Boat Building; Carbon/Nomex International Moth

Follow composite boat building gurus, Bill B. and George S. as they lead a team in building carbon/nomex parts for a Hungry Beaver foiling International Moth.

These guys are dedicated amateurs building out of a garage.

Music is "Lester had a Coconut" by the "String Cheese Incident" from the compilation CD "Pack of Dogs"

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Boat
• building
• International
• Moth
• fiberglass
• epoxy
• carbon
• boatbuilding
• nomex
• foiler
• laminating
• chickenpayback

[SKIFFSHOP]

hi guys good effort - I was looking into wetlaying with nomex but gave up after these two problems (assuming you had a 1 core 1 layup.

A) Laying the resin in the final layers ontop of the nomex, without filling up the holes. Or prepregnating them off the job without them draining into the cells!? What did you do here.

B) With 1/core/1 layup you will get small holes in the laminate or will be porous. With will also fill up the nomex cells. What was your solution??

Cheers

[chickenpayback]

Bill

From Bill B,

The carbon outer layer in the carbon inner layer were wet out on a separate table before placing in the female mold. The thin kevlar layer on the outer skin between the carbon and nomex was placed in the mold dry and wet out as required in place. By wetting the inner carbon skin on a table it only needed to be positioned on the nomex core and bagged down.

[chickenpayback]

From Bill B,

Porosity is a problem. The best approach is to spray an ample coat of primer in the mold before starting the layup. Porosity will still exist, but it will be behind the impermeable primer. If the outer skin were bagged and cured in the mold before the nomex was added, the porosity problem would go away. Assuming you did neither of these things, the problem can still be solved by squegeeing three extremely thin coats of thickened resin over the entire surface.

[chickenpayback]

Hull with no wings weighs around 10 kg (22 lbs.)

[strangefacekid]

Hey great job ! People don't realise how easy it is, doing it well though... I worked in the boat industry building open 60's & Volvo class great job. Nice to see the whole process again. I was wondering why you did not use Pre Preg as aposed to wet lay? Perhaps you do not have an oven... Anyhow great job & great video. Peace :)

[eric3969]

Laying breather directly over peel ply is very likely to pull too much resin out of the laminate. The approach of a perforated release ply in between the peel ply and the breather has worked very well for me and pulls a consistant 25% resin from the laminate into the breather. The nomex stuff seems very easy to fill up with resin making for a heavier laminate than corecell or divinycell. The boat has obviously held together. Good job and very cleaver with the half mold technique!

[knutfheifer]

I am going to puke, there is no need for that sort of thing on you tube

[mapiababy]

how much money cost to make that

[thebunny31]

Great video. I've been thinking of getting into sailing and this looks like the most exciting way. How much did it cost to build the boat and where did you find the specs to follow?

[jabousquet]

jabousquet | March 20, 2008

The Nomex is 1/4" thick, 3"16" cell, overexpanded. Procured from Eurocomposites. The Nomex core is flexible enough on the long axis to roll into a tube about 8 inches in diameter. Bill's half-hull molds allow the composite to be made in one lay-up. And the pieces are easily extracted from the mold! I suspect that laying up a hull would be much more difficult with a one-piece hull mold, both in speed required to get everything in before the resin kicks & in removal.

[martianhop]

I just got around to weighing the pieces with an accurate scale and found the hull parts shown, trimmed and taped together weigh 19.4 lb. Adding bulkheads, transom and trunk brings it up to 20.9 lb. Filler and paint to go.