I was wandering around walmart like a homeless old man and came across some fibergl*** cloth and resin. I was real close to buying it except I couldnt think of anything to make with it. I have allways wanted to experiment with fibergl***. (If they had carbon fiber I would make a cool bedpan to sell to the carbon fiber funboys.) Anyone got some ideas of something cool I could build with it?
Wal-Mart? one of those little Swiss brand FG repair kits in a box? not much cloth there to do much..fun project is take an old bumper and start making a mold..or you could just mix up the resin and catalyst and sniff it till you remember where you are and what you came there for.....
I am going to try to make real carbon fiber counter tops in my new house. Mybe it will start a new trend. I think it will look good with stainless frig and stove.
The good stuff for making molds is chopped strand mat (about 2 ounces), and about 3 layers. Wax the part real good, and put a tooling gel-coat on it, then layers of gl*** and foam to make it rigid. Use polyester resin and mek for the catalyst. It doesn't set-up so fast as epoxy resin. Pull the mat apart at the joining edges so they overlap with the same thickness and density as the non-edges. If you're lucky the mold will separate, and you just wax the tooling gel-coat real good, and spray on regular gel-coat and then lay-up more mat to make the copy. Cloth is used a lot in airplanes. It is used in a couple of layers on top of thick foam for wing surfaces, where light weight is desired. They have Bi-directional weave (BID) which is good for curves and Uni-Directional (UID) for flat surfaces. For example a wing might just contain UID while a nose cone might contain BID. Cloth is also good for cheap auto repair. Fill the dent with bondo and cover it with one layer of cloth, sell the car, and then move to another city before they find you. http://www.fibergl***warehouse.com/index.asp Film at 11...
I like this...set it up in a tray, pour the hot mix in there, tal*** powder up yer *** real good, sit in there right before it sets up, kinda Jello like, pullup at the perfect moment and whammo, custom fit toilet seat..cut out the appropriate holes, paint and pinstripe, and yer in business (please don't take me seriously) talk about a curious rash.....
After you wax it and BEFORE you gel coat--Spray or brush on Part-ALL (water based release agent). Gl*** is fun I just made a trans cover. Heck you can make anything out of it.
Ya may want to use some sort of heat sheild when you mold your toilet seat, fibregl*** can generate a lot of heat as it sets up. Explaining why you are diggin at your a$$ will also be fun!
WAAAY O/T, but this seat cowl was my first f/g project. The bikes a 95 and the huge two up seat really dated it. This covers the p***enger part. I took 3/8" round rod and made a "birdcage" for the shape. Stretched an old tshirt over it, soaked with resin, then put a few layers of mat on the inside. It actually has a minimal amount (skim coat) of filler.
I sure wouldn't want my ***cheecks sunk down into a setting batch of fibergl***. Not only is the heat a concern, but imagine that **** setting up and capturing all your ***hair. Removing your *** from the mold would be rough to say the least. I think the best way would probably be to make a mold of your *** out of plaster or something. Then cast a fibergl*** *** from the plaster mold, then make a 'gl*** mold from the 'gl*** ***. Then you can make multiple ***es at will.
Don't know what u could make, just when you do it, wear gloves and a long sleve shirt. That **** will make you itch for months.
Yeah make sure your wearing long sleeves and gloves, safety gl***es and earplugs and hard hat while ya got your bare *** in the fibregl***. The mental image is killin me!!! safety first.
I like the carbon fiber counter top idea, stainless steel, maybe appropriate color powder coated fixtures..this fall, when the weather was workable we took on some some repairs of those long skinny rowing shells you see on the Town Lake, those can cost 10,000! so the busted up ones get fixed for thousands.most of those boats are insured..carbon fiber is 55.00 a yard..I tried to save as much as I could and am going to make some fenderwells, air cleaners, etc....
ok.. what's the deal with fibergl*** vs bondo. I know bondo absorbs h20, and fibergl*** supposedly doesn't. So.. wouldn't it make sense to repair holes with fibergl***, instead of bondo? School me on this please, as I've got a few holes that need fillin, and I aint done learnin how to weld. How long can one expect a fibergl*** patch to last, etc etc etc etc....
I just had a bunch of fun with this stuff in the last year, my son and I built a plywood "s***ch and glue" boat, maybe this year a hydro plane to recycle the old "ski twin" I just got. Also a father son rust out project got major missing body corners from this stuff, but it is hokey ***ed to the max, for make it arould the block/drive at nite projects. Great for plywood plastic crummy for metal. USE all safety precations. I used disposable gloves, disposable brush's, and disposed of all. Mix a batch do a job toss the sticky mess quick, it burns. Cheese grate or #40 sand the mess before full set up can save work later. DONT clean up with acetone dont even own any just throw away the mess.
