ydeardorff
New member
Many people think of fiberglass work as difficult, or think of housing insulation and the feeling of fiberglass in your skin and think it is too difficult to do.
Fraid' it aint true.
Here is one method for using something unrelated to get a uniform shape that can be carved to something useful.
One part of my cars re-design requires a uniform radius along the car over an extended length.
If I tried this by hand it would take forever to get right, and would end up with warps and generally look like crap even if I spent a month trying to "get it right"
So, I first tried a scrap piece of 4" PVC sewer tubing, which made a radius that was too small for this purpose, so I went with an 8" piece of street drain tubing instead.
How this is accomplished is using composite bagging film (like a thick saran wrap that resin wont stick to).
(1) You wrap the item you want to cast with the film. Make sure to get out any wrinkles.
(2) Apply a generous coat of catalyzed resin to the film
(3) lay the glass on the item your casting, and saturate the fiberglass heavily.
(4) once cured untape the film and slide it off the item you casted.
(5) now peel off the film
Here is the 8" tube I casted
With the bagging film removed
And now I have a perfect uniform radius I can use to cut into strips length wise. This will create about 8 or 9 feet of a uniform radius strips I can use on the car.
These strips can be hot glued into position (hot glue doesn't melt with normal outdoor high temps, paint, or resin) Then I can add more fiberglass to the are to tie them in.
This can also be used as a way to ensure a corner on the car is uniform over a large distance. You could use this as a go-no go gauge of sorts to ensure your keeping things perfectly uniform along a corner or edge on the car.
There are many applications.
This is just one way of making parts. Its very simple to do, and takes more waiting for the resin to cure than it does skill.
Additionally, using the bagging film over the top of your repair, or patch will result in a near glass finish, this aids in saving time on those finishing details.
Fraid' it aint true.
Here is one method for using something unrelated to get a uniform shape that can be carved to something useful.
One part of my cars re-design requires a uniform radius along the car over an extended length.
If I tried this by hand it would take forever to get right, and would end up with warps and generally look like crap even if I spent a month trying to "get it right"
So, I first tried a scrap piece of 4" PVC sewer tubing, which made a radius that was too small for this purpose, so I went with an 8" piece of street drain tubing instead.
How this is accomplished is using composite bagging film (like a thick saran wrap that resin wont stick to).
(1) You wrap the item you want to cast with the film. Make sure to get out any wrinkles.
(2) Apply a generous coat of catalyzed resin to the film
(3) lay the glass on the item your casting, and saturate the fiberglass heavily.
(4) once cured untape the film and slide it off the item you casted.
(5) now peel off the film
Here is the 8" tube I casted
With the bagging film removed
And now I have a perfect uniform radius I can use to cut into strips length wise. This will create about 8 or 9 feet of a uniform radius strips I can use on the car.
These strips can be hot glued into position (hot glue doesn't melt with normal outdoor high temps, paint, or resin) Then I can add more fiberglass to the are to tie them in.
This can also be used as a way to ensure a corner on the car is uniform over a large distance. You could use this as a go-no go gauge of sorts to ensure your keeping things perfectly uniform along a corner or edge on the car.
There are many applications.
This is just one way of making parts. Its very simple to do, and takes more waiting for the resin to cure than it does skill.
Additionally, using the bagging film over the top of your repair, or patch will result in a near glass finish, this aids in saving time on those finishing details.
Last edited:
