How to Build a Fiberglass Mold: Building a Mold for a CX500 Motorcycle Side Cover

[@larrycluness5438]

Struggling to make a mould for a dished shield at the moment but after watching your videos I've realised the importance of a good sized flange area, we currently haven't been doing that! Back to the drawing board for round 2, thank you for the education!

[@Sephlarite]

i still dont understand why you need a huge flange area never made fiberglass mould, i just wanna use the fiberglass though, why cant i just have the replicated peice and nothing else

[@larrycluness5438]

@@Sephlarite we've found out that it's very much required! I'm involved currently in a small project where we're making quite a few dome shaped shields about 600mm in dia. We started making moulds where it was just the shape of the shield and we found that the edge was always weak and usually got damaged when taking it out of the mould. We then started making moulds with a flat flange area around the actual shape and we can now leaver the two flanges apart and use wodden wedges to sperate the two items without causing any damage to the actual item that we're trying to make. We also made the mould much stronger and resined on a timber frame to the underside to stiffen things up. The flange only needs to be big enough to achieve a minimum area of about 40 - 50mm at it's narrowest part, it can be seen as waste but it greatly helps to get a decent product.

[@ericwoodard8332]

Definitely not afraid to watch a long video. This could have been done a in a long video. Thanks for making these very interesting and your narration of what was going on was good.

[@Alatinu]

¡ Thankyou VM to teaching, sharing. Health for you and yours ! .I must make one of plastic side of my motorcycle Enduro.. Greeting from Córdoba, Argentina !

[@TheBicycleTherapist]

Excellent craftman. Good job.

[@allenfong720]

Excellent job

[@jimbo8009]

You guys are great , video is very professional and really instructive.

[@FiberglassSupply]

Thanks!

[@Nortyoldman]

Thanks for continuing with the series - it's appreciated :) Good Job.

[@davidschoenoff4262]

thank you

[@kafibertv]

Nice process

[@deluxedigitle]

very informative video! good to watch, should use a silicone bag to produce these parts!

[@FiberglassSupply]

Thanks! You know, we’ve done that with other parts, thanks for the idea, we’ll do one up for this part and show it.

[@deluxedigitle]

Fiberglass Supply, i will have to watch! I work with them all the time and the ease of production using them is so much better than hand lay or conventional 1 use bagging

[@CristianGonzalez-qs3cq]

Great video guys 👌🏼

[@FiberglassSupply]

Thanks

[@SARAVANANS-ut7ch]

Super ji

[@zhengyuanli8810]

Good job

[@phildonington5520]

Great video. If you were to use fibreglass for the actual part. How would the method differ to this? As you did a carbon outcome and ill be doing a fibreglass outcome. Thanks

[@humanitynow1565]

Thanx for the video ... please what do use for molding and casting , waxed gelcoat or non waxed ????

[@jasoncunningham5595]

Awesome video! I have a client wanting fiberglass molds made for synthetic human arms and legs. They'll use silicone in the mold so it'll have to obviously be a two piece mold that will separate once the silicone has cured. What do you think would be the best way to make a plug for legs and arms?

[@sausages6135]

Thanks bro

[@MrWearerobotsnow]

Great video, thank you for all the information. I would like to ask about overlapping fiberglass mat, either chop strand or weave, on the mold surface area and how much it affects the final surface of the mold itself. Will having a seem of overlapped fabric have visible after effects on the mold? Does the amount of overlap matter, let's say by 1 1/2" to 2"? Will weave and chop strand have the same surface finish?

[@FiberglassSupply]

When the fabric leaves a pattern on the surface of the part or mold we call that print through. If that happens when the part is built it is due to the resin shrinking, if it shows up some time after the part was built it is due to the resin and fiberglass having different rates of thermal expansion, or latent curing in the resin system. To control that and reduce the chance of it happening you can first pick a resin system that shrinks less like our Iso tooling resin or a vinylester resin or an epoxy (keep in mind epoxy doesn't work with mat) and second make sure the resin is fully cured before demolding the part or mold from the plug. The overlap can have a visible effect on the mold, mat is a better option here because you can tear the edges of the overlap so that they feather together and don't have a hard overlap line. Chop strand mat is often used on parts as a print blocker, so getting down a couple layers with feathered joints will help prevent the overlap of woven or knit fabrics coming through to the surface. On large parts a 2" overlap is standard.

[@MrWearerobotsnow]

Thank you for the information .

[@marvinvalentin8960]

Great!. Could you specify the gelcoat you used? Thanks

[@FiberglassSupply]

It is orange tooling gelcoat that we sell.

[@ahmadgharaee584]

❤❤❤

[@kenmey6803]

Cool

[@chrishall4134]

He ads what after the gel coat? Sevel?

