It went pretty well. The first shot is the waxed plug ready to go. The second shot should have a caption of “Who says hot chicks aren’t useful in the garage?” Sorry girls, but you’re only useful as a pattern for cutting the fiberglass and carbon plies. When it was all said and done, I give the first part a “B+”, pretty good though I forgot to angle the plies so it more easily bent around the sharp back edge corner of the roof. As a result I had to clamp the plies which of course glued my clamp to the material. It was fun trying to remove it without cracking anything but eventually succeeded. The good news is the goofs are functionally harmless though I know they’re there. The foam plug was removed very easily thanks to the wax and in fact about a third of it came out intact. The end product still needs some work to prep it for paint but it’s very usable. A big thanks to Dave for instilling his years of composite experience and trying to keep me from going too far wrong, and the next two parts should go much smoother.
After the first piece was done it was on to the second, which required some thought due to how I made the “sort-of” plug. That is, the plug isn’t exactly that; parts of it are permanent and other parts are expendable, due to my inexperience. After staring at it a while, it can be used as-is but doing it over it would have been done differently, albeit ending up with the same product. The “icing” (epoxy and micro) is on the parts which either stay or get hollowed out, and the parts of it without will be dug out more to allow the inside surface composite layer to flow out to the outer layers. Pictures as it progresses.
In other news, one of our koi fish died so I bagged it, tied it up tight and put it in the trash can. That would have been fine had it not been for our hot weather and the smell was something that has to be experienced. I needed to get rid of it so went to put it in the truck and just reaching into the trash can was enough to imprint the smell into my clothes, nearly as strong as a skunk – ewww. Anyhow, I’m sure the shoppers at our local shopping center appreciated me putting it into the trash can in front of the grocery store…