More kevlar !

I was not really in the mood lately for doing more lamination , but today I woke up feeling like messing up a bit with kevlar...!

As s matter of fact, I still had to work on the forward bunk support / stringers and decided to reinforce them with kevlar , just as I did all the others.

Except that this time I was a bit more carefull cutting the strips... It is important to note that I am not working with tape, but I am simply cutting strips of cloth out of a large roll.......and that can be very messy if you are not very cautious ! Kevlar cannot be compared to fiberglass, which is a pleasure to work with ,or with carbon which is simply the best and easiest I have worked so far.

The kevlar cloth I have is dificult to cut, dificult to handle and dificult to laminate.

So this time my strips were cut very straight, carefully following the thread, and I had very few loose strings. That made a big difference !

I laminated the kevlar directly on the stringers, layed on top another 6 ounce fiber glass tape, and finished it off with a strip of plastic film (the same stuff I used for my keel). Squeege once again came to the rescue to make everything smooth, flat and without any excess.

The end result was very good, much better than before. The edges of the kevlar are thin and flat, no bumps, no loose strings.

This result got me motivated to use kevlar on the sheer clamps and the hull's center seam. This was actually the reason why I bought kevlar in the first place, but I ended up kind of changing my mind after the initial hard experiences I had laminating the stuff.

I guess now I am learning how to deal with it and I should be able to do allright on the hull without massive fairing afterwards.

We will see....