Is there some preffered technique for waxing your molds, or is it just apply thick, let dry, buff off and repeat several times?
how thick should you apply the wax?
how long should it dry before you buff off and reapply another layer?
This is how I do it.
First apply the wax in thin coats. Use just enough to create a smear. NOT streaky with small chunks of un-smeared wax.
Let it haze over. Usually takes about 30 second to 1 minute here in Florida.
LIGHTLY buff it off. By lightly I mean little to no muscle force. Let the weight of your forearm do most of the work. What you want to do is lightly scratch the wax away with your rag bristles. This will prevent you from buffing the wax completely off.
Once properly buffed off, wait 1 hour before applying additional coats. This is a real time killer, and a pain, but its completely necessary. Wax off gasses just like any other chemical. Proper drying times apply to it just as they do for poly or epoxy. If you apply new coats to soon your not adding thickness.
Ive been using meguires #88 lately. Its awesome stuff.
improper waxing is also what damaged a fender i was working on making a mold from. Contamination of the waxed surface was the other problem. I’d say keep your molds wrapped in clean plastic sheet or bag if you can when they are not being used.
would having a heat lamp expedite the "drying " process?
Never really heard of anyone doing that. Maybe some of the old schoolers could tell you?
I personally find other stuff to do between coats. Ive been waxing my kayak now for 3 days. On the 5th coat of wax.
do you guys wax over the area that will be taped down with the sealant tape aswell?
I have. The gorilla snot (butyl tape) sticks to pretty much anything. The wax just makes it easier to clean up.
LOL @ gorilla snot. That is what we call black silicone rtv used for gasket sealer in the engine repair world. I’m also waxing a mold with PartAll 2 currently, just finished up the first coat/buff. I’ll wait an hour and do one more and so on until i reach 6 coats of wax.
Go for 10! Are you going to spray some PVA on after the wax?
yeah, the mold surfaces are not 100% perfect… more like 97% so i’m using lots of wax and 3 mils of pva. I’ll try 10 coats of wax.
They say a pic is worth a 1000 words, what’s a video worth?? A quick google search will answer all your questions:
I’m on my last coat 
Too bad Danny isn’t here.
Multiple coats of wax are applied purely and simply to ensure the whole surface of a large or intricate mould, is fully coated with wax and there are no unwaxed surfaces.
For small and uncomplicated moulds, there is really no need whatsover to (properly) apply more than about 3 coats of wax, which are correctly buffed.
is it necessary to use pva on top of the wax? I remember last time I tried it was nearly impossible to get a nice evenlt coated surface of pva on the was, it would all just be repelled by the wax…
On a green, brand new mold…Yes! At lest I would for the first few parts to heat cycle the wax into the mold.
you guys should try using semi-perminent sealers and release agents. works very good and you can pull many parts before apply more release agent
I’m using this can of PartAll wax… trying to use up all this can, then i’ll switch to the TR high temp wax. I also have a can of Meguires mold wax that i have not tried yet. So far PartAll has worked ok for me.
semi permanents are good because they chemically bond to the mold surface and creat a nice releasing interface for parts, highly recomended for epoxies, and a must for prepregs
Do you mean PVA hojo? Or is there some name brand product we should be looking at? Sorry just don’t know all the material jargon yet. Thnx.
no, not pva. semi’s are chemical liquid sealers and release agents. for example the most known would be Frekote. basically you could pull in some cases 10-15 parts between coats. they are nice because they dont leave any wax on the part. the release agent chemically bonds to the mold surface and stays there