ORIGINAL: Mike James

Hi everybody,

I've made plenty of (hand laid up) fiberglass wing tube sockets in the past, using a typical method of barber-pole wrapping some resin-saturated glass around the wing tube, but have had typical results... Often they're hard to get off the wing tube, the edges are ragged and need to be sanded, and they've been relatively heavy.

Yesterday, I made my first ones via vacuum bag, and was surprised at the good results. Here's what I did...

First, I waxed the wing tube, just in case I got any resin on it. Then I wrapped a single piece of vacuum bag material around the tube, and taped it in place with a couple of pieces of Scotch tape. Wearing gloves, i wrapped a piece of 3" wide, resin-saturated (6 oz.) cloth around the tube, overlapping each wrap by approximately 1 inch. Next, I wrapped a piece of peel-ply around the tube, and finally, a piece of breather felt. The epoxy on the outside held all of this together well enough to be put into the bag. (It's helpful to leave several inches of the wing tube uncoated, so you have a gripping surface later, to twist the finished tube off.)

Releasing it from the tube wasn't "easy", but it only took a few minutes of twisting before I could slide it off... Not too bad.

Here's the surprise..A 7-inch long 3/4" diameter socket only weighed .2 ounces. That's the same weight as the typical phenolic tubes you get with Pattern-style tubes and sockets, and quite a bit stronger. I expected it to be almost double that weight. And, due to the vacuum bagging process, there are no ragged edges, and no sanding required. Nice.

Anybody else making these? Same method?