Saturday, September 29, 2012

Backwall Install (Epoxied-Over Plywood)

Had to trim the interior skin of the panels on the rear of the camper to accommodate the rear wall panel. I just cut through and removed the interior skin and polypropylene honeycomb, leaving the protruding exterior skin intact.  This would serve as a shelf to hold the plywood when installed. 

The reason I chose this manner of install was because I was concerned, had I went with 45 degree angled corner cuts on plywood sheet, that angle when mating with the fiberglass would present a sharpened edge of the sort which might work like a knife, cutting into the fiberglass and joint and thereby creating failure.  So instead of using 45-to-45 mating, I decided to go with a butt joint instead.  Squared cuts all around the plywood's perimeter and allow it to sit upon and butt up against these exterior skins. 
 
For the backwall I decided to go with a decent grade 3/4" Plywood and using 635 Thin System 3:1 Medium Epoxy from US Composites, coated the exterior of the plywood with three separate coats for waterproofing.  The epoxy application bonded really well leaving a 'built up' hardened, waterproof finish.

The small fibrous facing on this general plywood serves as more surface area for the epoxy to saturate and thus create not only better saturation, but ultimately a better cured bond across the face.

After multiple applications, the exterior of the plywood turned out really nice.  I also coated the edges to provide waterproofing along the edges also, filling up the pores to saturation. 

Should be able to sand later on and paint the backwall with the same marine paint that I will use on the entire camper.






Interior corners were filleted using 635 Thin System Epoxy as well for this wood-to-fiberglass mate.  Epoxy bonds to wood really well, polyester resin not so much so.  I have to mount many accessories upon the backwall plus a door install, so decided to go with plywood here instead of a composite panel.  

Now I just need to glass the interior and exterior corners.  I should have glassed over top of the filleting while it was still wet, but I was unsure if the epoxy was going to cure well considering my addition of quite a bit of structural filler material.  I did not want to glass over the fillet with several layers of cloth and then it not cure underneath because the filler material might have had disturbed the epoxy to hardener ratio.  That would have been a mess.

I waited until the next day and to my pleasant surprise it had cured thoroughly. Very nice!!  Now, I have the interior corners of the backwall fiberglassed with epoxy.

The rear panel has been cut and tied into the top now.


jump forward to November to see rear wall completed

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Chris