Carbon cloth (uni and biaxial) and hard foam sourcing? Where to get good material in the USA at a fair price?
In the Southern US, 3/16 inch 316 alloy S.S. pop rivets have become unavailable: now what? Source?

Monel Pop Rivets. Again not usually available at your local hardware shop, but engineering supplies have them over here.

Regards

Monel is generally too hard for use with aluminum or fiberglass.

Hi dacarls

Monel is what a lot of riggers use over here, including Greg Goodall who put me on to them. I have just brought a heavy duty rivet gun, with handles like a swaging tool or bolt cutters, makes it alot easier and was about the same price as a quality regular hand rivetter, it was cheap, but its doin the job for the moment, when I went looking for one I expected to pay 2-3 times what I paid.

Regards

Fiberglass Supply in Bingen, WA tries to keep carbon in stock, though they can be out. I think they have foam, they supply the sailboard industry in the Gorge.

dave

I get carbon fiber fron Soller Composites (603 934 10290),
peel-ply and sealant tape from Fiberglass Supply (509 493 3464) and mold wax and mold release from Sweet Composites.
Also if you want glass at a good price call www.thayercraft.com
I am in the process of building an A-Cat and am using their
Unidirectional 6.0 OZ cloth.

Try here

Gurit (USA) Inc
Lauderdale Marine Center
2019 SW 20th Street
Suite 234
Fort Lauderdale
Florida (USA)
33315
T +1 954 423 9630
F +1 212 419 9498

How can monel rivets be too hard to use when compared to stainless steel ones ?

SS ones take alot more force to pop, are harder to remove when damaged and induce galvaic corrosion sooner when used on aluminium.

Wouter

for cloth and resins www.aircraftspruce.com for foam i use www.flyingfoam.com what the they call "spyder" foam is the hardest. bob will even cut it to exact specs on his cnc machine. I made a set of daggers for a viva 27, 8'4" tall. bob cut the cores. i used the knitted rutan unidirectional times about 10-15 layers.

I have put a small howto on vacuum bagging and making spreaders and other small carbon parts on my blog site.

Looking forward to seeing how you do the part where the diamond wires pass over the spreaders!
Are there any aerodynamic advantages to "foil shaped" spreaders compared to regular tubes, in real life?

As for the diamond wires, a notch cut in the ends and then two holes for SS safety wire to hold the diamond stay in place. The tip of each spreader has a block of ebony, which is very hard stuff and this spreads the compression load out over the hole surface of the spreader.
I do not have any numbers to support this, but I don't know how an airfoil shape could not have "aerodynamic advantages" over a round tube.

Thank you, good idea with the ebony!
The question about the airfoil shape was how much it means in real life. The "standard" tubes are about as bad as it can be, but in the larger pictures, how much faster can it be..

When you weigh more then your boat every little bit helps.
I building an A-cat and hope to bring it in at 85KG and I am 195 cm and weigh over 100 KG.

Being 178cm and having just dropped below 100Kgs, I know what you mean <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
It all adds up of course, but I was curious becouse we have a Tornado alu mast with one broken spreader arm. Build a set of wings or buy a replacement part from Marstrøm..

Build a set of wings, definitely. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

For those home builders looking to find out how the "big boys" do it.
http://valenciasailing.blogspot.com/2008/04/bmw-oracle-progress-well-advanced-on.html