Thanks for the replies Frank and Keith.
Frank, what you describe is similar to what I am doing now. It's not too bad but
I am finding it hard to straighten the fibers. It seems that when I make one
section straight, I mess another. And when I go fix the other, I mess the first
one :) But at the end it works out OK. One thing I don't think helps is that
I apply masking tape to the biased cut line. Its nice for cutting but I think
that when I place that line on the TE, any pull on the fibers at that end will
distort adjacent fibers since they are joined at that edge.
Keith, your proposal is intriguing since I was thinking about something similar.
I will think about that. Our parts are not that big and a small frame would
probably work well. I had it with the "roll the fabric in a tube" technique
which
is not working that great for me.
BTW, I asked the Cozy group about it (I was building a Cozy before I got the
Europa
kit). In the cozy, UNI layups tend to be the big stuff (wings) so you use
the whole width, unroll it over the wind and have two people pull at the ends
of the whole width of cloth. You lift the whole thing, straighten and then bring
down. That is hard to do with pieces cut to match the shape of the flap with
biased cloth. Other suggestions from the Cozy group where the 'Spatula" idea
(placing the cloth on a big flat piece of cardboard and then sliding the cloth
in place, the portable roll to move in place for unrolling the glass over the
part at the right angle, etc. But they all involve full width of cloth and
dropping it over the part which I find a little wasteful for our small parts.
Best Regards,
Chris Martin
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