The excitement of any project tends to impact good old fashioned common sense. When in doubt about something, either go back and find the answer or take the the right precautions in order to minimize a negative impact.
With the second set of plugs shaped, fiberglass materials at hand, and the knowledge of Polyester resin being extremely harmful to floral foam, and the experience of Epoxy resin being very kind, I made a very poor judgement with the Vinyl Ester resin.
Vinyl Ester is sold as a best of both worlds resin. It has a similar chemical make-up as the Poly, but has the strength and resistance to heat and chemicals like Epoxy. Without finding any definitive answers on the good old Interwebs, I made the assumption that the foam would be okay and I took absolutely no precautions of coating the foam with paint to give it a protective coating from the resin. BIG MISTAKE!
While it was true that the resin did not attack the foam like Poly would have, I still had a big, stinky, gooey green mess to deal with.
Remember the scene at the end of Gremlins when Stripe melted for exposure to the sun? The mess inside of the mold reminded me of that.
First order of business was to try and salvage the plugs. I had to get the foam out in order to stop the chemical reaction with the resin. Fortunately the outside layer of resin hardened just enough beforehand, so the general shaped remained, although sunken in spots.
Once I got the foam out, scraped, cleaned, scraped the insides again I needed to bulk up the insides of the piece with fiberglass to build up the strength. Two layers of mat and resin I set the pieces to the side to thoroughly cure while I went out of town for a week for business.
When I came back, they were certainly solid, but far from pretty!
While the general shape of the plug was there, there were a loot of pinholes and weak areas because of the foam melting. The above pictures are not the greatest, but that black is where the resin seeped out and adhered itself to the plastic sheeting I had on my bench.
I’m thankful I actually had the fore site to do something right! Otherwise they would be a permanent part of my workbench right now.
At this point I had no idea if they were usable still, I had to break out the Dremel and put on the old respirator and safety googles on and get to work trimming and sanding!
When sanding or cutting fiberglass always, always, always, where a respirator. The dust is nasty stuff, it gets into all of the nooks and crannies of anything in it’s close proximity. You don’t want that crap up you nose and in your lungs. It will take you out!
So after about and hour I get them to the point were they are fitting okay, and I can assess the damage and where I need to fix.
Dear Brian, I owned a 1977 Royal Monaco and I ‘m making it into a Blumo too. You are an inspiration of transformation parts from no parts to be found out there, I love this keep up the good work.
Thanks Mark! I appreciate that!