Any advice or links to a DIY M5 carbon seat?



J

JoanD'arcRoast

Guest
When we went to the beach this summer, I made sure to make a plaster
cast of my backside. I will make a plaster cast of the beach cast, so I
can squeeze the curing composite from both sides.

Now I'm looking for a M5 CF how-to.

I'm under the impression that I need to make a "sandwich" of
CF-foam-CF. [I have no idea what type of foam yet.]

I weigh 135 pounds, I have no desire to over-engineer this piece.
Lighter is of course, better.

I plan to mount it on my Rocket for now, but eventually on a homebrew
Aluminum or CF "Stick"-type SWB.

Any pointers?

-j
 
JoanD'arcRoast wrote:

>When we went to the beach this summer, I made sure to make a plaster
>cast of my backside. I will make a plaster cast of the beach cast, so I
>can squeeze the curing composite from both sides.
>I'm under the impression that I need to make a "sandwich" of
>CF-foam-CF. [I have no idea what type of foam yet.]
>I weigh 135 pounds, I have no desire to over-engineer this piece.
>Lighter is of course, better.


Mmmmm, Joanie Baby -- You aren't, perhaps, offering that plaster cast
for sale, are you? A "Joan" weighing only 135 lbs. posting on ARBR is
quite rare, and really gets the juices flowing. How detailed is that
plaster cast, by the way? Did it capture every crevice? If so, please
e-mail me -- I would like to make a bid on it.

--ROTB
 
I have an M5 seat, and I am working on a CF recumbent that I will
mount it on, so I have experience with the seat and making stuff using
CF. The M5 seat I have does not have any foam core. There is just an
anatomically curved "bed" about 3-4 mm thick and two stiffening
"rails". Maybe there is foam inside the rails, but I suspect that
they made the seat using a mold rather than a lay-up. There is no
reason why you can't use lay-up instead, but you're not likely to get
such pretty results unless you do a lot of hand finishing.

If you just want a seat, it hardly seems worth the trouble to gather
materials and learn the techniques involved in making stuff from CF.
It will cost you far more to DIY than to buy one, even a new one.
Proper CF lay-up will require making forms, vacuum bagging stuff
including a vacuum pump ($50 on ebay will get a good one), CF cloth at
$35 per yard, epoxy resin and hardener at $35 for a quart, lots of
rubber gloves, filter masks, spray adhesive, and etc., ad nauseam.

Post an ad at BROL and specify the size of seat you want. I got mine
there for $150.

Now if you want to make one bike, I'm still not sure it's worth the
trouble and expense compared to buying a bike, unless you're going to
make something you can't get somewhere else. Once you have the
hardware and tools and have put in the effort to learn how to do the
job, the incremental expense and effort of making another bike is
pretty low.

Hmmmmm.
 
"JoanD'arcRoast" <JoanD'[email protected]> wrote in message
news:090820050627026309%JoanD'[email protected]...
[...]

I weigh 135 pounds, I have no desire to over-engineer this piece.
> Lighter is of course, better.


Nobody in this world weighs only 135 pounds (unless you are a starving
inhabitant of *****). Are you anorexic? Do you engage in bulimia? Just how
disgusting are you? We here on ARBR need to know.

Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota