Teach me. Fiberglass I imagine is pretty easy to work with. What should I know about this?

 

Just don't breathe it. Wear a good dust mask.

 

Is it pretty easy? Yea I've heard you can mess your lungs up pretty bad with that. Think I still have the mask I used to wear when I repaired my surf board.

 

You need a respirator if you are lying fiberglass. The chemicals in the resin are very bad for you. If you are sanding cured fiberglass, then a dust mask will do.

Fabricating with FG requires a mold or a plug. Your question is very general, can you give more details? what are you fabricating?

 

Thinking about making a plenum cover out of fiberglass, and if that goes well possibly other things. Not sure what.

 

The layup is the easy part. You will require a mold, or what we call tooling of the product to layup on though. Which is labor intensive if making by hand and not having machined.

There's a **** ton of ways to make a mold though. So you will have to research what the best method is for what you are trying to make.

Like mentioned use proper PPE. Styrene and everything else that can be on the resin is terrible for you.

 

You'll need a mold but fiberglass only comes in sheets of 12" so it's going to be hard to lay it on something that's only 4". Kthnxbye

 

?? you can cut cloth or mat, why wuld it matter the size of the sheets

 

page is way outdated as I cant acess it, but here's one small project I made out of it http://losts86hatch.tripod.com/id15.html

 

Are you pretty decent at fabbing this kind of stuff?

 

I didn't think it'd be too hard. A plenum cover should be pretty straight forward. One large rectangle followed by two sides. Hell a shoe box would practically make for a mold. (yes I'm aware I can't ACTUALLY use a shoe box as a mold.)

 

Teehee

 

sort of, i've done several pieces for the car, once my wife gets over this mess and gets to go home, I had planned on starting a mold for a fuse box to be integrated into one of the kick panels, I'll start a thread and post pictures,

 

Care to make some extra cash and help me out?

 

what do you need? my main issue is time at the moment, but once she goes home I might be able to help you,just depends on how complex of a project you have

 

Wolf hair is much stronger than fiber glass. You should try that with wolf **** epoxy hardener.
No need to wear PPE when you use wolf pp.


SRS though, fiberglass work is frustrating, messy, stinky, humbling, laborous, costly, did I say messy? Ohh yeah and get some one that knows glass already to make it for you. You'll thank me later Betagator.

 

messy is the under statement of the year, I'm still finding dust from sanding that piece in my shop corners, and that was years ago

 

You interested in doing carbon instead? I can send you some.

 

CARBON FIBER is the WORST stuff ever to work with. NEVER grind it or you will seriously itch for hours to days. Breathing the dust is like a poison that gets stuck in your nasal and doesn't leave.
Unless you have been professionally trained to achieve the classic clear fiber look, you WILL NOT get it on the 20th try! The fibers shift and twist and pull all the F over the place in any curve. I have made plenty of CF stuff for high powered rocketry and cars, it really sucks ***** to work with it. I even purchased some vacuum bagging stufff to make parts but have been so frustrated in the past I havn't tried it yet. Frreeeeel doe!

 

PM'd

I was thinking about doing it myself, or even paying a guy around town to do it that I know is pretty decent at making stuff like that, but if you truly are in need of some extra income and would be interested in it, I don't have a problem paying you to do it if it helps out.

Interdasting!

 

If you can make the plug ( different from a mold) all you have to do is cover it with fiberglass cloth. As you said, if you are making something that looks like a shoe box, then it's really simple. I work on small parts and this is the simplest way to do it.

Get fiberglass cloth and cut it into 2" wide strips then cut the strips into 4" long sections.
Mix the resin and hardener in disposable paper plates, don't use foam plates. You want enough resin to fill the plate about 1/4 high. Then dip each section of mat into the plate one at a time and slowly pull it out getting rid of the extra resin as it drags on the edge of the plate. Stick the mat section to the plug on one corner, Then lay more sections on top overlapping by about 1/2 the size of the sections. You want to cover the plug with 2 layers at least.

The actual hard part is getting a smooth finished look. You will have to sand and use body filler to get to that point. This works for prototype type work or one-off because it's labor intensive to get the smooth finish.

 

one thing I've always done is spray the plug with adhesive like 3m and stick the fiberglass to it, then apply the resin works very well, and the resin wont stick to real duct tape, i cover everything with it before i lay down the glass, parts pop off when cured

 

So you cover the plug with duct tape, then spray adhesive glue, then stick the FG to the plug then cover it with resin...amirite?

That seems like a good idea, I am going to try that then next time I mess with FG.

 

has always worked for me, dont use the cheap duct tape, I use the genuine stuff. something in it wont bond to the resin. just use an adhesive that will let you pull the part off, dont spray both sides just enough of a bond to work out the air bubbles o the first layer, sometimes I've had to put a little resin on the bottom side later,but generally it soaks through the cloth, Personally I prefer to work with matting for fitting over a mold. I've never has too much of an issue with the fumes if I worked outside. also remember if you mix resin in something, whatever it's in will heat up, so be aware of that

 

Carbon is way easier to work with than glass. Check out the link in my sig. If you have any questions let me know. Keep in mind, whatever your plug looks like on the ouyside, that will reflect the finish on your final product.