I went back and forth. Do we start with the practice piece and use some of my Chapter 4 & 5 supplies for Chapter 3 or do we just dive in and do Chapter 4 right off the bat?
We decided to start with Chapter 3 and see what happens. Jan set out to cut out our the glass for the first Chapter 3 piece - the glass panel. First she cut out a pattern the correct size out of newspaper and proceeded to cut the required number of glass squares for the layups.
Of course she did have some help from Gumbo...
I wonder what this tastes like and who is that coming in to help Gumbo?
Why it's his sister Beignet! This is fun!
We had a roll of plastic wrap left over from our move (man did this come in handy). You can find this at U-Haul and other self move centers. We're using the Cozy Girrrls LoVac system. This requires a layer of plastic wrap on the bottom.
Plastic on the bottom, do the layup, add a layer of peel-ply, about three layers of paper towels and add plastic on the top. The black hose snaking down is the coming from the vacuum pump. This is now ready to cure. NOTE: This was our first time at doing anything. The lay-up, Lo-Vac, etc are all new to us. We probably should have weighed this down.
Additionally, while we were able to document each step along the way of our RV build process this will be somewhat more challenging. You get the gloves on start slapping epoxy on the glass and before you know it the layup is complete. I'd really need to take off the gloves to use the camera (I can't see getting the camera covered in epoxy). This picture taking and documenting will take some practice. This is another angle of the layup.
Here's a little bit better picture of the Lo-Vac pump. I eventually had to rearrage it so that I could use a fan to blow on it to keep it cool. Of course this being our first attempt at it I actually left the pump on for 4 hours. One would have done it.
I decided to bulid a heat tent over the part. Nothing fancy but this worked really well. There's a heater under the table. The temp on top of the table stayed at over 100 degrees. You can see that this isn't sealed by any means but heat rises so the temps stayed up. I actually left vent holes on the side so it wouldn't get too hot.
