fiberglassing?
 

A friend and I want to try our hands at fiberglassing. We would end up making a few body panels for cars eventually (hopefully) as well as other smaller pieces. The problem is, niether of us have any experience at all with fiberglassing. I am wondering if anyone has any links to decent guides or can point me in the direction of decent book(s) on the topic.

any and all help greatly appreciated,
franky

All I can offer is this pointer: Be careful of the rough little shards that are on the edge of unfinished pieces, after it dries - before you sand. These edges need to be handled with leather gloved hands and sanded smooth a.s.a.p. Otherwise, you will get a glass splinter and be picking glass out of your hands for about 10 years. Good luck, have fun.

The easiest way to do it is to make a clay mold of whatever you are going to make, put the fiber over it, paint on the hardener, let it dry, then use a grinder to take off the edges (wear a dust mask, goggles, and long sleeves and pants.) Then, paint it with several layers of primer, sand it smooth, put on the topcoat/clearcoat, and let it dry.

Yeah, and accept that your hands are gonna itch like the devil for a few days.

*remembers rebuilding his sailboat...*

Personally I use pink insulation foam from home depot for my molds. I cut the molds using a hot wire cutter (re: a small car battery charger with a piece of safety wire connected to the leads and it set to the lowest amperage) and then bondo the hell out of the mold. After its fine sanded its then highly waxed, then coated again with a special release agent. At this point the glass is layed up onto the mold and the resin is applied. Personally I recomend West System Epoxy, not that bondo crap epoxy. The west system is very predictable and easy to work with. Personably I vacuum bag at this point but thats kinda advanced. I personally recomend heading over to Aircraft Spruce and checking out there composites section. I buy most of my stuff from there, and there catalog is full of helpful hints.

Get a few pair of disposable Tyvek painters coveralls. It will make life much nicer afterwards.

good info, thanks for the pointers so far guys. question: any special pointers for making molds of pieces i already have, like to make a copy of something? like a body piece from a car thats say, a couple square feet? would plaster be best for something like that?

I little experience with fiberglass but have heard good things about this company: www.fiberglast.com

They sell how to videos that I've heard are pretty good.

I've only done a very small amount of fiberglassing, but I've found that the best resources (sorta) are caraudio sites. Some of them have fabricator's forums and the like, and since fiberglass is a big part of custom stereos, they often have some very good ideas.

This thread taught me the most: http://audioforum.termpro.com/cgi-bi...;f=32;t=000549