Fred,
very impressive !!
In addition to Jacks and Bills comment, may i just throw in my thoughts and experiences for the mouldings.
-you did and do an immense work in creating a beautiful plug. It would be worthwile now to spend at least the same investment in time and material to create longlasting, highquality and stable moulds
- to do so i would create the moulds out of epoxy resin only. It is less prone to shrinking and if you use a higher curing temp spec resin you would be able to temper the mould as it is still on the plug and therefore assure the exactness of your moulds.
- parts taken out of this moulds could also be tempered than before removing it from the mould
- laying up the moulds should be done in several steps in order to avoid to many layers holding to much resin which could create a to high exotermic reaction, which in turn would lead to distortions. My reco would be start with a epoxy gelcoat and 2-3 thin layers of woven material to get all the air out easily. then build up with ticker materials and even just cross directional materials. The gelcoat will be cured until it is "finger sticky" from there you could lay up to next layer and it should work also upside down, if you take care of Bills reco.
- Build a symetric layer concept. Design your layup from the beginning and reverse the layer concept as of the middle of the whole layup in a mirror image. This would minimize by fare the chance of distortions.
- Prepare an insulated housing of the plug ( big bubble foil on a wooden frame works great) and thermostatic controlled heating source to be able to run a temperature controled climate to cure according yxour resin specs.
- source high quality materials. I have mad good experiences with suppliers which also serve the premium range yacht builders.
- for multipiece moulds prepare all your seem flanges before and very exact out of strong enough material. I´m using thickwalled aluminum arrowshafts (Easton) as a source for creating very exact index pins.
Hope that helps a little
TOM
