Adding the upper, painting, and eyelets

The boots have come together and are ready to be tested on the ice. It was a fun and educational experience. Many mistakes were made and hopefully will be avoided next time. But, the blades bolt on and I think that the boots will hold together for sometime.



I left off in the previous entry having completed the shell and I added a few layers of dynel fabric as a backing on the exposed portion of the neoprene that will form the upper flaps. The tongue was glued in place having been constructed of EVA foam and leather.


Next, I added the major portion of the leather upper - cowhide of some sort I presume. It came from an old leather jacket made in Argentina. Shown in the photo is one piece of leather glued on with contact cement and held in place with a few rubber bands. Next, but not shown I added a piece of leather around the cuff and then reinforcing strips of leather where the eyelets will be placed. All solidly held in place with contact cement.



Next I painted the shell and the leather. I used acrylic paints from a craft store. They are water based paints that easily apply to leather and the fiberglass shell. The eyelets were something of a challenge. The hand tool shown in the next photo I purchased at a craft store and it punched 5/32 inch holes. The top three holes I added quarter inch eyelets. To create these larger holes I used a hole punch and rubber mallet shown in the next photo. Going through 4 layers of leather, 3 to six of dynel fabric, and one or two of neoprene was a pain - especially the neoprene. Next, time I will use fewer layers in this area.



Here is my list of lessons learned:

• don't fold the neoprene over to form a cuff before laminating the fiber glass on - epoxy gets on the cuff.
  
• when adding extra padding, which I did around the ankle, taper the edges so that it doesn't show through the fiberglass as the ugly ridge that it does.
• use less gold paint, and more dark paints because they help cover the defects in the shell.
• don't use masking tape for anything, epoxy will soak right through it - plastic tape is much better.
• chopped fiberglass is not an easy filler material to work with.
  
• I need a real vacuum pump - the mityvac is tough on the hands.
• don't panic when using epoxy - you have more time then you might think.
  

Laminating the fiberglass shell

It's time for another short update. The fiberglass shells have been laminated to the neoprene rubber liner. Shown in the next photo are the major pieces of 6 oz. fiberglass cut and ready to use.

In the right foot I have used five layers to create the footbed. I glued the blocks onto one of the footbed layers and wetted down these layers and let them set. Not shown in the photo is the fact the I placed an inline frame (without wheels) on top in order to get the spacing right. I used chopped up fiberglass mixed with epoxy as a filler material around the blocks. Otherwise when the big layer go over the top an air bubble will form.

The next step was to put the rest of the fiberglass pieces in place, wet them down with epoxy, roll out the air bubbles and then vacuum form in place. To vacuum form I wrapped the wet shell in plastic film (with pin holes poked in it), taped quilted paper towel in place as a breather material, put the whole thing in a 2.5 gallon ziploc plastic bag, inserted a plastic tube, sealed it off, and then applied a vacuum. First with a vacuum cleaner to get the excess air out of the bag and then I switched over to a hand vacuum pump. See the setup in the next photo:

I used a slow setting epoxy so I left the vacuum on for a few hours. the result was mostly satisfactory. There are lots of wrinkles, and ridges in the transition areas from a single to a double layer of neoprene. That is about the worst of it. I will use plastic tape for masking in the future. Masking tape absorbs the wet epoxy and is hard to remove and leaked through in some places. The next photo shows the complete shell. Unlike carbon fiber the fiberglass is almost transparent.

The next photo shows the shell removed from the plaster foot.

Finally, I used contact cement to add some backing/reinforcing material to the neoprene upper. I also have the tongue in place which is a quarter inch layer of EVA foam cemented to a piece of an old leather jacket. More leather to come in my next posting.


Additional photos on my Flickr page.