Greetings all- I'm planning on making my own fiberglass hood (not enough money to buy one ready made). I've done a good amount of searching but still have a few questions:

What weight fiberglass should I use to make the mold and hood and how many layers should be used for the hood? (I'm not too worried about the mold thickness as I'll fix a cardboard bracing system to it)
Are there any particular brands/types of PVA, gelcoat, resin, catalyst and hardener that are recommended?

And if you have any other tips I'm all ears

Thanks in advance!

 

Thay made a hood on the spike tv show "muscle car", it was great information, might be worth trying to find the episode to see how its done.

I hate posting links... http://www.spike.com/full-episodes/q...eason-4-ep-111

2oz mat, 2-4 layers for final hood. More layers = stronger, less layers= lighter. Good brand, "Rexco".

Imo, it would cost close if not more to build a hood than buy one. But if you try it, make sure to post the build.

 

Have you ever done any glassing before?

As far as supplies, your looking at a MINIMUM of 1.5 gallons, probably 2 or resin ($23 + each), mat and cloth ($50+ minimum), gel coat if you do it correctly ($35+), air removal roller ($10), mold supplies (your gonna spend more here than you think I promise), tooling grease, rollers, brushes, gloves, acetone, etc, threaded inserts to attached stuff (hinges, latch).

If you haven't done extensive glass work before and are trying to save money I would recommend saving your money and waiting until a good deal on a used hood pops up. Glass work is not hard, but to learn on something big and flat like a hood that needs to be paintable, attach solidly, fit even close to correctly, and be lighter than a stock steel hood is a bad idea. If you want to do it for the sake of doing it then by all means try it thats the best way to learn, but I can almost guarantee your first hood will not turn out well, or save you any money.

I did this boat this summer, total recore, transom, deck, hull, etc and spent $600 on just resin and mat/cloth, near $1200 for tools, wood, other stuff not including paint and running gear, I didn't have to make a mold which saved a bunch of $$$

 

Thanks for the replies and for putting the situation in scope for me. I was hoping that I could learn how to do a hood and then move onto the rest of the front end, but it doesn't look like that'll materialize.
I haven't done any glasswork before so I'd really be starting from scratch. It would probably start to pay off after i got the hood finished but I don't have the funds to invest in that now. I won't be able to afford the stuff until the summer but I've been planning on getting a paint job during the spring.
What I can afford is some PAM, home depot fiberglass, saran wrap, turtle wax, and resin
(Ok I'm not that poor, but I'm not working with much of a budget).

All I can say is that it's a shame it isn't as affordable as they make it look on Musclecar. But it really doesn't look like they used even half as much of the amounts you described sailtexas (I now understand why that is your name). Btw, do you have any pictures of the finished boat?

 

yeah pam and homedepot supplies isn't gonna cut it for a decent hood unfortunately. If fiberglass interests you http://www.mertons.com/ along with http://www.uscomposites.com/ are good places to get supplies, I use mertons and they are nice and will give you advice if you call them.

well it's TV so they make it look easy, and you could make a hood for pretty cheap once you have mold making and glassing experience along with all the tools, it's just hard to make nice, thin light pieces when our starting out, pieces tend to be heavyyyyy or weak when your learning (ask me how I know )

The boat isn't finished but here's a pic, I need to reinstall the windshield, finish buffing the paint, finish the seats and hang the motor on it (150HP Merc!), here I come 80mph!