Test mold week!

Our Second test mold is looking awesome. We've refined our construction technique and we have decided duct tape is the best way to cover the steel skeleton. yes, duct tape will be a major part of our construction! yayy!



After it was covered in duct tape, we once again covered it with resin and fiberglass mesh. This time we used three layers to ensure the mold doesnt undergo any deflection once the concrete is placed.


One of the more time consuming and boring tasks being done is pulling all of the bits of reinforcement out of the crushed icebreaker aggregate.



Today we did two very important things for our mix design. We poured test cylinders to determine the aggregate gradation we want to use and we poured cement paste cubes so we can determine cement mix percentages.




The test cylinders will be broken tomorrow and placed into 100% humidiy. We will be obtaining a 7-day compressive strength and a 28-day compressive strength to add us in picking our best mix. The cement paste cubes will also be placed into 100% humidity and they will be broken after 7 days.

On a side note, today at the lab we had a honors seminar class visit to get help with a project. They are building a pirate ship so we gave them some pointers on how to use fiberglass resin. Any visitors that would like to learn more about concrete canoe are always more than welcome!