Another product is dyna-gl*** and dyna-hair (or many of the brands that combine fibergl*** strands with bondo). Mix in the hardner and you have a pretty nice filler. http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/product.php?pid=104
they had some of that resin with fibergl*** in it. I think I will just get some cloth and resin to make up some kind of hood scoop for my cutl*** one of those super duty trans am types nice and small and square maybe wal mart will have some kind of tupperware tub in a similar shape? I might not use the scoop but it will be fun.
Might be more work than you want to deal with, but you can get some of that pink insulation foam board...(the board stuff, NOT the fuzzy pink stuff)....and carve it into the shape of the scoop. That works nice because you can test fit it to your hood in the foam form. Once you have it looking nice and perfect, you can coat it with latex paint. Coat it real good and make sure to coat it so its smooth. Once you get that done, you can wax it up, make a mold from it, and cast multiple 'gl*** hood scoops. Another way would be to use clay or even carve and sand plaster to make your buck (buck=original from whence the mold comes). Some of this is probably elementary, so if you already know this then disreguard. I figured I'd throw it out there though just in case.
I was going to suggest the same thing Tingler. Make a scoop! I think it would be a good material to make a custom nose for an old hotrod if you're going for that wild 60's look. Quick question about materials: The bondo with gl*** in it, is it almost as strong as fibergl*** at about 1/8th inch thick? Does it hold its shape like fibergl***, or does it shrink and bend like bondo when it's a free standing form?
The foam is a good Idea I also thought of using that spray expanding foam to spray over a copy of the part made outta some wood or soemthing and using the foam to make the mold dont know how well it would work. I think the scoop would look good its not huge it has a nice shape I would run it like on the trans am with the inlet facing the windshield. Its either that or a 64 GTO type scoop. something to make it a little more agressive and not some prostock monstrosity. That mask is sweet! I dont know If I would trust my tEEf to something I made but it sure brings back memories of the movie Strange Brew. I would wear it while riding my motorcycle if i Had one. motorcycle that is. If anyone would read it I might do a tech on it with photos drawings on napkins and everything.
I am in the swimming pool buisness and what was said earlier about gl*** and metal is exactly right. Bondo for metal - micro beads for plastic or masonery (polyester or epoxy).
I'm guessing that wouldn't work too good. I think the foam will be hard to make go on without having creases and folds in it....if you know what I mean. I've sprayed that stuff before and it seems like it would be very difficult to create a solid surface with it. I would suggest using plaster guaze for a mold if you want to just lay up one or two pieces. Its the stuff they use to make casts out of. Make your buck, wax it up with some sort of release agent, lay on the plaster guaze making sure to work out all the air bubbles. Once your guaze has set up, then lay on some plaster of paris on the guaze to give the mold some reinforcement. You could probably do just as well by making a box around your scoop buck and just pouring plaster over it. tap the box to make sure the air bubbles come out. In the end, you'll have a chunk of plaster with a hood scoop impression in it. Wallah....your mold. Another whole thing to think about is undercutting. That simply means that if you make a lip on your buck that sticks out. Say, the air opening. If there is a recessed area and you pour plaster over that buck, YOU WILL NEVER be able to remove the buck from your plaster mold without destroying either the buck or the mold itself. Same thing goes with laying up the actual fibergl***. For example of this: I once observed a mislead art student immerse his hand into a box filled with wet plaster. He stood there and waited till the plaster set up.....thinking he could simply remove his hand an then have a mold. HAHAHA. A human hand has all sorts of undercuts. In the end, he obviously could not remove his hand so he spent the rest of the cl*** chipping a 10 lb. chunk of plaster off of his hand. If there is a lot of undercutting, you will have to use latex rubber to make a mold out of. You can get the latex rubber mold making stuff at Smooth on. I've used that stuff before....its awesome. 1:1 mixing ratio and you can cast literally anything with their systems. If you want to experiment on some small items (think model car parts), you can use silicon caulking (the clear stuff) from your hardware store to make a mold with. I wouldn't make a large mold from it, but something small would work great. Doing some desktop casting like that might give you much needed practice for doing the hood scoop. .....just some things to think about. Good luck.
Thanks for your help guys I will pick up some supplies today. I will see if I can find something allready made like a tupperware container that is real close to the shape I want.
aight I got the fibergl*** cloth type and the mat type and a jug of resin couldnt find a nice trashcan or tupperware sO i will make a buck from scratch. I looked at the pink foam at homedepot but it was 30 bux for a sheet of it. i think i will scrounge the construction dumpsters. Or do it roth style with a 4 dollar bucket of plaster from walmart.
I just learned the other day that fibergl*** matt has a "smooth" side & a "rough" side....I have only used it a few times and always wondered why the **** would come apart all over the place sometime when I would brush resin over it, but other times not. Apprently it does this if the "rough" side is up....
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