Now that I have sanded my mold to 1000 grit, do you guys have any tips for Buffing and polishing it? Steps and products?
Well 1500,then 2000 before any polish
Wet or dry sanding?
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Wet
Then my weapon of choice is 3m
Fast cut+ then fine cut+
Then “possibly” one of their finnishing polishes but that’s rare
Depends what the mould is and what its used for ?
Lot easier to put the work into the pattern and pull a good mould that has a good shine an just needs a light buff before you start
How big is the mold? For the 3M polish you ideally need a slow, adjustable speed buffer.Makita make a good one (electric). If the mold is small, you can get small pneumatic ones.
I wet sanded it and its big mold.
all I have to polish with is my 9" orbital or my hand which is generally what i do.
I hope you were being funny there. Wet sand and polish a 40 foot boat hull mold and then you’ll know what big is (and that’s not as big as they can get). You feel like your arms are gonna fall off.
You must have popeye arms!! Hahaha. No its not big but my orbital is too big for my mool. Also the only stuff I can seen to find locally for polishing is the meguairs stuff
I found that the tooling gel coats I have used also take a lot of buffing pressure and time to get a gloss.
+1. Epoxy tooling coats don’t polish… You run the risk of opening up porosity in the surface.
Yes people will say there are polishable epoxy tooling coats…and agreed there are a few that are soft enough to get a shine…BUT not a mirror A class polish like something like duratec etc.
Also one mans shinny is another mans dull…
Just take not and do a small test area first before sanding the whole mould.
What was used for the surface coat ?? Details ??
Tim
I don’t use epoxy tooling gel. I use vinylester and it’s just very hard.
Call Auto Body Toolmart 1-800-382-1200 they’ll send you a catalogue. 3M , sanding papers, tools, everything you need for finishing off patterns or molds.
I coated it with feather fill high build primer.
I’m interested in using vinyl ester , what brand gel coat do you use ?
At the risk of saying something a little controversial, I find that a lot of my polishing effort goes to waste because I immediately coat it with wax, then I polish the wax and then coat that with PVA. The CF is never actually touching the mold surface.
I get pretty much the same results (as polishing) by sanding it fine until all imperfections are gone and it feels smooth, then polishing the wax layer properly.
There, I said it and I’m not sorry!
I can kind of agree with that. can someone argue against it?
Agree. With chemical release agent or chemical release agent wax and IMC I get a hazy surface that needs sanding and buffing anyways. I have yet to find a solution to pop parts out of the mold perfectly.