airframefixer wrote:
Is that soric in your fender lay up?
Yes.........I used soric on the front fenders, in the floor under the seats, and then coremat on the rear fenders. They are both easy to use, conform great to contours, and they cut easy (both in the raw form and after cure). It seams like the soric soaks up a little less resin, which results in a lighter laminate, plus the bagside surface takes on the cool honeycomb shape. I did notice some print through issues on the tool side using the soric due to some in porosity in the those honeycomb channels. One fender shows worse that the other so I think it can be attributed to a less than perfect vacuum bag. It's hard to see unless you are really looking........but I know it's there. The coremat on the other hand had has zero print through issues, but it is more of a resin hog.
I used wet ply layup for everything. So I can't speak to how well it works for infusion layups. One trick I did use when I was applying the resin was to spread out the correct oz/yd amount with a squeegee, then roll up the soric/coremat and "wring" it out like you would a wet towel. This helped to better and more evenly distribute the resin throughout the product. You had to be a little more careful with the coremat vs. the soric as the coremat wanted to tear.
Overall I would highly recommend it. If I was doing a full body (I'd love to do a Lotus 23 build) it would be my first choice. For the amount of stiffness per unit weight it adds I think it's extremely cost effective. Much cheaper, lighter, and faster than adding additional plys.