While waiting for supplies to continue this project I thought I might as well post this latest update while I have the free time. With what looks to be a lot of work ahead of me I wanted to show you what I have managed to get done so for with a few of the parts for the chair along with the test mold that I have been assembling.
I had to take this photo simple because it is a good view of the first two sections of the chair that I have managed to get fiberglassed so far. The dome section of the chair has been coated with a fiberglass resin and micro-balloon mixture to fill the weave of the fiberglass cloth. This is the reason for the color of the dome now being white instead of blue like the lower part. This photo also lets me see how the seam of the parts will look once the chair has been assembled. I am very pleased at this point with how things are looking so far. It will look good once I am able to paint the sections. Since each section of the chair will be painted different colors it will also be a simple task to do so before assembly.
Here you can see the interior of the second section of the chair and the dome section. The ribs in the second section of the chair will be removed so that further fiberglass can be added to give more strength to the assembly, allow space for the electrical wiring, as well as the sound system that is planned. The two other ring sections of the chair will also be set up the same way. The rims of each sections will be beefed up with the needed fiberglass to make the sections strong enough to bolt each section together when the chair is assembled. So I am getting there step by step with lots of glassing and prep work still needing to be done.
Here is the test mold that I put together and talked about in my last post. It's a simple mold that will help me learn how best to set up the larger mold for the six inner wedge pieces that are needed for chair.
Here the simple mold has been fiber glassed and coated with the fiberglass resin mixture just like I did with the dome section of the chair. I had to lay down several coats of the resin mixture a section at a time to get it all coated the way I need for the test part. I will sand the mold down as smooth as possible and then spray on several coats of primer to start the wet sanding needed to get it even smoother. This process is not difficult but takes a bunch of time to get right.
In this last photo of the test mold I finished fiberglassing the outer surface of the mold. You can see the rounded edges of the mold that needed to be done to lay the fiberglass cloth into place easily. I know that this looks like a lot of unnecessary work for the mold but if I spay primer on the mold and the Styrofoam is not glassed it will be melted away by either the primer or paint that I will spray into the mold. I didn't want to take any chance that the mold would be destroyed by a simple thing like paint.
So this gives you a good idea of why this looks like not much is done at this point from the last post to this one. The time on the project has risen to 100 hours so far with a long ways to go yet to finish. But with every little step you see here is hours and hours of boring labor. Sanding, sanding and more sanding followed by primer coats and more sanding afterward. It will all pay off when I want to get the paint to look as perfect as I can get it. I'll keep you up to date when I get farther along and more progress will be easily seen. Have a good day in your shop and with your projects.
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