[@cyrilgoulding9668]

Hi, great video, i have a few questions as im attempting to remake a mould of a classic car louvre that they no longer make that is 20 years old so is damaged chipped and warped, ive took a new mould but ive not made it to thick so i can get the warp out, so now im filling and sanding to get all imperfections out. 1, I found when brushing pva it left marks on the mould so would it be better to spray or use a wax 2, how much acitone should i use to mix with gelcoat to get it through spraygun 3, what resin do you use as it looks quite fluid, can i also mix acitone with the resin to make more fluid and if so how much Thanks

[@FiberglassSupply]

Thanks, 1. If you can avoid using PVA and get away with just wax you will get a better surface finish, if you have to use PVA spraying it will give the best results 2. We really don't recommend thinning the gelcoat with acetone, it lowers the properties of the cured gelcoat. We recommend using the G-100 gelcoat gun or a pressure pot with a 2mm or larger nozzle. If you have to thin it then we recommend using duratec high gloss additive. 3. We use our Isophthalic (Iso) tooling resin for most of the mold building that we do. Again we recommend against thinning the resin with acetone, if you have to thin it styrene monomer would be the preferred method up to 10%. We do not thin the resins we use here.

[@nicholasbalcerzak1308]

Still waiting to see you use the mold and make a cast out of it

[@FiberglassSupply]

Video has been shot and is being edited, probably be up next week.

[@debrawilson9959]

Hey do you make side covers for other people

[@heckkoch9]

dang....I could never get use to smelling polyester-resin...no respirator? how is Tim's health?

[@Overlandadventureinatoyotasequ]

I have a right side cover how would I make a left side. Couldn't I basically use the inside of the right side to make it

[@superswede97]

Is this polyester or epoxy resin?

[@muhdayep8424]

What size of nozzle spray gun sir

[@SARAVANANS-ut7ch]

Ji how to mould on two wheeler petrol tank. Kindly share the video

[@electricgaragetv9701]

I replicated this process and my gel coat on the mold surface wrinkled. Any idea what could cause that? I used a mil gauge and it was 25 mils thick

[@FiberglassSupply]

I am assuming the wrinkles look like a dried out desert floor or alligator skin. There are a number of reasons why. It sounds like you had good thickness so we can rule that one out. Next would be the gelcoat was under catalyzed and not cured enough before putting on the laminating resin and/or the laminating resin wasn't catalyzed hot enough and attacked the under-cured gelcoat.

[@frankwadelton9376]

Thanks for a great vid! Is the veil layer just 3/4 oz chop strand? Thx

[@FiberglassSupply]

No it is a lighter, finer non-woven fabric.

[@skoljar]

I would like to ask you, this Orange Tooling Gel Coat contains styrene, why didn't it dissolve the plastic cover? Does PVA prevent plastic from dissolving? PVA didn't work for me, but I applied PVA manually on plastic part.

[@FiberglassSupply]

Yes it does contain styrene. The particular plastic this part is made from does not have any issues with the resin. That said the oval applied thick enough should provide a sufficient barrier for most plastics. If the part is styrofoam then using a polyester system might not be a good idea, although we have successfully coated styrofoam parts with epoxy before using polyester over it.

[@JOEGGGJOE]

Are you sending before the addition layers after they are cured?

[@FiberglassSupply]

I don't, Tim will sometimes go over it real quick with some 60 or 80 grit paper just to knock down anything that is sticking up. The resin is a laminating resin that stays tacky and the next layers will bond to the previous layers (assuming you don't let it sit for weeks).

[@gibfortune]

How many coats of PVA do you use?

[@FiberglassSupply]

When spraying generally 2, wiping 1. Spraying mist on the first coat, it will have a fine texture, then once that dries spray a heavier coat that flows.

[@adebagasp8751]

Hello, what the type of resin you used?

[@FiberglassSupply]

Isophthalic Tooling Resin: shop.fiberglasssupply.com/Polyester_Resins-Gallon_Isophthalic_Tooling_St.html

[@VicsGarage71]

Where’s video 3?

[@ShabirAhmad-oe3dq]

Sar Lamination is the Epoxy resin Polyester resin help me please

[@FiberglassSupply]

Polyester in this case

[@heidenfelderkustoms1502]

Why not bag the mold?

[@FiberglassSupply]

The chop strand mat when wet out breaks down and allows the mat to conform to complex 3d curves, we are not worried about the weight of the tool and we want the tool to be stiff so we need to build thickness, mat does that really well and relatively inexpensively. Also with the veil/mat combo and the lower shrink tooling resin we don't get print through from the reinforcements to the gelcoat surface. We have done bagged molds both wet layup and infused, usually when we do that they are carbon molds that are going to be used at high temperatures, the materials we use for those are more difficult to work with and more expensive, resulting in an more expensive product.

[@nonames3347]

What is he dabbing on the fiberglass, yall never explained that bit

[@Ewat69]

Resin?

[@bhupendradesai3402]

Name of veil paper n from where can I buy it.please reply for fartdhar subscrib tion to chanal.

[@pmd7771969]

Orange peel city.

[@diederichabels8119]

I made it with Woodglut plans!

[@cordeliablakeslee7964]

I recommend Woodprix to every beginner and not only.

[@stanleyjaxen8759]

thanks bro