Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior learning to fiberglass

I just started yesterday and have only made a couple of little pieces...do any of you guys that are good at this have any tip or anything like that, also what do you use as a base for making bigger things?

no one?

not me..sorry..good luck with everything though

i could use some tips too! let me know

heres a tip for you, wear long sleeves, when sanding fiberglass it gets itchy as hell. to make a base you can use like wood, or cardboard, like custom trunk setups sometimes have wood underneath and fiberglass on top. dont use a sanding block because it will take a long time to sand it that way. when mixing the hardener use less then what it says so you have more time to work with it. if its outside peices you can always put bondo on top to make it smoother, but not much because when bondo drys it gets heavy and will crack

if you dont wear a mask to prevent inhaling the fiberglass dust make sure you do this:
-go to a sink
-fill one hand with water
-snort the water
when snorting the water make sure you spit it out like your hocking a loogie.

you'll notice that the water is a greyish color, that is from the dust thats caught inside your nostrils.

yah i'd say mainly wear a mask.. after a while you'll get to knowing how much hardener to mix depending on weather conditions. cardboard sounds like a good idea for a base. and plexi glass should be good too.

heres the picture of the screen i molded and painted.. i used chicken wire which worked fine. the finish isn't show quality perfect because i only had 3 days to work with.

^^^thats awesome

haha that's some random info... where did you learn that? I hope not from personal experiance.

more experience, better product

How bout carbon fiber?

i'll let you know.. im about to try covering my center console (picture above) with carbon fiber. i dont see why it wouldn't be the same... aside from making relief cuts in less obvious places.

saw a cool trick on one of those car customizer shows.. you take a peice of wood then skrew in some speaker rings at the angles you want them propped up with wood peices and then stretch fabric over it and staple it on.. it makes a smooth swoopy design going up to the speakers for an awsome looking sub housing after you glass it. never done it myself.. where can you get supplys?

Yea thats what a lot of shops do, you use felt and soak it w/ resin.

Also, w/ carbon fiber. It is extremely hard to work w/ due to the bubbles that appear in the epoxy. It is hard to get rid of the bubbles entirely. I've experimented w/ it before and found it isn't worth the trouble. my 1st project was my dash and found it would have been more of a PITA to do carbon fiber than paint it

Well that's what i've heard about the air bubbles, but do you know any good online guides for a DIY project. I know that it will not be perfect and is much harder than glassing, but if I made a piece I would most likely paint it so the bubles wouldn't show. I would much rather use carbon fiber than glass because of its strength and lightweight.

Heres some links to get you started

http://www.rtol.net/scornell/HowTo.htm

http://www.lindsay.k12.ca.us/emerson/caraudio/How2Glass.html

and heres a forum that would help you
http://audioforum.termpro.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi