I am making some fiberglass side panels for my bike and need to blend in some scoop that I am shaping. I am concerned about the transition from the curved scoop to the flat panel. I am either going to need to build up the fiberglass in between the two to create a smoother transition, or I was curious about using short strand filler. How thick can short strand filler be applied?

Hard to answer this...on a flat panel with no flexing it can probably be put on pretty darn thick. At an interface like that I think unfortunately you are going to be running an experiment. Seems to me there should be a better way to integrate those parts. Darrel may stop by this thread if he sees it, if not PM him...

The panel I am referring to is the side cover on a bagger (Victory Cross Country) so I doubt it would see a ton of flexing. It is mounted with molded plastic push pins into rubber grommets as well. I am thinking that at most it would be 1/4 inch...but most likely even less than that. I could still shave down the foam piece to try to smooth out the transition but I am trying to avoid losing the shape that I have created by thinning it out too much.

At a 1/4 inch fill you will be fine especially if you've got very little flexing going on. I would do that rather than "shave" a shape and loose a contour. When using stranded style fillers like this I still like to "spread" a layer of finely chopped up mat and resin over the fill feathering out to a larger area. I then feather out over that with a poly putty such as Body Icing.

DarrelK wrote:At a 1/4 inch fill you will be fine especially if you've got very little flexing going on. I would do that rather than "shave" a shape and loose a contour. When using stranded style fillers like this I still like to "spread" a layer of finely chopped up mat and resin over the fill feathering out to a larger area. I then feather out over that with a poly putty such as Body Icing.

Thank you sir, that takes care of my problem.