based on your own hands-on experience, how much resin do YOU consume for a given amount of veil or 1.5 ounce mat? Were the figures I gave comparable, or out of the ballpark?

Thanks.

#4

couldnt really tell you…I dont measure the weight of my cloth when building a mold or a part.

I start out with excess and try to keep pulling it farther and farther back until I have a couple of consistant failures in completely wetting out in an infusion.

In my opinion, really getting antsy about the ratio is a moot point in anything other than a really nice infusion and even then…youre really stretching if its going to not be overly saturated.

Its the nature of the beast…in an infusion youre going to oversaturate the starting area before it decides to pull through to the drier area. The cloth is like a wick and will pull everthing it can.

If your really worried about it…try to keep it at a 1 to 1

Me? As long as my parts are sound and light Im happy. People keep buying them so they cant be too bad right?