Day 58 - Newspapering and fiberglassing the dome plug

The next steps for my polystyrene dome plug was to prepare it for being covered in strips of newspaper.  This is per AdamSt's post on Avonlea22's diary about how he made sections for his B9 robot, suggesting that this might be a faster way of making a dome plug.

I had to clean my sureform rasp by soaking it in rubbing alcohol overnight and then taking a BBQ wire brush to it.  It was gunged up with a mixture of foam and semi-dried wood glue, which, after being soaked in the isopropyl, came off of it in little balls in a consistency not unlike a dog's eye bogies.  Ick.

Once the rasp was clean, I trimmed the dome to be about 1/4" away from the edge of the wooden dome former.  Then I took the paint brush and started glazing sections of the dome with wood glue, applying torn-up strips of newspaper as I went.  Pretty soon, this was done, and I let it all sit to dry.

I went out and got a few yards of fiberglass tissue (also known as surfacing mat) and started to tear it up to layer it on top of the newspaper.  This will provide a thin layer of strength to the dome plug, on which I will later apply layers of Bondo.  I rubbed out the bubbles as best I could; the newspaper was already fairly bumpy.

It took me a long while to get the resin to react to the catalyst, probably because the garage is cold.  I hope that this stuff cures... it's been about an hour since I applied it, and the remnant that's in the jar is still fairly runny.  I wonder if I should buy a space heater for the garage to maybe speed up the curing process.