Traveller supports (worthy of the Hulk)

The plans call for a 5/32" minimum thickness on the 100% carbon fiber traveller supports that glue to the sides of the aft cabin.    I approached this task by cutting a bunch of carbon fiber pieces (half at 90 degrees, half at 45 degrees, to be alternated during lamination) and measuring their compressed thickness while dry.    When I got to 3/16" I figured that was enough for a safety factor and did a wet layup of the whole mess (don't know anymore what weight of carbon I had on hand, but it took 20 layers total), using slow hardener.   Then I laid it over the mold and put in the back of the car to help it cure:

Notice how the mold plate is laying at an angle?   This caused a near-disaster:  once I left it alone, the carbon fiber started sliding slowly down the mold, all told about 2-3 inches before it (fortunately) started to harden up (thank goodness for warm summer days).    The part that slid over buckled around the mold edge making removal a fun chore.  Nevertheless, there was enough carbon left in the right areas to still make the support:

And notice how much wastage there is in the blank shown above?  I feel bad about this, but on the other hand if I had tried to minimize the size of the blank (and hence the amount of carbon used), it would have turned out too small (or of non-uniform thickness) - it's very hard to keep all the pieces in a multi-layer layup exactly together so it helps to give yourself some room for error.   (Especially when dealing with fiber cut at 45 degrees...it always wants to distort.)

On the other hand...I ended up with a 3/8" inch thick (darn near uniform) piece! This thing is strong - I cannot flex it at all by hand.   There is zero signs of voids along the edge - not bad for a hand layup, if I do say so myself.

The first support consumed nearly all of my remaining carbon fiber, so I ordered a bunch more 11.1oz carbon from Fiberglass Supply (using next day shipping, ouch! - sometimes instead I drive up there for a will-call pickup, but it's a three hour round-trip and I was busy this time.) for the second one.    I wanted both supports to have the same thickness, so I used the same method - cut enough pieces until I got to a dry thickness of 3/16", hoping this would end up the same.  This time it only required about 16 layers.    Here's my carbon cake in progress, only a few layers to go:

Freshly laid over the mold (note the supports underneath to keep it level this time!):

I let it cure overnight then gave both supports a half-day-long post-cure in the car (80+ deg F day today!).  

Unfortunately, my laminate-thickness dead-reckoning techniques suck...the second support turned out substantially thicker than the first one, right around 7/16"+:

Ah well, at least it's lightweight (although fairing these monster supports into the rest of the hull might be a chore).  

I carefully marked how the supports should be mounted to get the correct angle, then removed the jig:

I decided I wanted to fair the aft cabin top without the supports being in the way, so they have been removed for the time being.    Here's the current state of my fairing efforts at the aft end of the boat:

The weather man has predicted more dust clouds in my area tomorrow... :-)