I mentioned in the General forum that I was going to start a little project to attempt to create a carbon juliet. With moving cross country, having a child, and trying to save some money, the prospect of being able to buy an Elite pair of glasses is not going to happen.
However, I am a carbon fiber fiend and need a fix, so I thought that I would try to make my own carbon Oakleys. The Juliet is far and away my favorite, so it's a good place to start.
My plan is to first redo the earstems in carbon. These should be relatively easy. After that I might tackle trying to redo the primary orbitals in carbon. This thread will document my attempts.
Since someone will ask, I get my carbon fiber fabric from eBay, I use West System epoxy for bonding (available at most boating stores) and everything is done by hand with a jewelers saw, dremel tool and sandpapers.
Earstems:
First we have to do some basic carbon layup. I measured up my existing earstem with some calipers to get the overall dimensions, cut out pieces from my roll of fabric to get a big enough overall piece, and then started to build up a "block" of compressed fabric from which I can cut the shape. This pic shows the block halfway through. I needed a fair number of layers to get the required thickness.
Once that was cured, I traced out my earstem with a scribe and started cutting with my jewelers saw.
Here we see the rough blank. The next step will be to more accurately shape the "top-down" profile and get that correct, and then move to the side profile. All of this shaping will be done with the dremel or small hand files.
More to come....