Fruits Of My Labor (A-113)

[ebb]

Excellent work on the hatch! Rounded corners, whoa, now ya talking! Nice hatch too. The cast aluminum Bomar's 338 ended up with weigh a ton.


As to "popping" finished pieces out of a female mold OR off a male mold, here, for what its worth, is a couple observations.

I use a blue colored specific mold wax. The color helps in spreading it evenly around, which I do with my hands. Put it on, let it dry briefly, buff it up. Do it again. I do three times, then it gets old. I think next time I'm gonna wax and buff at least six times to be certain of complete release.

Made sure the molds were designed to release the completed lam. But getting the pieces started was difficult, Any corners holds the piece real tight, so, have to get one side started for the mold to let go. Everything may seem loose but will stay stuck! On my male mold (the hutch) I did not wax enough and/or hair spray enough (I had made the mistake of using AquaNet, also) and ended up deconstructing the goddam mold from the inside. Bad. Real bad.

I'm using epoxy for this polyester type work. {Believe it's argueable that polyester shrinks a little because of solvents thereby aiding in removal - while 100% solids epoxy doesn't] Gel coat is probably the real secret for successful female molding. My epoxy gel coat is slightly thickened laminating epoxy with universal white color added. I could not get it thick enough because I wanted to do the whole piece at once. Thick first coat just got squeezed out where ever I pushed and poked the xmatt into the mold. Maybe there's a way to get three color coat layers on by getting them to go off but not go hard while the cloth is going in. That would be too organized! But I'm a coward, and therefor the pieces will have to be finished when in place on the boat.