I feel pretty good about these, the tan fighting butt is from one of my first pours of foam, then I decided to try black rit dye and I think it worked great! I'm going to slim down the fly grip a little then try my hand at the carbon fiber. I'm thinking of trying a dry layup, wet with resin without heat shrink. I know that would work with fiberglass but I haven't used CF before, am I asking for trouble?
Click this link for a picture
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2018 12:55PM by Grant Aldridge.

Not necessarily, but you may find that it's difficult to get any decent penetration of the epoxy resin into and through the skin to adhere it to the foam. Worth a test, however. It would certainly make fiber orientation/alignment easier.

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Grant,
Try wetting out the foam, cover with wax paper, put the sleeve on, than remove the wax paper. Than wet out again.

Good idea Spencer, do you use a single piece of wax paper or strips?
I just realized I have almost messed up on my casting grip, it may be chalked up as a lesson learned. I got to looking at it and where I thinned it down in the middle I ALMOST went too far, for about an inch if that I will have to ream out all of the foam, the blank is onlyn2 thousandths smaller than the foam



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2018 05:04PM by Grant Aldridge.

It's wrapped on, got the idea from Rod Maker magazine from a quick one, or two page article, the mags worth it's weight in gold.

I ended up trying wet layup without the wax paper and I was worried over nothing, no problem there.
I almost had a catastrophic failure on the seat hood recess - I pulled the seat (it was waxed very well) out after only an hour or so and the fabric followed it! I got it back in though and I'm very happy with how it turned out.
The tenon left by my hole saw worked perfectly to support the seat too.
For the seat insert I just used a size 16 arbor turned down slightly to allow for the fabric
The fighting butt is a step ahead of the other two pieces, the grip and seat insert need a final coat still.
Pictures here, thanks for looking!
Grant

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