Bow Prod

The bow prod looks good and it was time to create the receiver sleeve for the prod.  As before, I created the receiver tube out of carbon fiber sleeves from Solar Composites.  This time however I made to significant changes in the fabrication, 1) I did not vacuum bag the item, and 2) I put the Kevlar composite sleeve on the inside rather than the outside.  Other than the look, the primary benefit of using carbon/kevlar is that the kevlar is much more resistant to long term wear and abrasion than carbon fiber.  

Of course we want the receiver tube to have a slightly larger inside diameter than the outside diameter of the prod.  So I used the prod as the mold for the receiver, and wrapped 6 mil plastic around it several times in order to insure that the receiver tube would have the necessary clearance from the prod.

As I mentioned above, I did not vacuum bag this part.  Instead I just hung the prod from the ceiling of the garage, put on the four layers of sleeving material in the same way that I created the prod previously, painting each layer with epoxy.  The layers were taped to the mold (at the top) and then I simply stretched each layer by pulling downward.  Finally, I wrapped the whole thing in release cloth.   The picture on the right shows the sleeve hanging with the release cloth still attached.

Once the epoxy hardened, I removed the release cloth and pulled the finished receiver tube off of the prod and then cut it to length on the table saw.


The picture to the left shows the fitting of the receiver tube through the starboard side of the bow.  The picture below show the tube tacked in with a bit of thickened epoxy.

The next step is to reinforce this area with some 12 oz carbon fiber cloth.  I need to add some reinforcing to frame 18 as well to hold the back end of the receiver tube more securely.