While I am waiting for damascus to ship and a knife in glue up, I decided I needed to make some micarta. I have never seen anyone use a sarape before and have searched online, so I figured why not. We just had a fiesta for my daughters 1st birthday so I had some sarapes laying around. Headed out to the composite shop today and got some clear surfboard laminating resin. Laminating resin doesn't have wax added to it so it will stay tacky if you don't mix wax into it or seal it from air. I already had wax so I was good to go. I chose this over epoxy for shear cost savings. A quart of this resin is $17. Epoxy is like triple I think.
I laid some parchment paper down, mixed up the resin and started laying it out onto the material. This material is woven and unravels very easy so I elected to just fold it back over onto itself instead of cutting squares. It also helped to line up the pattern somewhat. After it was all laid up I take my mdf boards over to the shop press and let it set up for a bit while fanning it with the heat gun. I usually squeeze way too much out but I want to get any bubbles out. After it's semi set I pulled it out of the press, mixed up another batch, this time with the wax mixed in to cure all of the resin. The parchment paper works way better than plastic because the heat from the resin, and heat gun don't melt to it.
I think it came out pretty good.
I laid some parchment paper down, mixed up the resin and started laying it out onto the material. This material is woven and unravels very easy so I elected to just fold it back over onto itself instead of cutting squares. It also helped to line up the pattern somewhat. After it was all laid up I take my mdf boards over to the shop press and let it set up for a bit while fanning it with the heat gun. I usually squeeze way too much out but I want to get any bubbles out. After it's semi set I pulled it out of the press, mixed up another batch, this time with the wax mixed in to cure all of the resin. The parchment paper works way better than plastic because the heat from the resin, and heat gun don't melt to it.
I think it came out pretty good.
