Reinforcement - carbon vs. glass

[Klint]

Hi,

I'm going to build up the tube of a carbon boom front a tad to get a snug fit with the renowned MauiSails boom front end which I intend to retrofit. I will not need much cloth, just a couple of wraps. Will there be a motivated advantage to go with the significantly more expensive (10x more expensive per sqm, 1 sqm carbonfibre about $100...) carbon cloth or will this kind of reinforcement / build up be fine with glass fiber?

thanks,

/ Andy

[Britt]

The advantages of carbon is that it will make the front tube stiffer. That combined with the Maui Sails boom head will make a big difference. If you just want to build up to where the head fits then go the cheaper route.

Britt

[davide]

Originally Posted by Klint

Hi,

I'm going to build up the tube of a carbon boom front a tad to get a snug fit with the renowned MauiSails boom front end which I intend to retrofit. I will not need much cloth, just a couple of wraps. Will there be a motivated advantage to go with the significantly more expensive (10x more expensive per sqm, 1 sqm carbonfibre about $100...) carbon cloth or will this kind of reinforcement / build up be fine with glass fiber?

thanks,

/ Andy

If I understand correctly you are trying to increase the diameter of your current boom so that it fits the maui-sails boom frontend? If so that seems very hard to do. You need to be able to produce a perfect cylinder + there might be extrusions on the maui tube that "lock in" the front end. In addition especially, for a tube, you need to vacuum bag or at least use a tape trick (where you wrap thinly perforated tape over the fiber) for lamination. If I were you I would just keep my current frontend ... if you want to do it, do it with S-glass or S2-glass tape that is cheap, easier to work with and makes no difference in weight for such a small job.

[geo]

I'd go with glass. Remember the reinforcement would only be partial, so it would leave all the rest of the tubing weaker than the reinforced part. No use to make it super strong in one only place; the aim is just to increase thickness.

Before glassing, try putting a bicycle innertube to build up diameter. The advantage is that it won't slide side to side as much because as a previous poster said you won't have the extrusions keep the head in place.
In any case, the carbon is only a good idea if you reinforce the entire front of the boom and you layer the carbon in such a way that you don't have one "step" between reinforced and original part of the boom.
Again, try the innertube before you get the epoxy out...

before anything you must make sure that the arms have the same shape/curvature as the Maui arms. Its highly unlikely that they will so the boom wont come together at the tail.