Hey,
Been a while since I’ve posted here. Just a quick question regarding carbon fiber layerup. I was wondering how many carbon fiber layers is ideal? For reference I plan to use 3k 2x2 twill carbon and the mast/ wing e.t.c will have a foam core.
Also, how many mm’s thick would your suggested number of carbon layers be?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hi.
I would advise against trying to build a mast. It is a million times more structurally challenging than a board or wing to build a mast that’s stiff enough to actually work.
My friend tried to build a mast and it’s was so flexible it was unusable.
Not sure how much CF to put on foils. Look up “clearwater hydrofoils”. They have some good instructions on how to fiberglass their “build it yourself” kits.
We just finished building a clearwater wing and used 3 layers on the top and 3 layers on the bottom part of the wing. CF used was I believe 120 g/m2.
Make sure when applying it that you do not lay all the mats in the same weave direction.
Basically (we have been told) 6 layers of glass is the same as 3 layers of CF.
@Flightjunkie @Kian thank you for your responses, I’ll keep that in mind but for the moment I would still like to create my own efoil from scratch. Mainly for the project aspect.
For a carbon mast with good stiffness you should probably use Biaxial and Uni-directional carbon. I build one with 3 layers of 8 oz Uni, 1 layer of 12 oz 45 deg biax and 1 layer of 3k twill on each side over an 11mm thick cedar core. You need to do serious reinforcement where the mast connects to the pedestal - 6-8 more layers. Mine turned out stiffer than the moses kitefoil mast - but with about the same amount of torsional rigidity - I still haven’t tested it with big wings like the moses 1100 I built it for. It is a lot of work and much more complicated than building a carbon board.
Redfoil, I have glassed, and broken, a few of the Clearwaterfoils wings and woode masts, back when he made them. His videos are very good. I will try to find his instructions, One key piece is to generously fillet the mast to plate and mast to fuselage joint. Both are fragile. If I was doing it again I would make the middle wood piece out of 2 pieces and put a carbon tube inside of it and inflate a bike inner tube to push it out against the 2 halves. A hollow pipe is stronger than a solid one. Go a little bigger than a gong or Slingshot, I think Axis makes a wider mast. Length is not that important or difficult. Do the fillet with adhesive fillers and put 4 oz glass on it immediately. It makes it much, much easier to shape the fillet with a layer of glass on top. Thin layers are way easier to work. Clearwater’s method of overhanging the cloth and then filling the edge with epoxy is nice. I used to drop in 1 or 2 CF threads in there as well. Definitely finish with a layer wrapping around the edge. Wings that do not wrap the front edge will delaminate on impact. Good luck. I would post pictures but they are at a friend’s summer house.
