I had a great meeting Friday with my crazed composites inventor friend Chippy(Robert Chilipala). Earlier he came up with basalt fiberglass. Then powdered holograms to add to laminates. Recently epoxy made from apple juice and fiberglass from cellulose. And what looks like a cookie that you add water to and it will cook your meal. I will have data sheets soon. He now has 87 companies. He keeps innovating. Seated on the left.
On right, a high end fiberglass weaver from Las Vegas, Steve Nagamoto. His company CH Composites weaves a product similar to the Rovelock product but at a better price. http://www.chcomposites.com/
I forget now what the heat distortion temperature of Airex core is. I used to know off top of my head. I did always know it was lower than a cross linked pvc and slightly lower than SEN core. So when I set about heat bending some Airex window stops on the lander, I was surprised that this was all I could get to bend. It was a 100F day and I set the pieces in dark sand that was reading 155F. I thought just a little extra boost from a hair dryer was all I needed. No way. And this was with using weight.
I finally got a picture of Trilogy 4 from Maui. I think that was my 48′ that was built by Kevin Millett some 20 or more years ago. Originally called Hula Girl.
That crack in the bow was alarming. Clearly no triaxial nor uni glass was used. They declined laminate design.
I was surprised how heavy and low tech the items like rudders or hatches were on these rowing multis. I was retained to do a design for a trimaran for ’13 but Roy skipped out without paying, so the design sits.
I have gotten another line on a run of carbon uni and carbon biaxial material for my builders.
This in addition to a bunch of e-glass from before. I will post the details here when I see them in print.
The multihull sailor and philosopher Mark Evans used to remark that spiders will move into epoxy boats immediately, but never onto polyester boats.
I’m building the spaceship like a boat, with epoxy. This large alpha arachnid in the lunar lander was warning me to back off. It was his house now. There must be human health implications.
