mould finishing

So, work has been insane and I haven’t had much of a chance to blog about the car.

The mould is finished and the surface prepped. It’s been painted with high-build primer, flatted, painted, flatted and painted again. It would be ready for a part but I’m having a couple of problems.

Firstly I have sanded back through to the wood once or twice. Then I put more primer on, and still get it wrong about sanding back. I now understand what Warren means when he says you have to get the orbital in there and dig out the high-spot and then fill it with high build and sand back. Many evenings have gone into this process. I could have farmed it out but bodywork is something I don’t know anything about, so want to learn.

Secondly, this could keep going on forever and I won’t end up with the finish I crave for such a visible part. As such, the right thing to do is flat the mould back again and spray the whole thing with 2k clear-coat. then I’ll have a nice shiny surface for my part to take.

Thirdly, in order to get an ultra-violet proof finish on the part, it will need to be gel-coated, which means spraying the mould surface with GC50, something I’m not equipped to do.

So, I’m off to see Warren again and we’ll finish the mould prep. It’s a fantastic amount of hours to get this far, but the end result should be a showroom quality utterly structural part that weighs a lot less than the transmission tunnel coming out.

I think the layup will involve something like 10 layers of cloth and a 10mm closed-cell foam core with some soric hard points and soric radius support on the inside bends of the part.

I’m really looking forward to this.