Hand Lamination vs. Vacuum Infusion: Does It Actually Matter? A question that comes up often enough to deserve a proper answer: would the structural outcome of a composite part actually change if it was hand laminated instead of vacuum bagged or infused? The honest answer depends entirely on whether the part has a core or […]
Hand Lamination vs. Vacuum Infusion: Does It Actually Matter? Read More »
Daggerboard Crash Box: Building a Watertight Safety Compartment Why We’re Building a Crash Box With the floors already out and the boat this far stripped down, adding a crash box behind the daggerboard case made sense. It’s a genuine safety upgrade — secondary flood protection in case the daggerboard case is breached. The concept is
Daggerboard Crash Box: Building a Watertight Safety Compartment Read More »
Salvaging a Failed Vacuum Infusion: How We Saved a Boat Floor This week’s floor came in two parts — the hatch first, then the floor itself, built around the hatch as its own mould. Between cold weather, a resin that turned out to be genuinely dodgy, and a vacuum that wasn’t quite there, it didn’t
Salvaging a Failed Vacuum Infusion: How We Saved a Boat Floor Read More »
Edge Capping a Cored Panel: Packing Unidirectional Fibre Into a Tight Channel Following on from the beam-theory reasoning behind cutting a bulkhead for headroom, this is the actual execution — getting calculated unidirectional fibre packed properly into a narrow routed channel, which turned out to be a genuinely different challenge from laminating it onto a
Edge Capping a Cored Panel: Packing Unidirectional Fibre Into a Tight Channel Read More »
This content is for Youngbarnacles members. The technical library, forum, and downloads are available to members only. If you’re not a member yet, here’s what you get access to — 25+ years of grand prix composite and rigging knowledge documented in depth, one new members-only video every month, and a technical forum where people building
Reading an Infusion: Flow Fronts, Close-Outs, and Chasing Air Leaks (Members) Read More »
Infusion Resin vs. Hand Lamination Resin: Why They’re Chemically Different A small floor for one of the bathrooms turned into a genuinely advanced infusion setup — two hoses, careful bag geometry, and a resin switch that ended up solving more problems than it caused. Fixing the Table for Good The plywood laminating table’s leak problem,
Infusion Resin vs. Hand Lamination Resin: Why They’re Chemically Different Read More »
