I remember seeing a sight awhile back where a guy made his own fenders using fleece for his mold. I'm trying to create a mold for the rear deck lid. My question is, can fleece by used to create the mold and if so, do I just add regular resin to the fleece or is there another product made specifically for this?
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Fleece for carbon mold?
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The plan would be to soak the fleece and lay on back deck lid on top of some plastic, let dry and then wrap in carbon and vacuum bag. Are you suggesting that even after it has set that when I vacuum it it could bend? I was going to set up with two layers of uni before final lay up but maybe a fiberglass cloth would be just as effective and def cheaper.
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If you cover your deck lid with the fleece, and then wrap it in carbon, nothing will fit right as the fleece is the OUTER dimension of the original part. What you need to do it make a mold first, then using the INSIDE of the mold, make your part...there are plenty of DIY on YouTube on how to do it. The thing about fiberglass and fabrics when soaked in resin is that the resin doesn't completely determine how strong it is. The weave of the fabric actually has a bit to do with it, and last time I checked, fleece doesn't have a weave, haha. Anyways, I would recommend fleece more or less for custom jobs like wrapping the framing of a fiberglass box to give it it's shape. I'm sure that once you are done the carbon will help, but there is the chance it might fail, which would suck with all the time you put into it
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That was a pretty good way of putting it Hey You. Fiberglass and carbon fiber don't have the same strength qualities. A lot comes into play when you compare the two...angle of the weave, thickness, flex properties....etc. So a full carbon fiber part will usually be stronger than a fiberglass part with a carbon fiber top.
Pretty much what you are going to want to do is make a mold of your original deck lid out of fiberglass. I'd recommend using fiberglass mat. Using weave is usually hard to get around the curves and bends unless you can vacuum bag it...I'd lay up about 7 layers of the mat and than pop it off. If you laid everything down right you shouldn't have many imperfections. If you do, sand em out/fill em up. Once the mold is perfect, you are going to want to lay down a few layers of carbon fiber, around 6 or so. Once that's all setup and hard, pop it out. Then, trim it to the shape you want. You will most likely have to sand/buff/polish the resin unless the finish on your mold was reaaaaaallllyy nice.
And there ya go! A new deck lid.
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