The Recumbent Velomobile Project Moves Forward!

Today had a bright spot in it for me as I finally got an order of styrofoam delivered to the shop so that I could start work on making parts for the construction of the body to the recumbent velomobile that I have posted about weeks back.  

  With this order of foam I laid out most of the components for the body today.  This is a simple process of taking full sized drawings of each part and tracing the drawing while it is position on the foam panel.  When you trace the part an indentation is created on the foam and then you go over this indentation with a Sharpie or some similar marker so that you can see it better when cutting parts.  Once I have all the parts marked out on to the foam I will fiber glass the panel, let it cure over night and then cut it apart.  I then will turn the parts over and glass them again on the opposite side.  This will make nice light, strong parts for the frame of the velomobile body.  Once all of the glass has been laid down and cured properly the parts will be cut again to trim them down to their proper shape.  This is the same process that is used in the construction of experimental composite aircraft.  I have used this technique when I built my three piece take apart kayak and my cargo trailer for my motorcycle.

  Not wanting to waste a perfect opportunity to have some fun and document what I managed to get done today I set up my handy dandy Ipad with an app to create a little time lapse video.  I compressed the 3 1/2 hours of work in the shop to just about 2 minutes.  It's a fun way to show you the process of transferring the full sized drawings to the foam panels and test out the app at the same time.  

  

I'll be posting more info about the recumbent velomobile project as I get farther along with it.  Until then enjoy the video.