Better Find Yourself a Girl

Maybe not the best title for the post after the one about the walking fool I have a vague crush on.



Anyway, remember in Pirates of the Caribbean when they're dueling and Will brags about how many hours a day he spends studying fencing? Jack's response is, 'You need to find yourself a girl.'



So as I spent an evening in my kitchen, burning the midnight oil (it was almost 1:00 am when I finished up), my inner Jack was telling me I should have done a better job of chatting up the Dream Walking. This was what I thought a free evening was for?



The G10 lobster claw fins for Claude the Impaler worry me with their obvious frailty. So I decided to laminate them with 2 oz. fiberglass cloth. Which is tricky stuff at first, but I'm getting to where I can do a layup that is merely sloppy rather than disastrous.



Took everything to the kitchen after giving up on getting my garage to a workable temperature for working with epoxy resins with a space heater.



One trick to laying up fiberglass, it seems, is to lay it up with plenty of excess material and then trim it when the resin is almost hard, two or three hours in. There are many tricks, and I have yet to learn most of them.



This did not add enough rigidity, but I think if I repeat the process a couple of times I'll end up with fins that can survive a landing or two. With a little luck, the thing won't be Floyd heavy when I'm done.



I also assembled Iron Man, my BT-70 tube project with a nose cone that was gifted to me. For Iron Man, the G10 fins were sturdy enough but the joint of the fin tab to the motor mount was dicy because of the thinness of the material and I decided to build some robust fillets.





Using plenty of microballoons and some five minute epoxy in the school of Dave 'Epoxy & Microballoons' Bucher, I think I gained most of the strength the job requires without being stupid about it.