Here's some fiberglass fenders I made for my teardrop trailer. I wanted the lines to match my car.
I made the mockup from wood, covered in cardboard, then covered in foam
The foam was rough carved to shape
I didn't want the fiberglass to stick to the foam, so I covered the entire surface of the foam with masking tape to act as a release layer. This worked, but the resin did chew up the glue on the tape, so next time I will use something else.
I used a disc grinder to shape the fiberglass close to the final shape.
I did use a skim coat of filler over everything, but don't have a picture. The gray stuff is "Slick Sand" over the body filler. It doesn't matter if you get runs in this stuff as long as it's applied all at once. If there's any pin holes in the body filler, now a perfect time to fill them with Slick sand. I just use my finger while the stuff is still wet and push it into the pin holes.
sanded with 120 grit.
A couple of coats of High build urethane primer, then leave it sit for a week.
I sprayed the inside of the fenders with Rhyno liner that I tinted to match the car.
After sanding the urethane with 500 dry, I painted them using Dupont Chroma Premier base and then topcoated with 72500 clear.
Wow, those look fantastic. I did a little 'glass work on an old boat for the cottage, looks like hell. I figured (before I finished your thread) that you were going to pull a mold from your mockup/buck, finish the heck out of the surface of the mold, then pull a copy from that. Just glassing the buck and not using a mold for the "finished surface" would mean a LOT of finishing / sanding / filling based on my glassing ability (or should I say "inability") ... very nice work.
By the way, what is the machine in the background with what looks like a converyor belt? Appears similar to a wood planer but I'm thinking that's not what it is.
Wow! Great job... they turned out perfect in my opinion.... I've never tried anything like this with fiberglass, but after seeing what you've done here it seems the possibilities are endless! Thanks for sharing and showing the steps involved...
By the way, what is the machine in the background with what looks like a converyor belt? Appears similar to a wood planer but I'm thinking that's not what it is.
That was another project !! If you ever get to know me, I always have a major project on the go.
It's actually a thickness sander. I used to do a lot of woodworking (will again soon) and wanted a quick way of flattening large panels. I have a thickness planer, but I made this machine to use after the boards are glued together into a wide board.
If you look beside the machine in my last post, you'll see a box with planks of wood in it. That's a kiln I made because a few years back wood was very expensive, so I would buy a log and get it cut into exactly the sizes that I wanted. The wood was freshly cut, so it was very heavy and very labour intensive and took 8 weeks to dry down to a usable 7% moisture content. I now buy my wood rough sawn from Pea**** Lumber in Oshawa already kiln dried for half of what it used to cost me, and was able to dismantle my kiln to give me extra shop room.
