How I built a fiberglass body in 1800 easy steps.

Along with the move I also had a rush job to do for a fellow. You will notice in the last series of pics a 1938 Dodge cab. (I will post a separate thread for this one)I've been working on an off on this cab since early summer but now he needed the lower 6" of the cab rebuilt so he can be ready for the Performance World car show in Toronto in March. I will also be there with onc car competing in first time shown and one in our display booth. Not sure yet what I'm going to take for the booth. It will either be the MG or my truck, but I need to get more of the metal work finished on it if I'm to take the truck so there may be some update on that soon too.

In this series of pix I'm setting up the parting flanges for the molds. The white panels you see are press board coated with melamine for a smooth wax able surface. The idea here is to make separate sections in the mold. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, to make it easier to pull the new part from the mold. Two, so I can lay up separate panels with out having to use the entire mold as a single section. This makes it easy for me to make replacement parts for my customer if ever they are needed.
The darker wood you see in the last couple pics are for mold reinforcements. These panels will be glassed right into the molds helping them to keep there shape as well as a place to bolt and pin through the flanges to hold the mold together as a single unit once all the sections have been laid up. This will become more clear in future pictures.

Now starts the process of color sanding and polishing. This is not a show polish by any means. All I'm after here is a smooth orange peel free surface, so there are fewer steps needed here. The first pic shows the wet/dry DA paper I used to sand the painted surface with. if I were to do a show polish this would all be done by hand blocks wet starting with 1200 grit and ending at 3000 before polishing. As you can see here I'm using 800 for a fast cut and 1200 to smooth it a bit more before the hard cut polishing. There would also be more polishing steps in a show finish. on average a good show polish would be at least a 100 hrs worth of work.

On a side note, when I saw these pics of me polishing I decided I looked a little over weight. Since then I've lost 20 pounds on my way to losing 45.

More of the same for the front plug.

I'm now in the new shop in these pics. [cl

Once all this polishing is done it's now time to wax everything. I've read a number of different sources about this and have been told everything from 5 coats on new bucks and molds to 15 coats. My supplier (Canada Composites) Has recommended that I go with 5 good coats of parting wax and a spay on coat of PVA on the first five pulls. Once the mold is broken in it will only need one coat of wax between pulls.

All the parting flanges have now been completed on the rear plug and the gaps on the bottom edges now need to be sealed to prevent any over casting. You don't want any resin oozing into the seams or you will never get it apart later. I like to use Permoplast modeling clay for this. It is a non hardening clay that cleans up very easily with water and molds very nicely into the seams. Once this is done you can now wax the flanges and seems as well. Be careful not to wipe out the clay though. You really don't need to buff up the wax on he clay itself.

It's hard to see, but the clay is finished in these pics. You want to end up with a nice crisp corner here as it will directly reflect in the mold. It takes a little practice but using an plastic window tool with nice smooth ends helps. I find that squaring off and beveling one end and then sanded smooth to about 400 grit works well and won't mar your painted surface.

Now it's on to building all the molding flanges for the front plug. Again I'm using press board coated in Melamine. This front half of the car is going to be a little more difficult to do. This is also going to be a 3 peace mold now but with a curved seam around the cockpit area. This required that I build a special jig to do a lay up using 1/8" Hard Board to make the flange and the reinforcements that will be glassed into the molds. First I had to make many measurements from the chassis of the car to find out where to best place the flanges and find where the new attachment points will be added later. I used a Tram gauge and tape measure for this. The main idea here is that the front fenders need to be capable of being removed by one person in the pits. The green tape shows where the body will separate. The last pic shows the jig I came up with to form the curved flange.

This series of pics shows the first lay up which is the wall for the flange around the cockpit. It is made from 4 pieces of 1/8" Hard board that was cut into 9'x6" lengths all laminated together using epoxy resin. Hard Board only comes in 4x8 sheets so I had to add an extra 12" in a staggered joint to make a long enough panel. I used a small roller to lay out the resin on the surfaces of the panels using only enough resin to wet the boards on all the inside surfaces. Sorry for no pix of that, I had to move fast. I then laid them all together and clamped it all into the jig and left it over night. Come morning I had my first piece of this puzzle.

The second lay up was done right on the outside surface of the first. done in the same manner, clamped in place, and left over night. A two inch spacer was added to the bottom of this outter panel as it only needed to be 4" wide. Once the clamps were off, the top surface was sanded smooth while the two panels where still in the jig. Then the outside top corner was rounded. This will make it easier to lay up the glass over it during the molding lay up faze. It is one thing to lay up an inside corner but quite another to lay up an outside corner. This will become more clear later in the process.

The flange wall ring is set in place and centered.

The flange ring needed an extra brace to help keep its shape.
It's hard to see in these pictures but the bottom of the ring needed to be trimmed to conform to the curved surface of the body. Once that was done that ring was then used to transfer that shape to the other inner and outer rings.

The last ring was laid up on the inside surface of the jig in the same manner as the first two. The top surface was sanded and the inside top corner was rounded using the router machine.

Now the rest of the parting flanges can be made and fitted to the plug. You can now see where the fenders will be able to separate from the rest of the body. From here I go on to making all the reinforcement panels that are to be glassed into the molds. These are actually done now and I'm about to start glassing up the molds this week. I'll have more pics of all this for you very soon guys.

The plug looks nice. Its a shame that you have to put that kind of finish on a plug instead of a car.

Oh yeah, the new shop looks nice. [dr

This is great. Fiberglass has always been one of those mystery materials for me to work with. I've done repairs on a much smaller scale. This is inspiring!

thanks

thank you so much for taking the time out of your obviously busy schedule, to share your artistry with us. can't wait to see more. by any chance do you have any more pic's/info about the truck that was in the photo of your new shop? wich is very nice by the way.

Thanks guys, I really enjoy what I do and being able to share it with you.

Pushrod, I do have a build thread here you can check out. Here is the link for you.

http://www.ratrodsrule.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1392