My Carbon Fiber Dash

Ok, I know I'm new here but wanted to show the carbon fiber dash I made for my boat, and the paint job I'm doing, its not finished but here are the before and after.

 

nice, did you use special tools to cut the carbon?

 

Household scissors

Carbon fiber is easy to cut. I think its Kevlar thats difficult. The carbon was pretty cheap, only about 30$ for 1 yard, more then enough for the dash

 

Looks pretty nice! What make/year of boat?
Probably a lower grade 3k at that price... not something I'd use for helicopter rotors, but certainly more than enough quality for a dashboard.
Baz- carbon's pretty easy to work, at least until it cures, with knife and scissors. Once it's cured, an angle grinder and fine-tooth carbide hole saws cover pretty much everything else you'd typically do. Any very-fine-tooth saw works if its tips are hard enough. The finer the better; coarse teeth tear the laminate apart.

 

It's a 1987 Chris Craft Stinger. I will post some more photo's after the paint is finished. I added some flames to the top that fade from red to purple and have a kamailian flake that shifts color for the tips

 

I wanted to the same for my boat but couldn't find a good UV protector for epoxy.

 

THere's both special hardeners with UV-protection and as far as everybody I have asked is saying, covering epoxy with lacquer with uv-protection in it, should be plenty.

Heck, the boat I'm building will have a lcquered finish (wood-epoxy with UV-filter lacquer on top). It's just a dashboard.

You can buy bikes and whatnot made from carbon, carbon masts and so on, and they seem to be working good enough.

 

I agree. Just thought it would be lower maintenance with the UV in the epoxy. WHat happens if you mix the lacquer to epoxy?[/QUOTE]

No, no, you shouldn't mix epoxy with anything. It should be on top of it.

Epoxy is a sort of glue. Well, for the purpose of this, let's call it glue. It's two-component, and it needs to mixed in a certain ratio.

Until it is hardened it's chemical reactive, so you don't want to mix it with anything, leave it in the sun or what have you. However, when it has dried it is inert. A plastics of sorts. Tests by the gudgeon brothers (the guys with West Epoxy), has shown that lacquer (with UV-filters) on epoxy lasts longer than the two on its own.
IF you were to mix the two, you will certainly get lesser strength, but all sorts of other things can happen. No, if I were you, I'd get the 209 hardener (the one with UV in it (perhaps not, actually, as the UV filters makes it a bit darker), and then get some lacquer with UV-filters, put at least to layers of it on top of the epoxy, that way you are pretty sure that there are no bare spots.

Please don't mix the two, you could even start a fire. And make sure that the ratio of the resin/hardener is correct too.

Andre

 

Hey Andre, no problem I will not mix it in to epoxy Just curious on if anyone's done that, sounded like a good idea at the time I replied, but reading it for the second time does sound pretty lame.

 

Well, had it been an "old" product, as in the "tar-days", you would have saved a lot of work by mixing it beforehand. It didn't sound lame to me. It's just not what to do with epoxy