Thought you folks might like to see some more high tech boat building.

Attached is a picture of the deck of a kayak I layed up yesterday right before I infused it with resin this morning. It’s a little hard to see what’s going on in this picture but under the vacuum bag is a spiral tube that runs along the center of the deck over the peel ply. Two more spiral tubes run along the top flange. First you clamped off the center tube and applied a vacuum to the tubes along the flange. This sucks all the air out of the carbon fiber / core and presses it against the mold surface. I then hook the center tube into a bucket of resin. The vacuum sucks the resin down the center of the deck where it wicks up the sides to the flange and into a port that keeps the resin out of the vacuum pump.

When it works it is quick and easy but some days are not meant to be easy. You need to have good vacuum bag with absolutely no leaks. Leaks suck air into the system and through the laminate. Today I checked the bag 100 times looking for the leak. Finally I found a small CF filament that got under the vacuum tape and was allowing air into the system. After infusing all the laminate the resin gels then the mold goes into the autoclave to bake for maximum cross linking of the epoxy.

So much to learn......

Regards,

Jack