Bubbles on sharp corners


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raygun
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This is my first time working with fiberglass. I'm working on a small fender for my race car. Ultimately, I'd like to do these and some other parts in carbon, but it seemed wise to spend some time practicing and learning with cheaper materials.
I made a mold of an existing fender using tooling gelcoat, fiberglass cloth and polyester resin. That worked really well, and I'm happy with the mold.
But, my first part did not turn out so well. In most places where there are relatively sharp bends, I'm getting large (1"-2" long) voids, which I assume are due to air bubbles forming where the 225g fiberglass cloth separates from the mold while curing.

Any suggestions on how to address this? Should I be using CSM instead of cloth? I've seen mention of others using spray adhesive to keep the glass in place, but I'm not sure how that might affect the mold release. (I'm using spray PVA.)

Original part (which was cleaned up after this shot, before working on the mold):


Top outside edge. The voids are clearly visible.



Leading edge with some clay and stuff still hanging on.



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raygun
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Hanaldo - 8/30/2019 6:59:01 AM
It's not bad for not using a gelcoat. For wet laying fibreglass, you should apply a gelcoat in the same fashion that you did with the tooling gelcoat when you made the mould.

This won't inherently fix the issue, but it does somewhat fill in those sharper corners and make it easier for the fibres to stay in there.

Okay - I'll give the gelcoat a go.

Ultimately, I'd like to make these out of carbon fiber. I'm practicing with glass first because it's much cheaper, and most of the process seems to be the same.
To avoid this problem when I switch to carbon, is  gelcoat still a viable option? I'd like to get that polished CF look, so I assume a clear gelcoat (if such a thing exists?) wouldn't be a problem. I could see vacuum bagging, in addition to the gelcoat, going a long way to address this problem.

I'd like to try the spray adhesive for the fiberglass, but I'm not sure how that's going to react with the PVA or the resin.

Thanks for your help.

Edited 6 Years Ago by raygun
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