What do you do when it's unhealthy to go outside and network television is an incessant stream of yellow journalism? Fun in the garage of course.

I picked up some carbon fiber weave and epoxy resin to see if compression could make up for my shameful lack of an autoclave. Additionally, I tried curing the resin at 500F.



The resin runoff cured in the oven within minutes and turned a deep amber; neither of these things is desirable. I removed the bake assembly from the oven and let it cure at room temperature, surprisingly it turned out to be visually identical to the full room temperature cure (seen below on left and right). Nonetheless, my procedure will hence be room temperature curing.



Straight out of the press, the composite surface is a bit hazy on account of the mold release. With a bit of wet sanding and a layer of clear coat it looks pretty good. I have a two layer carbon-carbon that is rather flexible. I also created a carbon-glass-glass-glass-carbon-carbon that is quite rigid.

A chain guard is currently drying in the garage, we'll see how it turns out.

Regarding the fires, I was out checking on a friend's house and decided to skirt the perimeter of my area to see if I'd need to worry. The one blaze I saw was pretty small, particularly in comparison to three years before about a mile west.



Apparently the most significant damage was done farther north in Rancho Santa Fe and east in Ramona.