Advanced Composite Techniques: Lightweigh Moldless Techniques for the Aircraft Homebuilder

This book deals almost exclusively with fiberglass in epoxy, though some of the concepts carry over to other materials. Covers foam cored sandwich structures and vacuum bagging. Excellent resource from the standpoint of one who wishes to make large structural composites at reasonable cost, both from the use of less expensive fabric and creative use of cheap consumables. There is a lot of focus on making molds of easily obtainable smooth surfaces-- and this contributes to real time savings compared to polishing rough molds. The last third of the book contains a series of exercises designed to teach the techniques sequentially.

This book walks you through the many different composite techniques aimed at aircraft design, but they can be applied to anything. At the end of the book there is a collection of examples that provide hands on experience with the methods described in the book. Another helpful part of this book is that it provides example methods for making the equipment needed to handle composite materials, the main one being how to build a vacuum bag tool. I knew nothing of composite construction before reading this book but now I feel confident that I can create most anything.

Excellent coverage of all relevant techniques for composite homebuilt aircraft. also applicable to boats, sports-cars, etc. Essential pre-build reading. Arrived very quickly in 'as new' condition, VERY happy!

I've been using Zeke Smith's composites book for several months and it's taught me everything I wanted to know about how to build a kitplane. In addition, in my work as a mechanical engineer, I was assigned as part of a team to design a new delivery van that weighs 50% less than current models. I've relied heavily on this book and the composite techniques it uses to create mock-ups and prototypes to reach our team objective. As soon as I have some free time, I'm going to design my own composite plane (Daniel Raymer's book "Simplified Aircraft for Homebuilders" is EXCELLENT for this I might add) and I'll use techniques mostly from Zeke Smith's book in addition to some other things I've learned.