First up was finishing off the mold pieces. I essentially followed the plans, except that I still didn't want to drill any holes in my beam mounts (yet, anyway). The clamp-only strategy worked well:
The mold surface is still in two pieces in the above picture. I decided to leave them clamped to the beam mounts while bogging the "V" joint, so the parts would be accurately joined as possible. So I used masking tape to protect the mounts, then added the bog:
After a quick cure in front of the fireplace, I sanded down the mold surfaces til smooth and added (clear) masking tape:
I couldn't feel any "wax" on the surface of the beam mounts, but since this is such a critical area I decided to be extra careful: first a careful de-greasing\de-waxing, then a thorough sanding on the surfaces to be laminated against, then another de-greasing to help get all of the dust off. The attachment points on the beam mounts are as clean as I could get them.
Attaching a temporary block along the center-line of the mold surface helps hold it in the right location against the mount, until clamped down:
First layer of glass on the first beam mount:
I found 8" x 10" to be a good size to cut the "C" glass to -- big enough to cover the area without too much excessive overhang.
Starting on the uni pieces:
When I got to my third beam mount, I realized (or remembered?), that the four uni layers can be stacked and consolidated separately from the mount, then added to the mount laminate -- just seemed easier that way.
One more piece of peel-ply to go on the first beam mount:
Need lots of glass pieces for this job:
Finally all done:
Laminating all four mounts took me four hours -- I sweated over each piece of glass, trying to keep the glass\resin ratio as high as possible, given the critical nature of these parts. Tomorrow I'll trim them up and post some pictures of the results.
1 comment:
Well said.
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