The process starts with a pattern that you wish to copy. The fiberglass mold-making process begins with an object known as the plug. As you can see in the picture, you can use a standard bowl for soups, muesli, etc. Concrete casting pros from around the world know Smooth-On liquid rubber products as the industry standard for making rubber molds that have the abrasion resistance and tear strength needed to keep production moving. I am a pilot and busy with the design of a Micro Light aircraft. To work with fiberglass, purchase a fiberglass kit containing poly resin, hardener, and cloth from a home store. Use plywood to make ribs that conform to the contours you would like, and use 2"x3" boards to act as a spine between ribs. Get us some pictures. I will use a current project of mine to illustrate the procedures of producing a fiberglass mold. Plaster of paris could work, or even styrofoam. Let's get started: We will deal with a fuselage that you want to make a fiberglass copy. Senior Editor for Make: I get ridiculously excited seeing people make things. Tips for When You Start to Make a Hump Mold. Some styrofoam can be left if a particular size hollow is desired. When all the epoxy had cured, I sanded enough so that I could handle the part safely without getting cut on sharp edges and then cut a hole through the bottom fiberglass skin. We have used MDF to make plugs, high density foam, styrofoam, body filler, and other materials. These creations can be the delight of children at parks, carnivals and school events. Whether you are interested in how to make a mold for reproducing a sculpted figure, an antique picture frame, an industrial pattern, an architectural molding, a fossil, animal skin (taxidermy), the texture of a piece of fabric, or a toy, you start by making a rubber mold. Fiberglass can be used to make a copy of an existing automotive body part, to repair damaged parts, or as a foundation for custom-body panels. The plug is an exact representation of the object to be fabricated. Allow to dry. Fiberglass molds are commonly used to make multiple copies of a part that may have a complex shape. Mold-making and Fiberglass Lay-up 1) Take a big chunk of dense foam - pink, gray or blue extruded foam are much easier to carve and sand - to match the fuselage. I take junk pieces of foam and glue the pieces to cover the fuselage outline. Buy or build a styrofoam base. These plans help to make molds of wood and polystyrene for architectural and decorative concrete and stone molding. into making a mold can contact me directly and I will get into it with them. Suggested clip 115 seconds. 2006. The I am adding the nesessary details to it, I feel that in ourder to fiberglass a negative copy I first need to add bondo or some other smoothing agent which can then be sanded to perfection then waxed and the whole 9. Some of the advantages of using a fiberglass mold are: the materials are inexpensive, they are easy to make, last many years and can be used to produce hundreds of parts. Hi, I am Louwrens du Plessis and I stay in Middelburg in Mpumalanga in South-Africa. This same procedure will work for any part you would want to make. Fiberglass is the casting material of choice for many auto body workers. So you have to look carefully at the piece you want to make a mold of, corners are a good starting place to make a parting line. Making a Fiberglass Mold. How do you make a fiberglass mold out of Styrofoam? Polystyrene is more commonly known as Styrofoam, and consists of 95 percent air. Here is one of the molds I made for make the furnace. If you wish to make a mold for use in producing several copies of an item, polystyrene is an easy material to work with. It can be formed into any variety of complex shapes, and you can buff its … This tutorial will help guide you through the making of your first fiberglass mold. For large parts often a framework is built and then layered with foam, fiberglass, and body filler before priming and finishing. This gives you a solid, hollow hemisphere after the concrete has hardened. Then, cover the skeleton with thin sheet aluminum sturdy enough to support the fiberglass without sagging. You can carve it by hand, or you can liquefy it and pour it into a mold … Editor’s note: For more information on using fiberglass mat with epoxy, see “Chopped Strand Mat & Epoxy” in Epoxyworks 21. Fiberglass will bond to almost any surface, including wood, foam, metal and even plastic. View more articles by Caleb Kraft Build a mold out of wood, cardboard, or foam, then lay the cloth over your form, allowing for plenty of overlap where it joins at corners or sharp curves. When you first make a hump mold from styrofoam, there are a few things that you will want to keep in mind, and this especially applies to limitations of this. There is many different ways of making a parting line, one technique I use a lot is, plywood, butcher paper held to the wood with 3M spray adhesive, and plaster sine between the wood and plug to fill that little gap. Whaine wants to make plaster molds of the styrofoam, not use the styrofoam for making a mold. Find a way to support this fuselage with a wood dowl through the fuselage, clamped in a vise or some other way. They contain clear descriptions, dimensioned drawings, photographs, illustrations and part lists, to allow any good handyman or craftsman to easily realize molds and formworks, using traditional tools and common and cheap materials. Building a boat mold is one of the first steps in building a fiberglass boat. I'd always love to hear about what you're making, so send me an email any time at caleb@make.co. Here I'm making a heat sink to go on my CNC stepper motors. Let's get started: Set the blade of the utility knife just above the depth of the side profile line and make a series of cuts across the foam, about 1" apart. or you must have on hand a completed article which you wish to … 3: The fiberglass has cured over the Styrofoam mold before it is trimmed and sanded. 4: The cured part and mold from below before the foam was dissolved with lacquer thinner. Buy a large block of sculpting foam (from a craft shop) or, alternatively, build up the base using pieces of recycled styrofoam that you glue and pin together as described below. Polystyrene is a useful material for model builders and other crafters. They can also provide a lucrative source of income through both rentals and sales. How To Make And Use A Fiberglass Mold A fiberglass mold is used to reproduce fiberglass products and is the exact reverse (mirror image) of the item to be produced. 0:42. Allow the tooling coat to cure to a soft solid; this should take about 30 minutes. Fiberglass molds are made using fiberglass gel coat and layers of fiberglass mat. Pretty much all you need to do is wet the fiberglass out in resin and layer it in. Use PVA glue (polyvinyl acetate) or Liquid Nails ® together with bamboo skewers and fencing wire. If a styrofoam block was used as a form, now is the time to hollow the rock. Fiberglass bathtubs can be built from scratch using a pre-made bathtub mold. - posted in ATM, Optics and DIY Forum: I wonder if it could be a good idea to mold a tube using fiberglass to get a strong, lightweight, and aesthetic Newtonian. The denser the material, the more it will hold up over multiple pressings, but the harder it will be to shape. When crafting something from scratch be cautious about who you listen to. The first product is an FGCI product called Styrocoat that uses a standard epoxy activator and will provide a protective shell over the Styrofoam. 3:48. I know I must have missed a lot along the way of explaining the procedures of making a mold and I will be going back and adding a lot more info. With Polystyrene or Styrofoam, you can’t directly apply Polyester or Epoxy directly to Styrofoam, as it will melt the foam. One of the primary keys to success in mold construction is proper preparation of the plug. The Plug. The material has good insulation qualities useful for keeping liquids warm or cold. Fortunately, we have a couple of products you can use to still make it work. How to Make A Fiberglass Mold from a Plug - Part 1 In this video series we will show you how to make a plug for a fiberglass mold. In order to have a form from which to develop your mold, you must either build the article from scratch using wood, plaster, polyester putty, formica, sheet metal, etc. Bathtub molds come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can even be customized. This technique can be used for just about anything that fits onto a table. 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