hi guys,im preparing my plug and am trying to build a flange on it.i made a mold of this last month as a practise and this is the proper run so to speak,i didnt build flanges on the first one.second pic is the first attempt mold.
the first pic shows the plug with cardboard ready to prep up,can you guys tell me if this looks correct?? or is there a better way of doing it?
ive left a corner to fit a vac valve to aswell.
with it at this stage my plan is to stiffen up the card,fill any gaps with plasticine,cover the card in alu tape,wax and pva the whole thing,coat with tooling resin,fill the sharp edges with some filler paste and then build up starting with 2 oz glass fabric,sound ok??
cheers guys 
Here is my plug. I have waxed, buffed and PVA’d the plug since this picture and am ready to spray down the tooling Gelcoat tonight. Does anyone have any tips?
when spraying tooling gel, do a number of small coats to build the surface.
spraying tooling gel thick will cause it to ripple away from the surface you sprayed, because of the weight of the gel.
looks good.
Does anyone have any tips?
yeah,stop thread hijacking!! 
lol. your flanges look good. use some clay to fill in the space between the flange and the plug so the resin doesn’t flow through.
yeah ive done that and covered all the card in aluminium tape,im now on the 4th coat of wax and am leaving it several hours in between coats,thats a mistake i made first time,only let the wax dry for an hour or less(no where near dry ) and then its pva time.
any tips on applying the pva? last time i brushed it on and all the brush marks transfered directly to the gelcoat on the item i pulled 
i dont have access to spray kit though…
cheers 
well here it is so far-looks ok to me
I would apply your mold release wax and leave it on then do your layup. It’s pretty hard not to get brush strokes when applying pva with a brush. I use paper towels when I’m too lazy to get the spray gun out. A light sanding with 1500 grit sand paper will take the strokes out also.
That flange looks good. I also found a better material for making the flange instead of card board paper. It’s thin sheets of polystyrene that you can get from your local plastics stores. I buy the scraps for $1.50/lb which goes a long way.
ok next problem lol,i have poly based tooling resin but its a kind of off white colour,i dont have any black pigment or colidal silica to stiffen it up for the edges,i cant get any now until the new year…should i wait until i can get these two products or just crack on with the tooling gelcoat as supplied? why do people prefer black molds?
on a part i made using a black storm pipe as a ‘mold’ i had a paint brush bristle stuck in the gelcoat,with a white mold i would have been able to see this as i brushed the gelcoat on ?
When you use the Polystyrene sheeting, you have to only use epoxy resins as PER will melt it.
I use black in the classroom to ID that is what it is. Most of the time, you want to make a color part (even primer grey) and it is easier to see the spray going into a black mold than the same or close to the same color mold.
is the fabric going to conform to the angle’s of the flanges? it looks like your flanges are 90 degree’s L. I didnt think think the fabric would bend that much.
If some one can answer this it will help me and GT if this is a prob
i will be using some filler to round of the 90 degree edges and then some very light 2 once cloth for the first few layers,as seen in the fibreglast video,even in a dry drape it conforms no problem
It is easier to see imperfections in the mold. Anyone who has ever owned a black car knows you’ll see a scratch from a mile away.