METHOD The basic method of making my tail spring was to lay up the glass into a plywood mould, let it cure, cut off the mould and trim the fibreglass. Here are the basic steps: (1) Get a piece of reasonably flat 3/4" plywood aprx. 30 inches long (or however long you want the final piece to be), and about 5-1/2 inches wide. Cut two more 3/4" plywood pieces, same length but 2" wide each. Glue or screw the 2 narrow pieces onto the wider piece so there it creates a 1-1/2"x3/4"x30" trough. (2) Cut down a squeegee so it fits into the trough. One plus a backup should be enough if you're using plastic squeegees. (3) Pre-cut strips of UNI to 1-1/2" wide so they fit in the trough, and about 4" longer than the trough (34" in this case)so they can hang out each end by about 2". (Obviously, the strands of the UNI strips must run parallel to the trough, which, incidentally, is also the easiest direction to cut it!) The 2" overhang will allow you to hold the glass strip with one hand and keep it from sliding, while squeegeeing with the other hand. Cut lots of strips. I can't remember exactly how many I used but it might have been in the order of 50 or more to build up the thin layers of UNI up to a thickness of 3/4". If you're a few strips short, you'll need to cut some more, so have your cloth ready for more cutting as required. (4) Mix small batches of epoxy so you don't have to rush. Start laying the strips down per the normal glassing procedure. Keep mixing epoxy and adding strips until the 3/4" trough is "full". It took me 2-3 hours to do the lay-up, but I work slower than the average builder. (5) This is optional: I "post-cured" the layup by placing it in a large plastic bag and running a hot hairdryer into it. I used a paper tube to run the exhaust air out of the bag and back into the back of the hairdryer. This caused the temperature to rise so high that the bag melted in one spot, so I backed off on the recirculated air a bit. The temperature stabilized at about 60 degrees Celcius (140 deg F) and I left it that way for about 2 hours. (6) Wait a day or two and then cut the plywood away with a tablesaw. This is where it pays off if you used nice straight cuts of plywood to make the mould. When you're done trimming, you should have a fibreglass bar with square edges that measures 1"x1/2"x30". With the table saw, trim the long edges at 45 degrees to approximate the radius and plane and sand the rest of the way until the desired cross-section in achieved. FIRST ATTEMPT My first attempt at making a tailspring taught me a very important thing about working with fiberglass. Before the epoxy cures, the glass has very little rigidity and will flow wherever the epoxy flows. That's what happened to my first lay-up. After I laid the glass into my mould, before the epoxy cured, I tried to press out excess epoxy with a strip of plywood that was sized to just fit into the groove where the glass had been laid. Wishful thinking, in retrospect. As the excess oozed out everywhere, so did the glass strands, and the whole lay-up became anything but UNI-directional. I ended up pulling the whole mess out of the mould and the pictures show how it looked after it cured. SECOND ATTEMPT On my second attempt, I did everything the same except the pressing. Instead I focused on the squeegeeing to achieve a good lay-up that had just the right epoxy content. I was quite pleased with the quality of the final product.