fiberglassing

i had planned on taking my dash to a shop to have it glassed but ive decided since i have the time, to just do it myself. i understand the obvious materials such as fiber glass and resin but other than that not really sure. what i would like to do is remove the little pocket on top of the dash as well as the two center vents. what would be the best way to shave those off with the glass? get mat and stretch it over the opening and let it dry or do i need to put some type of a filler like wood, cardboard, etc. in there to support the matting? also, i bought a toyota emblem...i had planned on glassing it into the dash where the center vents are. how would i go about that? glass the whole dash first, let it dry, then glass the emblem in over the dry stuff? or does it need to all happen at the same time? what type of preparation should i take... same ones when painting? and ive heard stuff about kitty hair...what is that? i heard that once the mat is layed and dryed the kitty hair goes over it, then bondo over that and sand and smooth it all out. prime and paint. is that about the jist of it or is there a lot more to it than that? sorry for the bazzilion questions but ive never done it before so im not quite sure what to expect. thanks in advance!

as for smoothing out the whole dash, it is better to just sand down all of the small grooves with an orbital. kitty hair is like normal bondo but harder and with fiberglass hairs mixed in. the only time i would lay kitty hair over the matte is if it truly needed it like if there is a big low spot. to get rid of the shallow pocket on top of the dash, i used the random fiber matte and laid out a sheet on alluminum foil and added the resin and let it harden so i would have a nice flat sheet of fiberglass. Then i cut out the glass peice to the size of the indent just like makeing a filler plate to shave handles. then i used the woven glass matte ( the woven is easier to sand smooth wich means less bondo to finish) and covered the filler piece, resined, let dry , and sanded. i guess you could use wood, cardboard or another material to make the filler piece.

im doin my whole dash right now,i started learnin on the dash so i guess i went thru alot of work but it worked,i streched fabric over the whole dash,added hardner n all that shit,then i layed down sum fiberglass,bondo n shit,i glassed the pass vent ima move my radio where the middle vents are cuz of my flip out,and ima get rid of the other vent,as far as smoothin goes,the rest of the shit im paintin,i sanded everything dwn,after i sand it ima bulldog it and primer it with sum gud shit that i got,then paint it n hopefully it will come out how i plan,ill post pics once i get it done

this process should be in a how to section

I like to use spray expanding foam to fill gaps sands eazy or use that green foam at hobby stores for flowers. but when useing that mix hot cause it melts from the heat. I have used tin works but make sure you ruff it up first or nothing will stick. I like to use 100% polyester fleece thin stuff not to hairy and soak it realy good. then go over that with mat cloth for strenght. I like to mix my resin per instuctions so say 14 drop hardner per once. So say i have 40 onces or resin instructions say to add 560 drops I will allways add 2 more onces of drops on top of that 588 drop just insures set to happen instead of just hoping. that sucks just so you know. Round corners and edges are better to sharp or pointed one make sanding a real bitch one sec to long and you go right through. That some things that have helped me so hopefully they help you. O yea 100% polyester bed sheets work to if you need something big but they have on strengh so you have to reinfoce the hell of of them with mat cloth but they do work good.

okay this doesnt sound too hard....time consuiming but thats okay i got time. so basically what would be the best thing to do is to lay out some foil and lay a resin soaked mat down on it and let it dry. once its dry i can take that hard square and cut out my filler peice for the little pocket on the dash and also for the vents. then get some polyester cloth put my filler pieces in place and lay the resin soaked polyester cloth over the whole dash and let it dry. im not sure how big the cloths are but if they were a little small would i over lap the cloths a little bit or do i just but them up next to each other and let dry? once that is dry i can take the woven fiberglass mat and apply resin to it and lay it over the dash to cover and strengthen the polyester. once that is dry do i need to sand it as smooth as i can then apply the kitty hair to it? let it dry and sand it smooth? toward the end would i need to use just plain bondo to help cover up some of the kitty hair hair? sand smooth, prime and paint.

when it comes to putting that emblem in what would be easiest way to put it into place. after the polyester sheets are dried i could position the emblem where i want and use the mat and get it into the nooks and crannys of the emblem?

i forgot to mention that my dash board is that foam dash with like a hard vynl cover over it. do i need to pull off all the vynl but leave the foam there? or can i just scuff up and clean the vynl surface and glass right over it?

thats not a bad idea....

Here's what I did stripped all the outer coving off except at the vent areas

Then filled the pocket with a dense foam, then glassed

okay cool, it makes sence to do that...the resin would soak into the foam a little bit and make it completly rock hard i would think. just out of curiosity, why didnt you pull the covering off around the vents?