"Help!" for: Fiberglassing, Resin, & Bondo

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Are you using fiberglass cloth or fiberglass mat, I've found the cloth is easier to work with (it should be right beside the mat)

Also glassing is much easier when you cut your material into small squares rather than trying to make it fit the shape of the piece.
What in particular are you having trouble with doing, if I know that I can better answer your question.

Hope that helps
 
I'm using cloth but the real issue is I have it resined up, but it is skin tight to my under suit, I don't want to take anymore space away from the limited amount I have, but on the other side would like to stiffen it up. I remember seeing like a glossy milky like substance used on those areas but I do not remember what its called :p
 
Glossy milk white. . . I know what that is >:D

Could be mud, if you use regular bondo (not gold) it's a grey-ish color and after it's resined and dryed it's kinda white-ish
That might be just as thick or thicker than fiberglassing it, and what piece in particular is so tight? I haven't had any of mine be so limited on space. . . or is you under suit padded?

Fiberglassing done right adds a very small amount of material and a whole lot of strength, if really need be you could fiberglass the outside but then you would need to be extra careful and it would make more work down the line to smooth it out.

I can't remeber who it was but whoever did the Terran marine recently used that method and his armor turned out well
You'd just have to make sure you smoothed the glass down and then used an extra coat or two of your smoothing material, and it should work out just fine...
 
Hello everyone I have a question that I'm hoping someone could answer, I just pepped an assault rifle and I resined the outside so I was wondering what now? How do I harden it more? usually with my helmets or armor I rondo the inside then bondo the outside. Should I do the same with my assault rifle by drilling a hole in it and pouring the rondo in it and slushing it around? any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks everyone.
 
I haven't built a weapon in this way (I modded a Nerf) but I am planning to do so. All the research I have done so far indicates that the use of "Rondo" on the inside is the best method. Another common method is to use expanding foam, but apparently this is tricky. Putting too much is easy to do and over expansion of the foam can warp the weapon.
 
Hey everyone, I fiberglassed my helmet 2 or 3 days ago, I carefully mixed the resin and the hardener and made 2 layers I then went inside to watch tv while it dried. When I came back the helmet was bluish and still very sticky. It still is today and I was wondering what i did wrong :confused
 
Given that the average temp in Quebec this time of year is about 12 degrees C (54 F for our US friends) I'd say you didn't add enough hardener. The recommended mixture was designed around a curing temperature of about 20 degrees C (70F). Less hardener is required at higher temps and more at lower. There is a low point where the stuff won't cure properly no matter what you do (I don't know what that temp is).

At the end of August we were having temps here in Nova Scotia of 30+ C (90+ F), I only had to wave the hardener at the resin :)
 
I haven't built a weapon in this way (I modded a Nerf) but I am planning to do so. All the research I have done so far indicates that the use of "Rondo" on the inside is the best method. Another common method is to use expanding foam, but apparently this is tricky. Putting too much is easy to do and over expansion of the foam can warp the weapon.

I have also tried doing some research and was thinking about using the expanding foam but I am worried about my assault rifle exploding,lol, So I guess I will make holes and rondo the inside and bondo the outside. Thanks for the info
 
Hey everyone, I fiberglassed my helmet 2 or 3 days ago, I carefully mixed the resin and the hardener and made 2 layers I then went inside to watch tv while it dried. When I came back the helmet was bluish and still very sticky. It still is today and I was wondering what i did wrong :confused

In addition to what Roadkiller said: How sticky was it? And how long did you watch TV? Depending on the resin you use, it can take a day or two to get hard, even with the right amount of hardener. And polyester resin has a slight tendency to stay sticky even then. Not sticky enough to glue the piece to the ceiling, but enough for a "sticky feeling" when you touch it.
 
hey, thanks for answering my last question.
uhm anyone knows, if polyester and epoxy-resin could be used at once? For example: Polyesterresined outside(letting it sit, till hardened ), but epoxy-resined inside with fibreglass mats. Or is it possible that the resintypes would eat each other or something?
 
In addition to what Roadkiller said: How sticky was it? And how long did you watch TV? Depending on the resin you use, it can take a day or two to get hard, even with the right amount of hardener. And polyester resin has a slight tendency to stay sticky even then. Not sticky enough to glue the piece to the ceiling, but enough for a "sticky feeling" when you touch it.

