First time Fibreglass

Decided it was time to start on the glove box but I've never worked with fibreglass before. Friend Jim gave me quite a few tips, the main one being to do a test first before getting on with the real thing. Looked around the garage for something I could use as a test mould and found one of Anette's Tupperware bowls (she won't notice!). 

• Stage 1. Painted two coats of release agent on the bowel with about 3 hours in between. 
• Stage 2. Rubbed in two coats of wax with 3 hours in between and polished to a shine.

Anette would have been impressed with the shine!

• Stage 3. Painted a layer of white gelcoat over it and waited about 4 hours until it was sticky.
• Stage 4. Cut up a load of fibreglass matting and made up a batch of polyester resin. On a rounded surface like this it seemed easier to have small pieces of matting. I just carried on painting on the matting, round and round making sure there were no bubbles. I did around three layers. The bottom of the bowl was quite complicated so I didn't bother trying to get it perfect. It was just the principle that was important.  

Left it over night and then carefully separated the fibreglass from the bowl.

This is my very first attempt, not beautiful but it proved the process worked. Now on to the real thing!

I bought some purple polystyrene which is much more dense than the white. Glued two bits together to get the right thickness. Made a rough outline of the space behind the dashboard and marked it onto the polystyrene. 

Used a hobby knife to gradually slice out the desired shape. 

Once the shape was right I covered it in a layer of polyfiller. Once dry I sanded it down and then filled again and sanded down again. I Made one booboo spraying it with hobby paint thinking that it would seal the whole thing before using the release agent. Problem was the hobby paint ate into the parts not covered in filler which meant I had to start the whole process with filling again. Now I'm at the stage where I painted on a layer of water based paint which I'll sand and then repaint until I'm happy with the surface. 

Some more rubbing and filling required as well as carefully sanding with high grade paper. once it's done it'll be time to use release agent, wax and start  fibre glassing- should be fun.

The console is also on its way. I've decided to make the sides in aluminium because stainless steel at the same thickness is really difficult to work with even though it's only 1 mm thick. Just cutting the holes for the heater ducts will be too much work.

I intend to cover the front and sides in the same material as the gear shift gaiter. Hopefully I can get the join between the carpet and console to look good.