Anyone have tips for working with silver Texalium 6oz? I have a few sharp radii i need to cover in the female mold.
Texalium is very stiff and quite hard to work with.
you say you are doing a female mold though? if so it’s not that bad if you infuse it, and let the bag do the bending for you.
but if you don’t know how to do infusion, back before I knew how to do it, what I did was put the tex dry in the mold and bagged it. I left it in the mold for an afternoon and when I took it out it was basically in the shape of the mold.
hope that helps
I have seen it really stiff and really soft , I found one problem with the soft stuff was the silver coating “disappears” if you "slide " the fabric around.
The surf ski pictured has flower stickers strategically place to hide "disturbed "areas
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k47/latman/DSC02004.jpg
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k47/latman/DSC02008.jpg
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k47/latman/DSC02012.jpg
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k47/latman/DSC02000.jpg
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k47/latman/DSC02160.jpg
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k47/latman/DSC02159.jpg
These are both vinyl ester resin/soric core infusions with clear polyester gelcoats
Are those last two shots a kayak? What weave is it?Looks like checkerboard weave.
woven roving?
Super nice surf ski’s:cool: man that Texalium looks great next to that pink paint or gel coat. I’m not into pink but a girl would love that.
The last one does look like checkerboard weave carbon… i’ve seen it for sale in that large of a weave.
isn’t it just 24k plain weave?
it was sold to me as 12K plain 200gsm , its a prick to hand lay but nice to infuse , there are often some gaps in the weave but you can just lay down a single tow to cover them over
a small dab of a acetone rag will dissolve the glue in the Texalium and make it get into sharp corners better, but be careful the weave will also move and separate easily.
I just tried this and it worked like a dream. You just have to be careful about the amount of acetone you use because it can discolor the fabric, even if you are applying to the backside. For the sake of having alternative methods documented on here, you can work the material by hand, folding it and rolling it in between your fingers at 0, 90, +/-45. This will loosen up the material significantly without any fear of discoloration. Now that I finally have loosened up the material and given it some conformability I feel confident infusing the stuff. I will post pictures if I can produce a complex enough part worth bragging about.