Monday, March 2, 2009

demolding the top part

I probably should have let the thing cure a bit longer in the mold but it looked solid enough and I just couldn't wait. I'm that way with scabs, too. And like a scab unready for the picking, it took plenty of encouragement to bust the mold loose. First some prying between the flanges, then a bit of drumming on the hull to pop free along the surface, more prying, more pounding, you get the idea. These things stick together quite a bit because of the PVA. It's weird stuff: a thin membrane that starts off applied to the mold but when you take everything apart, it ends up on as a coating on the final part that you just rinse off with water.

This is how it looked immediately out of the mold, so a lot of boogers and some flash to clean up, but the part seems pretty sound!



I ran it out to the garage to confirm fitment with the bottom, and after roughing out the edges a bit they look to be mating pretty well.



Next step will be to double up a few more layers on the top part from the inside where it looks a little thin, then it's on to fitting up the petcocks and gas cap.

4 comments :

  1. This is stunning! I'm impressed by the smoothness of the surface, with the piece coming right out of the mold.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey thanks for the comment, Alexander - Believe me, every imperfection in your plug will be transferred over as an exact duplicate in your final part! There are a lot of little imperfections taht I'll have to sand out but overall it came out a lot better than I had expected it would.

    Also, I should mention in the post above, but it takes a bit of coercion to demold the part. First I had to rap on the outside of the mold with a large wooden spoon to help "pop" the surfaces away from eachother. Then It's a lot of careful prying before things start to release.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think the Opinel 8 is on several top 100 lists for elegant design. I would have to agree.

    ReplyDelete