Progress on Skirts

A big thanks to my parents who were in town and gave me a hand this weekend.

We made a bunch of progress on the skirts this weekend. Here's the timelapse:




A few details from the process. We are prototyping the skirts using drop cloth plastic picked up at the hardware store since it's cheap and readily available.

Thinking about how to secure the corners we ran into some zippers for tarps which we thought might be useful.

They did end up being useful, however we didn't use the zipper functionality. They turned into good adhesive tape. In the future I think I will do some research to find some good tape to use for joining the skirt elements. Certainly this tape is as strong as the skirt material. And it has a special zipper like anti abrasive rub surface ;-)



We experimentally determined the curves necessary for the joints using masking tape, the plastic and a shop-vac set to blow.

Prototyping with masking tape

The shape of this curve is quite complicated, and we learned the important part is that they line up, as well as the two pieces have the same linear length along the joint.

Two corners secured using zipper reinforced tape.

I also had not worked on the intake for the skirt at the front. So we added a crossmember under the lift fan to be able to catch the air and route it into the skirt.

Adding scoop area for filling the skirt from the lift fan.

We're not sure about the ratio of lift to skirt, but expect that we can adjust it with a baffle if we need more.

With the glue drying we had to stop work on the front skirt section. But once that dries the front skirt segment should be ready to go too.

Once I've verified the plastic skirt works as I like. i plan to cut it apart and measure it to make my templates for the rubberized vinyl version.