first time fiberglassing

Edited: 7/14/2006 5:27:17 PM by FreakwitaFro

Edited: 7/13/2006 11:32:11 PM by FreakwitaFro

ok...i don't have any experience what so ever with fiber glassin but i have plenty of time on my hands and nothin to do so i'd figure i'd try it. can anyone help me explain what the best way to do it is. i wanna do my door panels and wanna know if i should use stock door panels and lay fleece over it and go from there or what. all help would be appreciated...thanks.

anyone got ANY info, tips, or tricks?

ok..what is it u want to do EXACTLY I.E..new design..speakers..tvs...what have u..

Use T Shirt material for light duty stuff, use fleece where you need hella strong mounting, Double Fleece for your speaker box, mids and tweets only need T Shirt material. Oh, and it still sucks sanding fiberglass, no matter what you use! T Shirt material will have less bodywork to smooth out! Hope this helps some!

Make sure that when you are pulling the fabric that it stays tight and the fleece will soak up a TON of resin, so make sure you get it good and strong.
If you are going to use a T-shirt or speaker grille fabric, you'll need to put 2 or 3 layers of fiberglass mat over it to make it strong.
If you use layers of mat you also want to try to get all the air bubbles out, they make rollers for this that work good.

If you are glassing over the stock panel make sure you rough the plastic up with 80 or 36 grit sand paper, if you don't it will mostlikley pull off.

You might want to buy a couple sets of door panels because your first ones will most likely not turn out the greatest. Practice makes perfect.

No matter what they say, it can't be too strong. Fleece is not a strength giving material, it's for shape. Make your frame, stretch fleece, and then resin. Don't mix hot or you'll have to deal with shrinkage really bad. After it dries knock it down with a DA then put another coat of resin on top of it, this coat will self level its self and you won't have near as much sanding to do. Now for strength, get to the back of the material you stretched and resined. From behind use mat and resin and go to town. At Kicker for a rule of thumb we say minimum of four layers and thats just on custom panels and tweets. For mids I would go around eight layers, and for subs we go about and inch to inch and a half thick. To finish use duraglass to get any shape you want. Sand with 40 to get it level. Finish this with bondo. Try to get it smooth enough that you dont have to use a shit ton of bondo. Just use it for filling small pin holes.

only thing I will add that saved me tons of time is the first sanding I use my grinder with a 40 or 60 grit flap wheel to knock down the high spots real fast. Try it you'll like it

thanks for all the help guys. if i end up usin my stock door panels do i juss need to glue the fabric down in the shape that i want then put the resin on?

check out this site : http://web.njit.edu/~cas1383/proj/main/

if you want some really good and useful info and pics check out the alpine audio buildup in car audio magazine