Steve,
I'll summarise my cloth cupboard ideas first, and you can read what mine
looks like below if you want.
#Decide if you want a bench styled cloth cupboard that is portable,
remembering it will not only be heavy and awkward with 2 rolls of cloth and
its own weight, but that the door design will have to be well thought out,
and bench space reduced.
#If space is available consider making a stand alone version like what I
have detailed below.
Its main advantage is that it doesn't dominate one of your workbenches,
and when in use you have the full length of your cutting table to work on.
Extractin cloth from any cupboard is awkward and you will want to minimise
doing it. As such you will want to do it infrequently and therefore a long
table full is ideal.
#Switch off your airconditioner when you work on the cloth and consider
wearing your respirator. Your cloth should ideally always be kept hotter
than the ambient temperature of the air in the room when you cut it. This
is because the cloth will then actually repel moisture laiden air. The
contrary is a wet room heated in winter and the inside of your windows
streaming with water from condensation as the moist air contacts the
outside cooled air.
Now if you continually change the air above your cloth it will do 2 things.
Firstly it will help to cool your cloth, and secondly it will expose the
cloth to more air that has some moisture in it, albeit even though it may
be at a low relative humidity. If you really want to do the best job, heat
the cloth from above the cutting table as you work on it with a heater bulb.
#Ensure the temperature in the cupboard is always nice and cosy, and way
above ambient, especially at the time of cutting, or for the 48 hours before.
Stand Alone Cloth Cupboard Details
My glass cloth cupboard is made from 16mm structural flooring, which is
simply a high grade form of small fibre fibreboard. I also used bits of
3"X1 1/2"oregon. My backing board is 1200mm wide and about 1200mm high. To
that I screwed 2 stringers down each side which will become the surface
that the side panels are screwed into. I then screwed 2 end panels to the
back piece, and screwed a roof and bse into the end grains of the
internally located stringers. Now for my front piece to gain entry. The
Rutan reference you mention relies on the pull down door providing a
cutting table which is OK for little pieces only. Now for bigger pieces it
will only get in the way and require you to place a table up to the lid(too
cumbersome!). My doors are made from another piece of board the same size
as the box, ripped down the middle. I actually located the front timber and
attached it with external hinges, and then ripped it down the middle with a
jigsaw. This way I didnt have to swing them and was able to do all the
work with the box lying on its back before standing it up.
You need to make a choice as to whether you want to store your box on the
end of a bench with doors that open outward like mine, or whether you want
a stand alone unit. Mine is a stand alone.Using leftover 3"X1 1/2" timber
and the box sitting horizontally on the table that I use for cutting cloth
on, I cut 2 splayed legs for each end and simply screwed them to the sides
of the box. I then used 2 horizontal braces to keep the legs together, and
placed these about 8" off the floor. Actually I used a piece of leftover
fibreboard to make a lower shelf which has proved handy for storing another
smaller premade cupboard which I ripped the shelves out of to store my
resin pump. Don't forget you will need another brace diagonally from the
top of a back leg to near the bottom of the other back leg. Mine is
actually on castors and the whole thing stands about 6' high. On the rear
wall of the box is a light bulb on a dimmer, and the light stays on the
whole time. The same dimmer also controls another bulb that warms my resin
cupboard. When cutting cloth I just move my cutting table up to the open
doored cloth cupboard and pull out as much cloth as I need. I have at times
had the entire table bar the last 300mm covered with cloth.
Thats about it. You'll never need to build another one, and hopefully you
will have about the best version you can get space permitting.
Reg
Tony Renshaw
>Folks,
>
>I'm interested in suggestions for a device that will store my rolls of
>glass cloth and provide a suitable cutting surface for same. There's a
>drawing of a pretty straightforward looking example in the Rutan
>Composites Handbook, but there are no dimensions given. I'll go to any
>lengths to do this properly, of course. (Sorry for the pun,
>couldn't/wouldn't stop myself.)
>
>Suggestions?
>
>Steve Genotte
>Dallas
>
>
Reg
Tony Renshaw
Builder No.236
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