I have had a few request for details showing how I do a project from start to finish so here goes.

Some of you may have gathered from some of my posts that I hate skinning, I have huge admiration for anyone who manages to make a living from doing it as I certainly can't. So when I was asked by a customer to skin the door mirrors from his Fiesta ST my initial reaction was "no thank you". After mulling things over I thought maybe there is another approach to this, make skins that can be made with infusion and then bonded on afterwards. As there seems to be lots of Fiestas out there and Fords kindly fit the same mirrors to all the models there could be a potential market for something that could be DIY fitted without the customer having to remove the covers, send them for skinning and have the car off the road until they came back. So here is how it was done.

First the original covers where removed from the car and given a degrease and a good coat of PVA.

Then I wet laid three layers of 200grm onto them. This was followed by flatting, re coating, flatting re coating until a smooth high gloss finish was achieved. ( this is why I hate skinning ) The final skins would be 2 layers plus roughly 0.2 gap for bonding them on.

These skins where then trimmed and released from the originals.

Because I wanted to produce two new skins at a time the two new skins where fixed to some Kingspan to form a pattern to mould form. The whole pattern was then given a layer of coating resin with some black pigment added and polished. ( black shows up any imperfections/scratches).

Because of the shape of the skins this would have to be a split mould, so the pattern was cut down the middle and a flange added. The whole thing was then bonded to a base board and any gaps filled with filleting wax.

A mould was then made using Uni Mould. The two halves where then bolted together with some gum tape between the flanges.

GC50 was then sprayed into the mould for UV protection.

The mould was then laid up with two layers of 200grm and bagged ready for infusion.

Once infused and cured they were trimmed using the originals as a template and given a polish.

If they prove popular then I think pre-preg may be the way forward to reduce manufacturing times and increase profit.


Warren

Carbon Copies Ltd