straight seam in cloth

You may have seen some parts made where the edges are beautifuly seemed together, and usually there is a direction change in the weave at that “seam”. I found a small trick today for a POSSIBLE way to do that.

Say you have a one piece mold but you can’t use a single piece of cloth to cover the entire mold for whatever reasons.

Buy some 3M blue painters tape, green may work too. When your cloth is dry apply the tape to where your cut line will be. Press the tape down to the cloth but you don’t have to hammer it down to the cloth. When you cut along the tape leave only 1.5mm or 1/16" of tape remaining on the portion of cloth you want to use in/on the mold. Now place your cloth in the mold or on the mold and wet it out and lay it down smooth where you need it to be, with the tape side facing up. Wet out even the tape. Wait a minute then use an exacto knife to pick the tape up off the cloth very carefully. I think there should be a clean straight edge of cloth there now with no fraying. I had to do a patch job today and used this method. I did it so the edges of the patch would be clean cut as it will be seen by the consumer.

If you have more to add or take away from this please feel free. :slight_smile:

can you do pics for us No0bs :smiley:

When i run across a part where I need to do this, yeah i’ll post pics then. for now my patch part is in a vacuum bag :slight_smile:

thanks, us no0bs need pics:D :smiley:

Here are two pics of the part after vacuum bagging.

I bet you can’t see the seem? :smiley: This has not been surface coated yet so it is dull raw looking cf. The white ragged lines are where the peel ply edges were, that stuff comes off.

Bigmans, this is a cover over an original part. The cover is removeable from the original part.

http://s210.photobucket.com/albums/bb186/Fastrr_photos/?action=view&current=carbonfibercover001.jpg

http://s210.photobucket.com/albums/bb186/Fastrr_photos/?action=view&current=carbonfibercover002.jpg

cool :smiley: :smiley:

Anytime you need to do something like this due to cloth scarcity…its always best to trim the cloth in a valley line ,rather than just in the middle somewhere.
The end result will not be so 'In you face"…if that makes sense. Kudos for experimenting though !

Good point and taken :slight_smile: