I've 'rolled my own' in the past, with limited success. In my instance it was to match a broken curved set off a semi scale pattern plane, and so were curved (think extra 300) and about 18" in track width..
Basically I traced the shape onto a block of 3" wide wood, and made two saw cuts about 3/16" apart in the curved shape of the landing gear, and then glued some clear plastic to the blocks as my release surface, No finishing the mould this way.
I then added strips around the edge to create a well for the carbon to lay into, on the top piece only, about 1/8" thick, this gave me my cut line (and was all within the 3" block, (the gear was 2 1/2" wide)
I then layed up my landing gear with two layers 200gsm carbon on the outside, and a pile of fibreglass unidirectional strands on the inside. I then clamped the top and bottom blocks together and came back in a few days and trimmed it all down to size.
I stuck in on the plane and was saddened to see it sag badly under the weight of the 11 pound plane, so I went to a buddy who builds aluminum boats and got him to cut me an ali landing gear set.
What I didn't know at the time was that I needed to post cure the part for a lot longer and at a lot higher temperature than I thought (8 hours in the back of the car is not enough).
Some years later I found that set and was suprised to find it had cured and was easily as strong as the aluminum set.
So, word to the wise, POST CURE!!!
Topic: Cheap Carbon Profile Landing gear? (Read 4893 times)