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Honestly, I know it seems like much more work and a bit of a waste, but in my opinion when you can't modify the original then making a splash mould and a new pattern is the best way to go about getting the surface finish that you are after. It is so much quicker and easier to work on the male pattern than it is to work on the female mould. Tooling gelcoat is beautiful stuff to polish up, but trying to sand out texture is a nightmare and you end up just going with 'good enough' rather than what you actually wanted. When you can just quickly flat down the texture with some 180 grit, hit it with primer filler, and then move on to finishing it to the standard you wanted. Then your mould comes off the pattern perfectly and you can just get straight into using it without running into potential dramas like sanding into porosity etc. All in all, on stuff the size of a vehicle interior panel it costs you maybe $30 in materials and a day of labour. For me that makes more sense than half a day of trying to refinish your mould and coming away with a mould that isn't really what you wanted.
As for the clips and fasteners, well... There's a reason I don't really do interior parts. There isn't really a perfect solution for this, and it comes down to you finding the solution that works for the job you're doing. For the most part, that means bonding on things like rivnuts, bighead fasteners, nutplates, threaded rod etc. Obviously a jig helps here, whether that's one you make yourself or whether you use the original mounting location and find a way to hold the part in place while the adhesive cures.
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