Originally Posted by
meech151
I have only built steel fillet-brazed frames but I was curious as to the difficulty of building a carbon frame in a similar manner that you all are building bamboo frames. Where is the best and most cost effective carbon tubing and how difficult is it to wrap the joints correctly? Most people mention wrapping them in stages and I was wondering how many layers and how long each need to set up? When you mentioned a vacuum bag this was new to me, maybe a couple of details would be great. Thanks.
I think that the wrapping referred to here is rather specific to the bamboo process out of necessity (infinite tube end dimensions). Though possible, seems doing it with carbon tubes would yield a heavy part. Maybe not.
The vacuum bag - putting the part you just made, wet with resin, in a plastic bag and sucking the air out with a pump. The plastic pushes the cloth against a mold, squeezes out excess resin. Seems that AllenG uses an inner tube section to push cloth against bamboo tube interiors once inflated.