hello, my name is Nate and I am an old broken US ARMY veteran with too many ideas and not enough brains to stop them. I have an idea for a new car and also a new airplane I am thinking carbon fibre is the only way to go for both. Since there has never been one built like the pictures in my head I have no pattern to go off. How do I make a mold from scratch? What tools will I need for body projects this size? I have access to all the metals and framework components (as well as people willing to help put it together) and even connections to find running gear/chassis parts. I have to keep my costs down due to limited income however some of these dreams just wont let me go so I guess I have to build them. I have watched your videos on youtube. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR ALL THE GREAT INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE! I really do appreciate this.

Thank you for your time, sincerely; Nathaniel Erik Fisher Owner of Pro Blasters media blasting in Portland Oregon

hi nate,

maybe you should search 'bailey blade xtr' on youtube! designed and built by a fellow american, it may answer more questions than you have posted here.

good luck with the project

Yup, the dedication of this guy is impressive and inspiring. Good luck for your project, Nate!

 



 


    A $1000 electronic device will always protect a 10 cents fuse

Hi Nate,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for the kind words. It's an ambitious project and it will be a long road but if you're determined to do it and have the patience to see it through then there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to make the car a reality.

The Bailey Blade project that neilb mentions is indeed a good reference both in terms of how to go about the pattern making project and in terms of showing just what you're letting yourself in for. In a well funded professional environment if you did have 3D CAD models of your car then you could simply have these machined out of polyurethane tooling board by a 5 axis CNC router and in an afternoon you'd have a dimensionally accurate pattern ready to do final surface prep on and potentially start pulling moulds. In reality though, for most of us the budget for that kind of machining (not to mention the cost of the block and the fact that you probably don't have a 3D CAD model of your car!) mean that traditional large-scale pattern making techniques of an MDF or plywood 'profile' skeleton packed out with polyurethane foam and then surfaced and shaped with enough bodyfiller to sink a battleship is more likely.

There's no secret at all to the profile skeleton/foam/filler pattern making process (the Bailey Blade being a nice example of this), just quite a lot of work. When you've got the pattern almost there then I'd suggest heavy coats of 2k filler primer flatted back and polished to the final finish. Once you get that far then you're well on your way!

We'll be filming a new series of video tutorials which will cover pattern making from foam or MDF in the coming weeks and months whcih you might find interesting or helpful.

I wish you all the best with it and look forward to seeing how you get on.

Best regards, Matt


Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Matt,   I was wondering if you ever made these videos.

"We'll be filming a new series of video tutorials which will cover pattern making from foam or MDF in the coming weeks and months whcih you might find interesting or helpful."

I am planning on starting a project and will need to do this and would like to have a good video to learn from.

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for your interest.

We've started filming but as always, these videos take longer than we think. For the pattern making video we've developed two new products from the ground up; we're very excited about them but just getting the formulation right has meant coating about 100 patterns so far just to compare and 'fine tune'. We hope to finish filming fairly soon. I always avoid giving a date for the videos because we'll inevitably miss that date but I do hope they won't be too long.

All the best, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales