Ex-Racer Spitfire Mk1 Rebuild

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Got the bag on after tea. Tweek for the sealing tape was to add the loops to take up slack in the bag after the main ring of tape. Much easier.

Then pulled vacuum to get everything properly in to place and check for leaks.

The smiley hose is for listening 

I'll get on with the resin infusion tomorrow. Get the heaters on and that half of the garage warmed up for that job. 

[PeteStupps]

This is so cool, I'm in awe. Hope tomorrow goes to plan

[Hamish]

Waiting with baited breath

exciting waiting for the results. 
good luck. 

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Infusion day today. Seems to have gone OK although I had a minor moment as I had miscalculated the quantity of resin needed - not taken account of the reinforcing and the carbon tape - so I had to make up some more mid job. But all well.

Starting the infusion

And pulling off the air at the end

I took a bit of video which I've edited and put on to YouTube only 40 seconds. The rattly noise part way through is the vac pump running.

It's now courried up under the heated pet mats and blanket - bless

 

[Nick Jones]

Woof......

[John I]

That’s really clever and if I were 30 plus years younger “cool”.

[Escadrille Ecosse]

So a bit of a 'mare last night as the bag developed a microscopic leak somewhere on the suction side of the mould.

I never actually managed to locate it so spent a large part of the evening in the garage sitting in the folding chair reading my book and periodically turning on the vac pump for a few seconds.

So there was much trepidation as I pulled off the bag and various other layers to reveal the carbon which appears to have bonded OK. Back covered up again for another bake overnight before attempting to remove it from the mould.

[PeteStupps]

Yikes! Sounds a bit stressful. Hope it turns out ok 

[steveJM]

On 4/9/2021 at 3:01 AM, John I said:

That’s really clever and if I were 30 plus years younger “cool”.

or additional +10 years younger "Sic"

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Well it came out of the mould in one piece and seems pretty robust. Ridiculously light too.

There was a little it of sinkage of the gelcoat into the carbon weave along the bottom edge of the lid but as it will all get painted that is not a disaster.

[Hamish]

That’s a great finish. Well done. 

[Mark]

Excellent result! Looks great.

[Nick Jones]

Good looking part!  Excellent   But.....does it fit?

Finish looks rather better than Chris's (which was made from pre-preg) but actually I don't think the fact that the weave shows a bit bothers him at all.

[Escadrille Ecosse]

3 hours ago, Nick Jones said:

Good looking part!  Excellent   But.....does it fit?

Good question. I hope so. Need to trim it down before trying but hanging off doing any of that until I've got more bits made. Cutting carbon fibre needs some fairly robust dust management as it's nasty stuff to get inside you. So I'll det the dust extraction set up again and do most of it in one go.

3 hours ago, Nick Jones said:

Finish looks rather better than Chris's (which was made from pre-preg) but actually I don't think the fact that the weave shows a bit bothers him at all.

Others have said similar to make a feature of the fact that it's made of carbon and not steel.

And why not....

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Passenger side door skin de-moulded this morning. Lots of polishing before starting

Learning some tricks here. Putting masking tape on the raw edge of the cloth makes it a lot easier to handle while getting it into the mould. Creates a bit of waste because it is 'impossible' to remove and needs cut off but does the trick

So this is a two part mould as I wanted to try and laminate the return at the window slot as part of the panel rather than gluing it on later. Original plan for this panel was to have a layer of 200 cloth either side of the 2mm thick core and just some extra reinforcement at the door handle (Mk1 twist handle). Plus the tape strips around the core to avoid a large change in section

I the end I decided to beef things up and changed the inner 200 layer to a layer of 600 cloth instead. Adds about 400g to the weight of the panel but aside from the crease line near the bottom there isn't much in the way of shape stiffness in the door panel.

Bagging up and adding the resin

Pleased with the way it came out.

The return on the top of the panel worked well except for a couple of points where I didn't manage to get the gelcoat right into the apex. Bloody difficult to do as you can't actually see what you're doing in there mach in from either end. Fortunately the vac bagging ensured that the resulting holes got filled with epoxy resin. Not perfect but not really critical I guess.

What is interesting though is that my previously mirror smooth mould now has the same surface finish print through as the gelcoat on the door panel itself. I've not seen this with hand layup glassfibre so I'm assuming that it's a combination of the pressure from the vac bag and the heat from the curing mats that's softening the get on the mould and allowing this. I have found stuff called 'tooling gelcoat' which is apparently much harder that standard (and more expensive of course). It doesn't actually mention this phenomenon but presumably this is one of the benefits it gives.

Too late for these panels but when I come to do the bonnet I'll think about using the harder gelcoat for the moulds.

[PeteStupps]

On 4/18/2021 at 12:57 PM, Escadrille Ecosse said:

Pleased with the way it came out.

Cor blimey! As they say down here. That looks very impressive