I have completed the majority of the work on the tube saddles. They are basically carbon fibre / epoxy castings that I layed up with dozens of layers of CF. I also tried something new: I made some CF plate and cut it to the shape of the tube saddles and laid it in during the wet lay-up in the mold.
Anyway, I've provided a brief sequence of images below to give everyone an idea of the process involved:
- Beginning to rough cut out the mold (made out of mdf board).
- Mold rough out completed (using drills and jigsaw)
- Mold finished using wood router (seen here mounted on my home made circle cutting jig).
- Vacuum bagging the CF plate using compressor and vacuum transducer. Note that this is simply some square flat CF plate; it's not the mold / casting. The plate was later cut to shape with a jigsaw and used as a couple of "layers" in the wet layup in the mold for each saddle.
- It was a cold day so I created a warm environment to cure the plate quickly using a home made, low temp oven (ie. hair dryer and plastic cover
)
- The first saddle cured in the mold and sanded flat using a belt sander.
- The first saddle demolded with the second saddle in the mold ready to be sanded prior to demolding.
I have also cut the slots in the ends since taking these images (to accept the strap ends) and made some bronze cylindrical retainers. I have also picked up the stainless straps that will be used to hold the tube on the saddles - I'll take some more pictures next weekend.