laminating beams and bulkheads with cloth

Thats interesting Michael, what diameter? When i built the one for Kialoa i dont quite remember the veneer thicknes but they were pretty thin but still required steaming to get a nice tight radius from the spokes to the rim. When Condor, a near sistership was built in Europe they had the Spalding tennis raquet company build their wheel which was pretty much a copy of mine except they apparently didnt know about steaming as theirs came out with huge radiuses to the rim. The one i did was only on the boat for a season and while it was very light and quite sucessful structurally it didnt have enough spokes for comfortable steering i guess. The wheel went onto the previous Kialoa. The reason we did the wood wheel was that at that time the wheel quoted by Edson would have weighed 3x what mine weighed. This was before anyone was building Titanium or carbon wheels, I think we had maybe 6 spokes and im sure that was a concession to weight, it was a fun project.

Steve.

 

Two wheels, port starb. Think built in Germany. The wood is OK ,but the epoxy carbon layer doenst seem to like UV from the sun. Some delam so Im attempting to epoxy back toogether.

 

Yeah Kialoas was a single wheel 7 feet in diameter with half of it down in a trough, they hadnt thought of twin wheels back then. Of course we all know that epoxy doesnt like UV so a good spar varnish is mandatory, although i did a laid teak deck on a 26ft cold molded boat that we built in our spare time while we were working on the Kialoa project, it was only 3/16" thick and i did the seams with epoxy and graphite powder and it outlasted the teak, about 25 years.

Steve.

 

What seems to happen is that the varnish, breaks, deteriorates, at the carbon epoxy joint. Holds to the wood great. The old finish was polyurethane. Think Ill give regular vanish a try this time. Thats part of tha high cost. Polyurethane is fast..green on green. Varnish is slow ... plus piles of sandpaper and a dozen disposable brushes .