Hey Sam

How the hell you doing anyhow? Invent more cool things while I was away or craft more of those incredible works of art you call mere kayaks?

The trip was good and I promise to start posting to the trips section when I get out from commitments and sudden real work generated from the problems exposed by the recent fires. So I'll be doing some consulting and of course what the findings are will be ignored. As I always said
"Management isn't and planners don't"

So this s-glass thing is a real mystery. My glass and epoxy suppliers both have opinions and wondered what the conditions were and epoxy used. The 6522 is supposed to be one of the cloths for enhanced clarity! My glass supllier and the boyz in the back all gathered round the image I sent and opined that they fibers didn't wet-out properly. Gee, we knew that! C'mon, why! So, after the meeting of minds after bumping of heads the ideas where:
1. epoxy and/or cloth were too cold
2. epoxy was too viscous for proper wet-out
3. contamination of the cloth
4. failure in the manufacturing process in the finish portion, possibly in the yarn manufacturing portion.

The trixial glass is a term used loosely for the tight weave fine cloths used in light applications. All are under 3 oz and are used for such things as model airplanes, etc. Industry, or course, uses it for all sorts of applications. In fact, Boeing and Lockheed have established standards for the cloths out there. The fine weave multi-directional cloths differ from the common 90 degree angle weave by the number of points in the weave harness. There's apparently 4 point and 8 point, and the stuff I use when I can get it, the real 120 degree weaves which is the real meaning of triaxial. The other stuff I like for it's tightness and smoothness in layup, and that I have this theory that 2 three oz layers are stronger with less epoxy then one 6 oz layer of plain weave. Of course, there's no sound reason that this is true, in fact, there are sound reasons why this is NOT true, but it does leave a slick finish and we all have our illusions we cling to. One of mine is the that 3 oz theory. Another is that my hair isn't thinning (at least in places where it's not totally missing). Now that I think about it, the list is rather long.
I think I'll go have a beer.

: Glad you are back - sounds like you had a cool trip.

: The image shows what S glass looks like next to E glass. Both came from JR
: Sweet and the only difference between the two styles is the glass type.
: Wet out of both went the same and was complete and there was no resin
: starvation. The only explanation that makes sense to me is the small
: difference between the index of refraction for S glass and E glass. I
: think part of what you see is the interference pattern created by having
: two layers. Since the two layers are not perfectly aligned, the visual
: effect is enhanced in some regions and reduced in others.

: Just what is this triaxial stuff you have mentioned. The only commercial
: triaxials (three different fiber orientations) I'm familiar with are
: stitched, and heavy.

: Sam