I’m keeping with the New Year’s traditional saying: Out with the old and In with the new, by tossing out the old plugs that are no longer needed. Tail, nose, and the wheel pant plug are gone, and I’m moving onto the new part of creating the main body molds~!
I did have a mishap occur with the plug while finishing up on the wheel-pants mold, but it was of no consequence.
I had the plug suspended in slings while working on the mold construction. I rotated the plug to be in a better orientation for applying resin, and the plug slid out of the front sling and cracked onto the concrete floor!
Fortunately it landed on the nose, which would be cut off very soon anyways, no longer needed. It cracked off the gray gel-coat and body filler on the outside of the right toe bump area (you can see the damage in the above photo). The tail sling hooks in front of the turtledeck, so that won’t go anywhere. I was at the end of applying resin to that mold, so I finished the mold work before putting the plug back up into the sling. It won’t be in the slings for very much longer.
The left side wheel pant mold is completed, and I’m glad to be done making wheel-pant molds! Four in a row…
I didn’t bother to mask off before spraying gel coat, since the surrounding areas are going to get re-worked, or tossed. You can see the wheel-pant mold in the background, before edge trimming.
I sanded the nose sections smooth again with 80 grit, removing orange gel-coat and/or drips of resin. Also cleaned with some acetone (at this point I’m purchasing acetone in 5 gallon cans), and I very gently placed each section of the nose-cone molds back onto the plug. I was very careful with the molds to minimize any movement, and removed each mold as quickly as I could since I have the molds waxed and ready to go.
Then using a permanent marker I marked the plug with the vertical line which will be the edge of the nose cone. I then marked a line that was 7cm further towards the nose; this would be my cutting line for removing the nose.
Here’s the after photo; on the right side of the plug you can see the vertical black line. That is where the nose cone will end. And I haven’t created wheel wells yet so I gave myself some extra buffer space at the lower portion of the cut. That’ll be fine tuned later.
To cut off the nose I first used my Dremel oscillating tool with a carbide multi-material saw blade fitted, and cut through the gray gel-coat and body filler. I also had to cut through the two wooden spars I embedded into the bottom of the plug.
Then I brought out my hot-wire cutter, fitted it with a longer wire, and with my wife’s help we hot-wired our way through the nose cone. This time, it was nice to hear the nose section crack as it hit the concrete! Weird to think that I was so careful and gentle with this area just a short time ago; now it’s trash….
And now it’s time to stop typing and get back into the workshop! I need to go spray a second gray gel-coat layer; I want to make one more mold before I start cutting in wheel-wells and the manhole opening. I’ll be making what I’m calling an intermediate manhole mold…. IMM? will let you know more about it in the next post!
