Sunday, October 18, 2009

Cape Fabric Test Fail

I've gotten a little bit of momentum going lately, and I thought I would take advantage of it. I'm still not completely convinced that my construction methodology for the cape is sound, as there are some bugs to work out.

I came up with the idea of using contact cement to secure the outer skin to the inner fabric. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I got down to Home Depot and picked up a pot of the stuff.



Not wanting to do a test directly on the cape, in case something went wrong, I poured up a little sample of latex and set the fan onto it to dry.



OH, also, while at Home Depot, I picked up another little storage container thingie for my tools. It was getting a little crowded in there. The on the left is the new one.



I also picked up at HD a particle board shelf. I need a flat and rigid surface to set my molds on while they are curing. This is better than putting the mold onto the floor, as it allows me to adjust the surface if it is not level. Normally, the floor is pretty level, but that doesn't mean the mold was poured on a level floor.



As of right now, the punchline is that the contact cement ate right through the latex and dissolved it. It blistered up in some places, and flat out ate through others. So that's sort of a bummer, and it means that this plan is out. I'll just have to stick with the original plan of using latex to stick the two halves together. Who knows... it just might work.

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