New Thread for Barry (Sandwich Construction)

[boatbuilder.org]

Barry

Do you use pre-made panels when you do this or fabricate your own stuff? Have you ever used the panels of closed cell foam with the thin layers of plywood on each side? I have never had to cut down the weight on anything yet but I am sure the day will come when I have a project that will need it and I have never played with the lightweight products.

---Joel---

[Barry Pyeatt]

Joel,

I haven't done any of this for quite awhile.

We mostly made up our own composite panels and vacuum presses. We had most of the molds made in California. The lightest weight panels we made were for a decorating firm. They were door skins with rigid closed cell foam panels laminated and then covered with (I think) 2.5 to 3 oz glass. These were for an aircraft interior but don't know how they were actually used. We also used the rigid foam with pinholes in it laminated to Okume 4mm panels and then glassed. A lot of these for custom stained and finished interior panels. Also some custom e exotic wood veneers laminated the same way but to birch backing. These actually ended up as a 4-5 layer sandwich. They were essentially furniture panels and ultimately cut down to various sizes. All made up in various overall thicknesses per architectural specs.

Some of them were pretty interesting with carbon fiber laid in on various angles and into customer supplied compound curved molds. Some of them were incredibly strong and weighed practically nothing, Just a few ounces per panel. We could accommodate flat custom panels up to 36' long and 16' wide. Smallest we made were about 2' X 3' and used as hatch covers. Largest we ever made was close to that 32' X 12' and was a couple inches thick with end grain balsa core and some pretty exotic finished wood veneer on one side and glass mat/cloth and gel coat on the opposing side. No idea what it was for but it went to the navy along with about 20 other matching panels that were various smaller sizes. These all had metal channels laid into the edges.

Many times we also laid decorator fabrics onto one surface of the panels as a part of the layup.