Good afternoon to all,

I am building a female mold that will beused to make a carbon fibre marathon canoe (18’6”). I have good skills working with fibreglass but this is my first experience in making a femalemold.

The mold is based on wooden slats lined with 1” foam and  lined once more with fibreglass. The fibreglass  is then finished with the usual body fillerand mold primer/hi-gloss coats to make it a glass finish. As you may realise,the front and back end of the molds are extremely streamlined and I find itimpossible to sand down to a glass finish.

The alternatives that I have come up withwould be to 1) cut the mold in half and work on each side separately thenreassemble to lay the carbon fibre cloth. The disadvantage might be that Iwould not end up with symmetrical sides. Option 2 would be to lay the carbon fibrein the mold as is but finish the exterior of the canoe’s ends to a glass finishafterwards. Finishing the outside to a glass finish after unmolding seemsdifficult to achieve. Any comment and recommendation would be welcome. 

Manythanks.

Z

Well ... Now he IS kind'a stuck with it, since he has gone all this way, and it CAN be done... I have seen more complicated shapes done this way, but always as multi-part moulds.

So ... .somebody DOES do "direct female moulds"   

Personally I would have made a plug from cheap styrofoam blocks, closed them up with Epoxy and glassfibre .... It would be much easier to work on, and get a perfect shape and surface..

But:   Please keep this thread updated, we would all like to see how the project gets along ...

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