I use peel ply even when not bagging. It helps in two ways- squeegeeing
the layup out to a smooth forn with minimal resin content and it leaves a
surface with a very bond-able finish and no amine blush.
I use the plastic squeegees (bondo spreaders), over the peelply, to smooth
the layup out.
If you've gotten a wrinkly surface, you didn't squeegee hard enough.
No harm, 'cept a bit of extra weight. Peel it off and continue.

pete wrote:

Help me please guys,
I'm just about to lay up a hull with two layers of uni-directional
cloth and epoxy and I want to lay peel ply over it.
My problem is that I have very little experience with laminating,
confined only to repairing the occaisionally holed dinghy after being
too stupid.
I have just done the initial layup which called for six layers of
woven cloth in the keel area, in preparation for the full hull layup.
I didn't want to try to do the entire layup in one go because I would
not have enough help (I think) or experience to do it all. I would
also have a relatively small area to put right if I botched it up.
That was a good idea as it turned out.

So I laid up the cloth and epoxy, and laid on the peel ply. It looked
really nice until I came back a day later and saw that it had
transformed itself from a nice smooth oval of cloth to a picture of
the North Sea on a bad day. More wrinkles than an elephants trunk.

Which means more work sanding I suppose, but what bothers me is that I
tried REALLY hard not to stretch the peel ply as I brushed it smooth,
but I guess I must have done. I need to do the full layup on the hull
now, but I'm worried that I'll botch it again and it's gonna look
really bad.

Any tips from out there? Can you not brush the damn stuff at all? I
did put more epoxy on than I needed in fear of not having enough.
Would that have had an effect? If so, When do you know that it's just
right?

Thanks in advance,

Pete

On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 04:50:44 GMT, Jim Conlin
wrote:

I use peel ply even when not bagging. It helps in two ways- squeegeeing
the layup out to a smooth forn with minimal resin content and it leaves a
surface with a very bond-able finish and no amine blush.
I use the plastic squeegees (bondo spreaders), over the peelply, to smooth
the layup out.
If you've gotten a wrinkly surface, you didn't squeegee hard enough.
No harm, 'cept a bit of extra weight. Peel it off and continue.

pete wrote:

Aha,

I thought I was doing the right thing by being gentle; the advice I
was given was to avoid stretching the stuff because when it shrinks
back it rucks up. I guess I took the advice too literally.

Pete