| glassdave |
01-31-2013 11:49 PM |
Not a terribly difficult process but it does take a bit of a seasoned hand and the proper tools, materials, etc.
First you need to make sure the part is as nice as you can get it, preferbly in gel. You'll need to determin the best place for a parting line and build a uniform wood structure that the actual part will be surounded by, this gives a surface that you can extend the actual part from and gives a consistant laminate where you will trim the final part to. Once this is all perfected it will need to be highly polished and waxed multiple times with a high temp parting wax. Because this is you first shot at mold building you will need to dust on several coats of PVA (polyvinylalcohol), it acts as a resistant barrier from your original part andthe mold you are going to lay up. Once the pva has dried for several hours spray on your tooling gel ad let that kick for a minimum of twelve hours, overnight basically. Now you need to stabilize the tooling with atleast two layers of carefully applied 1.5oz mat and let this cure out by itself. Now you'll need to build a heavy backing laminate to hold it all together, i use 1708 for everything but there more cost effective fabrics for mold work. Be creative and build a nice backedone out of fiberglass, wood, ???. This is the readers digest version but ya get the gist. We can get more detailed as the project unfolds, post pics if ya can :cool:
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