I had a quick read through the sticky atop this forum and saw that there was a constant request for a “Fibre Glassing 101” tutorial! J As such, things like complex door pods or sub box designs are not called for, and I have just finished what I thought would be the perfect ‘little project’ for such a tute.
Warning: Don’t expect much to do with car audio! Having said that, this post will guide you through some of the (very) basics to do with glassing and some of the common areas of caution.
The tutorial has three parts:
- Materials/Tools/Safety Precautions
- Building a “Frame” to fibreglass on
- Fibreglassing/Sanding/Finishing
- Triming/Painting Fibreglass
- Complex shapes/designs
- Building boats
What I needed was a fibre glass surround that would sit over most of the hole cut out of the shifter and look all pretty! So off I went …
First Step was to get some materials
After doing my research on CAA I went down the local Bunnings and got me a few of the essentials:
- Fibreglass Resin
- Catalyst
- Fibreglass matting
- A cheap paint brush
- Wood Glue
- MDF (6 mm in this application)
- A cheap jigsaw (needed one anyway!)
- Sand paper, up to 2000 grit
- Rags
- Gloves
- Tumb tacs
- Stretchy material (I got fleece as it stretches in both directions)
- Ventilating mask
- Some newspaper
Obviously in this application I didn’t need much resin/catalyst/matting etc so I ended up getting most of these matterials at the local Bunnings. For applications where you would use a lot more of this stuff, I’d recommend a specialised fibre glass retailer, check your Yellow Pages or search the CAA forums!
An important note
Pay paticular attention to items 10, 13 and 14! Although at first look you wouldn’t make this out to be a very hazardous task, believe me you don’t want to mess with this stuff getting on your skin! Weather you are fibre glassing “one-off” or will be doing it for an extended period of time, please do ensure you have as much of you covered as possible before you work with this stuff
Second step was to build my frame
I had thought about this for about a week before I had started. I spent a lot of time taking measurements etc and eventually got to cutting up some MDF and moulding it like I needed. Now I’ll leave out the details here as it is of no concern, suffice to say that you need to build your frame sturdy enough for whatever pressures that maybe put on it (weight and movement of a 12 inch woofer for example!).
Try to think ahead in everything you do, although that’s a little hard if it’s your first attempt with fibre glass! For example, see that little bit I didn’t fully cover at the far end of the shift hole in my design (below picture), well that came to bite me in the butt later on! Note the two “holes” (four thumb tacs) for my two power window switches…
Once I had built my frame with MDF to the specification required, I just had to stretch the fleece over my frame and using the tacs, secure it to the bottom of my shift surround. Here is a pic of the bottom of the piece. Note that the general untidiness of the bottom is not a factor as u will not see it when its sitting face up around the gear shifter…
At this stage its best to check if you got your measurements right! Test fit your piece and check that everything around it will work as per normal (things like window winders for example). Remember also that the fibre glass itself will take up some extra space.
Third step is to get glassing!
Well this is where you need to start worrying about the outside temperature, humidity ect! Actually, no you don’t…much. There is a lot said about how resin ‘goes off’, but its really hard to guage such things unless you are using the exact same brands as others, in the same atmospheric conditions! Its best just to experiment a little with your catalyst and resin combination to get it right…its really not that hard to get the hang of!
For me, I used about half the glass of resin shown below, with about 10 drops of catalyst. The resin was “managably hard” in about 35 minutes or so. The picture shows firstly, my gloves (!) and also the first coat of resin which I applied quite liberally using the cheap paint brush and the old unused platic cup. Note also the MDF off cut I used to mix the catalyst/resin mixture, and how the newspaper comes in handy!
I must admit, I have forgotton what I used the straw for!
Ok so after that I sort of lost the plot and got into it a little. As u can see above I have very wet fleece. What I did was chop my matting into about one inch squares (and different sizes/shapes for different areas) and lay it carefully down over the wet fleece. Make sure at this point that you use a little more resin to stick it down nice and wet so there is no chance of any air pockets forming between the layers.
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