Hi Dan,

OK, I'm with you.

I understand it that the plywood mould/template is going to be the 'female' mould (effectively) so that you'll get a nice finish on the plywood/GRP mould and then put your release agent on that and then lay the materials for the part itself onto that surface so that when you release the part from the mould your A side (the side you'll see) was the first layer down into the mould.

Under this understanding I would recommend using a gelcoat. If you're going to make the splitter out of glass and then have layer of carbon kevlar on top I would certainly recommend either woven glass cloth or biaxial glass cloth. Both of these materials will significantly outperform chopped strand mat for minimum extra cost. You could use a good quality clear polyester gelcoat and then polyester laminating resin, or, if you want something quite a bit stronger (but more expensive) then you could use our GC50 epoxy compatible polyester gelcoat and then our epoxy laminating resin to laminate the glass and carbon/kevlar.

Glass laminate with a carbon/kevlar reinforcement on the top would be pretty strong at 5mm. It might not be the lightest spliiter in the world but it should be plenty strong enough.

Best regards, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Thanks for the reply, I'm making a plywood mould / template that I wish to the lay the materials onto to make the actual product itself.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the post but reading through it I'm not entirely clear on what you plan to do. Are you making a pattern out of fibreglass that you will then use to take a mould off and then use the mould to make the parts or are you shaping this plywood and then reinforcing it with resin/fibre to actually make the parts?

You talk about a mould (when you ask about the gelcoating) but elsewhere in the post it seems like you might not be making a mould. Could you just set me straight and then I should be able to give you the input you need.

Thanks, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Hi, basically I'm going to be making my own design front splitter mount out of plywood and form it out of