23 replies to this topic

[sphell]

A few more tips- you can also use expanding foam or florists foam (that green stuff) to get your shape and glass over the top of it. This can give you more unique convex shapes rather than the "volcano" effect you get from stretching grille cloth over a speaker baffle. Definitely get yourself a roller like others have said.

A quick and easy way of glassing is to cut the mat to exactly the size you need (even if it's a big piece), lay it flat on some foil taped to a table, pour resin on it and roll out all the air bubbles and break down the fibers then pick up the whole sheet of mat and lay it on your work piece. Roll it out again on the work piece. This is easier than cutting multiple small pieces of mat and using a paintbrush and also let's you know exactly how many layers you've laid down.

If you have overhang, wait until the fiberglass is halfway dry then use very sharp scissors to trim the edges....it saves sanding them down later on.

[Lunchbox.inc]

okay guys!!

so after all your help, we got a little sumin' sumin' going today!!

just some simple midbass pods for a VS commodore wagon we're building, front stage is consisting of Vibe Blackdeath 8" middbass, and Vibe Blackdeath 4" bullet tweeters... missbass will be housed in these pods you see here, and the tweeters will be mounted into the top aircon vents on either door... but a couple of pics of our progress...

a uge thanks goes out to you all for the advice, as well as Preston (MR M.R) for coming along and doing a tonne of the work...

the woofers...





the idea...



the base plate idea...



and a bunch of pics skipped and missing due to working, instead of taking pics, how rude...!





this was our 1st attempt, we stretched the material a little too much, having to bunch together at one end, we should be able to fix it easily enough in the next stages, but we were still mighty impressed with out efforts as 1st timers!! 2nd pod came out alot cleaner, as we learnt from our mistake...

i should have a couple of profile pics i'll add in as soon as i get them off others... lol

but again, you guys were a HUGE help!!

Edited by Lunchbox.inc, 24 January 2012 - 11:09 PM.

[bobo333]

one tip i can give in situations like the pic above where you cant get rid of all the creases in the material is once youve soaked it in resin give the creases a quick bog and sand to fill in any low spots, doesnt need to be the prettiest thing in the world as you will cover it in glass after but it makes laying glass a lot easyer and prevents you havning any big bubbles in the glass layers

[peaandham]

Looking good Steve, I was going to bug you very shortly for some pictures of your work.

Looking at the material you might find, it'll be beneficial for another coat of resin on the curve since it is quite big and will require reinforcing. However if you are using glass, if there isn't any movement left in the material then that will suffice.

[Lunchbox.inc]

thanks guys!

basically atm, they're hard enough to tap on with a nice solid clunk, there's very little flex in them now

the material we used in the stretching was probably the biggest part in making this as simple as it was, the stretch was simply phenomenal, VERY much like lycra, but in a more open, natural feeling weave, which absorbed the resin wonderfully, there's 100ml of resin in each pod, and they set pretty quickly...

but the plan calls for the back to be opened right up, and we'll apply matting from the inside, the the outside will need very little final work to get a near on smooth as glass finish other than a thin smear of bondo and to sand that back.... the 2nd pod actually came out alot nice than this one, and i still think this one was a great success... final finish is yet to be decided, but it looks to either be vinyl trimmed, or painted with a texture finish....

in honesty there's a couple of things we could have done differently, but thats what we learn along the way! we're really happy with the results so far...

[peaandham]

If you do end up apply glass to the outside, or do anymore glassing that requires a smooth finish you can actually apply resin to your mat, lay it on a piece of glass, roll the air bubbles out and apply the piece.

[Jared.A]

When adding the mat, can you add layer upon layer without letting the first layer dry/harden?

Cheers

[peaandham]

Correct, I personally apply 4 layers wet on wet, let it harden then pull it out of the car.

[DrBoom]

Very interesting artifact about fibreglassing. One day I will give it a go. Thanks to all who have contributed to a very informative article.