Thursday, March 20, 2014

Day 69 - The dome!


My 1/4" wheel trim arrived in the mail, so that was the final thing needed before I set out to lay up the dome!  I eagerly started to apply it to the mold.  I carefully measured out the amount that I needed, and used that length's center-point to show how far off (or not) I was in my initial measurements.  As you can see in the photo, I was pretty darn close.  I marked an adjusting line for laying out the other pieces of trim.

After finishing up with the trimming, I placed my rubber intent cut-outs onto some newspaper, and sprayed the back of them with some 3M light spray adhesive.  I allowed that so sit for a minute to get some tack to it, and then pressed those onto the mold, as well.


I didn't want to nudge any of this detailed work by sponging on the release wax, so instead, I sprayed on a different type of mold release, based on silicone.  Its pseudo-oily slickness would hopefully provide a sufficient barrier between the mold and the eventual gel-coat and glass layers.  I sprayed on a couple of coats of this, redistributing it with a foam brush when finding any pools (which were few).




I mixed up some gel-coat, this time tinted gray, and started to pour and brush it onto the surface.  And man, I discovered just how slick that silicone release agent is—the gel-coat was slipping off of it like mud on a freshly-waxed car.  I had to really micromanage the application of the gel-coat, brushing and rebrushing it into place as it started to get some tack.  I would check up on it repeatedly after that just to make sure it was all still sticking to the mold surface.  After awhile, I noticed that the bubbly reaction I had while making the mold was also happening along the groove lines.  If the same blemishes appear within the grooves on the finished dome, I'll have to go back with some filler and fix them.  Not too worried.

I might have been rushing things a bit, or I might not have used sufficient catalyst, so only portions of the gel-coat got sufficient tack.  I went on ahead and applied some glass tape that I cut in half to the groove lines and indents.  I noticed right away that they weren't adhering very well to the half-round shape of the groove lines.  I did as best I could, and figured I would poke some resin in there once I started laying up the glass.

After letting the tape sit on the grooves for another little while (just to get the gel-coat to become tackier), I started to resin the first layer of glass.  I am using some especially thick chop mat, and I think I should have gotten some that was thinner.  I had a really hard time making sure that all the nooks and crannies of the detailing had glass sitting snugly on it.  There were air bubbles everywhere.  My roller brush that I use to squeeze out air pockets proved mostly useless on this concave surface, so I used the foam brush instead.  Went through three of those, because after awhile, the foam would fall off of the handle, and I would have to fish it out of the dome mold and into the trash.  Ugh, I hate fiberglass.


I started this process at about 20:00.  At 1:45 in the morning, I finished up, called it good, washed my hands of it (figuratively and literally), and crashed into bed.  In the morning, I check up on my work, looking closely at the grooves.  Looks like, at least near the base (which will be trimmed off anyway), there's definitely separation between the glass and the groove indent.  Ah, well.  Like I said, fixable with Bondo.

We will see what the dome looks like once I pop it off tonight!

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