Tips & Tricks - Creating hollow carbon fiber shapes

[NLCHAWAII]

In the spirit of sharing and giving some base information that may help someone in their own project at home , I was recently asked to make a paddle with a tennis ball size carbon fiber handle . Creating HOLLOW carbon fiber shapes needn't necessitate the use of bladder molds , autoclaves , roto-molds or anything else that sounds hi-tech and mystical to the garage builder . You don't even need a male/female mold , simply a shape to mold off of . This simple technique can be used for SUP board deck handles , paddle handles or even hollow shafts .
  I started my short venture with a humble and lonely tennis ball .
  Then I applied a mold release to the ball , in this case some stretch plastic wrap .

   With the mold release in place I was then free to wet out a few small pieces of carbon fiber and wrap them around the ball . Then I compressed the carbon against the ball or form per-say with more of the stretch plastic wrap .

Once the resin had hardened overnight , I could then carefully cut around the circumference of the shape and remove the new carbon shape .



   I then carefully realign the two halves together and lightly secure them in place with a few pieces of tape . Now I can use a small amount of resin and glue the two halves of the ball together . Its important at this time to let the resin cure to a rather hard state before progressing , as the resultant shape is very fragile and I don't want the seem to break when adding more layers of carbon . I usually will put the piece aside for a day and allow it to harden . In the case of this ball , I added three layers of carbon total . I filled the interior with two part polyurethane foam and then cored it out to accept the paddle shaft .



   Some five minute gel epoxy on the shaft and in the ball handle and this project is done . I hope that some of the ideas presented will help with some of your projects that you may be planing in the future . Aloha from Hawaii - NLC

[Dwight (DW)]

Awesome. Thanks!

[surf monkey]

Very Cool.

Thanks