Thread: Fiberglassing Tips?

One fiberglass tip I learned on some of the websites linked here that I think needs to be more visible is the value of aluminum foil. Forget about release agents and vaseline and all that, if you want your fiberglass to conform to a shape in a non-permanent way (like, a sub in the trunk or my dash mounted car PC), cover the target area with aluminum foil. It's non-porous, so the resin won't soak through, and it can usually be easilly peeled off the back of the set fiberglass.

Instead of aluminum foil, which gets really stuck in the fiberglass sometimes, use plastic wrap.

When you take the fiberglass out of your mold and try to remove the aluminum foil, then it rips and little pieces are still stuck in there everywhere. Plastic wrap does a much better job at releasing from the fiberglass.

Diagram:

Mold | Plastic Wrap | Fiberglass

When you're done, just pop the fiberglass with plastic wrap attached to it off of you mold, peel off the plastic wrap and boom, you're done!

Andrew

heres a question i went to home depot last night and was looking for fiberglass resin. i ask some one and they send me to the wood department. after abotu 20 mins of asking about 5 ppl in different dept.s no one knows where to get it from. and one know what dept. they got it from and whats a good brand to get? thanks sam

i wrote up a tutorial on how to make custom fiberglass door panels with lots of pictures, if any of you are unsure of the actual process check it out!

www.sounddomain.com/id/jojor512

i dont know if it's already been said, but i love the irony of the title. sticky: fiberglassing tips

when using those polymeric intermediate foam sprays (mono, great stuff, acme expanding foam, whatever) it's reccomended that you spray water between the layers, don't quite know why but i've heard that

Originally Posted by chkdsk

Start "prying" as soon as possible as the masking tape will start reacting with your mold and with the resin making it a permanent structure of your vehicle.

I use a good quality masking tape (7 day release) and usually apply Turtle Wax on top of the tape to assist in a mold release. You can also go one step further of using Tin Foil depending on how flat the surface is.

I've done quite abit of fiberglassing my self and found the best tape to use for the mold is "TUCK TAPE". It's the red stuff. It's expensive but it sticks to anything and won't react with the glass and your mold will pop right off. The only thing is, don't leave it on any surface to long or the glue will stay behind. Also be careful of the surface you stick it to. It could peel of the finish. I found it to work really well on Leather, vinyl and carpet.

I'll be posting some pics soon of my recently completed custom sub box made of Fiberglass. I just finished it last night. I got pics right from the start. Looks good too!

I've done a little bit with fiberglass in the past. One other car project I'm working on is making a set of teeth to replace the grill. So far (i've only made 2 teeth to this point) I've ground them out of styrofoam with the dremel, and then wrap fiberglass cloth arround them. Then I just brushed on some five-min epoxy, and cut off the excess. Although I haven't gotten to this part yet, I could pour gasoline or some solvent in to dissolve the styroafoam, leaving a hollow tooth. I'll probably end up putting some threaded rod into them, so that I can adjust/remove individual teeth.

As for my car mp3 player project... I"m still in the primitive phases, I'm not even sure what display I'll use... so I"m not real sure how anything will be mounted on my dash. Plus it's a strange car, it'll be tough to make it match and look like it belongs. Most of the dash is a "fake wood" finish. That'll be tough to match, unless I just redid ALL of it, but then I'd also have to do the door panels too, to match them.

Originally Posted by chkdsk

To anyone interested, here are some more fiberglassing resources...

The12Volt.com has a Fiberglass section (as well as other things)...

Alpine-Usa.com 2003 Honda Civic SI, Click on the Installation Photo's - it will take you a few hours to go through BUT it is extremely informative!

The Glassman Forum at YahooGroups - not a pile of posts but very informative. Kinda of commercial orientate but still a lot of good info. At YahooGroups, search for Glassmancustomforum and you'll find it.

I don't know how far MP3Car.com wants to get into glassing as it is a growing part of our hobby IE; do you prefer we send people to other sites OR do you prefer we help them out here?

THANKS CIVIC IS THE @#$%. Wow.