Arts and Crafts Time

Like I said in the other post, the weather in Missoula has been shitty. Today being the worst I've seen since June of 2001 (I think). In order to stay busy on the poor days, I've been shaping an aerodynamic "POD" for my flight instruments.

No that's not rain....ITS FUCKING SNOW!

Jeff had done this before so he taught me how to make one. I started by shaping floral foam into the specific shape I needed. Next we secured a bracket from my instruments into the foam using bondo. After much needed sanding to get the shape as perfect as possible we were ready to lay the carbon fiber. We painted the foam with epoxy resin and molded the carbon to the foam shape. I wrapped my instruments in plastic and placed them in the POD to hold the carbon in place. It took a night for the epoxy to harden. Then we laid a sheet of carbon on the back of the foam and let the epoxy harden over night once again. Now we had the basic POD and it was now time to sand and layer epoxy on to increase the strength. After about eight layers, I had a finished product. What would of cost me over $300 from a manufacturer probably ended up costing me about $40 in material and some of my time. Click on the images for a closer look.