[therivermonster]

I decided to lay up the mold for the exhaust shroud today, but I had a big issue to deal with that I didn't think about before. Holes...

These holes.


So I decided that I would stuff the cavity below the shroud with grocery bags...


And use non drying clay to fill the holes.




Then I waxed the plug with Partall paste wax...


...followed by a couple coats of PVA.


With my workstation all set I got started. I applied the first coat of epoxy...


...and used some of the yarn from the fiberglass cloth to fill the corner between the plywood and the part.






Next I layed up 5 layers of 8.5 OZ 2x2 twill fiberglass fabric over the plug. This is the finished result.




I am really concerned about bubbles. Look at this picture; there's lots of those little guys in there.


Now that I am gaining some experience, I made sure to have an ample supply of Coors Banquet beer with me.

Now we'll let the layup sit for a day or so, then pop it off, trim it up, clean it up, and hopefully lay up a cf part soon.


Thoughts:

Making a quality plug has been a great experience and great practice. I think that the mold will turn out OK, but not great because of bubbles.

I had thought that I would just make molds from epoxy, but the more experience that I get, the more gell coat and chopped strand mat makes sense to me as mold making components.

I think that I'll order up some poly tooling gell coat and some mat for the next mold project.

Anyhow, more to come soon!!