It was sticky enough to glue my fingers together and I watched TV for a while but waited till the next day to check it and it still was sticky 4 days after application. Its my first attempt at resining something but im pretty sure I mixed it right. I don't remember the resin brand but Im sure it was fiberglass resin. Anyway, I think the problem was the temperature as Roadkills says, I let it dry in my garage where it was around 10 degrees.

Ty for your help guys and sorry for my english
 
Hello everyone.

Okay, i have an almost finished pepakura helmet. In porgression forums and videos i see many diffrent ways to resin and fiberglass. First to do the inside with lots of resin and fiberglass, then do the rest. The other way is vise versa. I see people with some inside supports, lots of inside supports, and sometimes even not at all. Can anyone tell my the safest way to resin and fiberglass? If it warps i have a plan B but i would do that on pourpose rather than accident.

Thanks
 
uhm anyone knows, if polyester and epoxy-resin could be used at once? For example: Polyesterresined outside(letting it sit, till hardened ), but epoxy-resined inside with fibreglass mats. Or is it possible that the resintypes would eat each other or something?

Curious, I was planning on doing just that myself because I am starting to hate the styrene smell :-D

You can combine them, but you can't mix the liquids or anything. You have to wait until the first one is completely cured before putting the second one on top of it.

Also, there are other things to consider.
First of all: Safety. Epoxy (or rather its components) can contain substances that cause allergies and other nasty stuff you don't want - and thin disposable gloves won't provide protection against them. If you plan on actually sticking your fingers into the resin (which is likely to happen when fibreglassing), you need to get chemical protection gloves. Which ones to buy is a bit more tricky, I'm still working on that myself, because apparently the official tesing procedures according to EN standards don't work for the stuff we're talking about and thus don't allow any conclusions about whether a glove is appropriate or not. From what I've read so far, butyl gloves thicker than 0.5 mm and some (not all) nitrile gloves work. Nitrile doesn't like solvents, though, so you can't use these when working with polyester resin, epoxy that contains solvents or acetone.

A second thing is that an epoxywon't work very well with fibreglass mats if it doesn't contain solvents (which is a good thing otherwise). The fibres in these mats are held together by something that is supposed to dissolve in styrene and in connection with epoxy the mat will just stay an inflexible mat.

Third thing, you probably know that already, but just to make sure: You need to stick to the correct mixing ratio, preferably by weight. The tolerance is very small here (like 2% or something). Unlike polyester resin, which is pretty forgiving when it comes to (especially too much) hardener, epoxy won't cure with too much or too little of it and small deviations will already result in a lower quality.

In porgression forums and videos i see many diffrent ways to resin and fiberglass. First to do the inside with lots of resin and fiberglass, then do the rest. The other way is vise versa. I see people with some inside supports, lots of inside supports, and sometimes even not at all. Can anyone tell my the safest way to resin and fiberglass? If it warps i have a plan B but i would do that on pourpose rather than accident.

Do not use fibreglass on the outside.
The best thing to do is use heavy cardboard (this has the largest influence) and use any pepakura struts that come with it. It you think it bends easily, put in some more (wood, paper, ...). Then brush on a thin layer of resin (and I mean really thin, use as little material as you possibly can), let it cure and then put on some thicker layers. One to three should be enough. Then take the struts out and start glassing the inside. Alternatively, when using Rondo or anything liquid, you can leave all or some of the struts inside until it's completely hard.
 
Sanding

I resined my helmet and i'm planning to rondo the inside. I watched a video on youtube and the guy said that you should add resine (at least 2-3 layers) let it dry, then add a primer and lastly sand the helmet. Then after that, you can apply bondo on the outside. Is that true? And do you have to apply bondo? Because i'm on a time crunch, i wanna get this finished by saturday.
 
Hi Blaq Sin, I just added 2-3 layers of fiberglass to the inside of my helmet, I use sculpture fiberglass with (I guess) 50g / m2. there are larger fiberglass packages with 300g / m2 but thats way to heavy to fit into the small areas. the fiberglass matt should be nearly transparent and very flexible so you can attach them to all of the corners of the pep.
 
thanks for the info S42 ... i am using 450g matting on larger pieces ... only one layer ... hope that is ok. Not doing the helmet yet :)
 
I guess 450g with one layer should be fine. I'm not sure if I should use 2 layers of the 300g for the larger pieces, but I will try ;)
btw. for the more detailed ones I got some pics of my fiberglass matt so maybe this may help a little more since seeing is better then imagining by reading ;)

fiberglass_matt1.jpg

fiberglass_matt2.jpg


oh... and by the way: you're welcome ;)
 
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