Sunday, September 23, 2012

SUP mold

On Friday we had the plug polished and ready, so we sprayed on PVA and prepared to make the mold.  To have everything organized is essential with such a big part.  We precut the variety of cloths used for the mold.  We made sure all the supplies were at hand including a fresh bucket of Vinyl Ester, latex gloves, several respirators etc.
We sprayed on a tooling gel coat Friday night and on Saturday morning we started a wet layup of the mold.  We ended using about 3 gallons of resin.
On Sunday after lunch we were able to easily free the mold and quickly declared victory.  The mold is nice and clean.  There are a couple of voids we will fill and polish in the morning.
On Tuesday we plan on forming our first part from this mold.

This photo (added Oct 7th) is of the first part pulled from the mold:



The mold just after it was popped off the plug.  Wooden shims and plastic wedges are used to prevent scratches.
The mold has some stringers embedded to add strength.  This mold should be able to produce  many parts.

The mold before washing off the pva skin.


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