Cutting fiberglass

Anything goes in the world of fiberglass and plastic

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 1:17 pm
I'm going to make a hole in my fiberglass hood in order to make my hood scoop 'functional', and I'm looking for some tips on doing it. This area won't be very visible, so absolute precision isn't needed, but I don't want it to look like I let a monkey loose in the garage with a Sawzall, either.

I know how to operate a pencil, measuring tape, drill, and saw, but I've never worked with fiberglass before, so what I'm looking for is: what sort of blade to use, how to avoid fraying the edges, how to keep it looking tidy, etc.

I have another, smaller project in mind that I may tackle later, and that's inserting the turn-signal indicators into a hood scoop that hasn't got them (MACH1 style indicators into a Boss 429 scoop). This would be more delicate and require some filling/sanding, etc. I am not ready for that project yet, but if there are any fiberglass experts here, I'd love some tips on that, too.
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 6:33 pm
Fiberlgas really isn't that bad to cut as long as you carefully measure and plan your cuts. I've made every kind of hole imaginable, along with sunroof cutouts, sectioning/grafting, etc. First, the quality of the lamination itself affects the cut. Good quality laminations with little to no air voids and tight resin accurate layups cut like butter. Cheap Chinese layups can tend to pull you "off course" with air voids and "loose" laminations. I like to use a decent quality powered orbital scroll/ sabre saw with a fine tooth wood/plastic cutting blade. You don't generate enough heat for any melting at the cut like thermoplastics, urethanes, etc., so a fine cutting blade works pretty good. TAPE- It's important, I use a high tack green automotive masking tape to lay out both top and bottom in my cut area. This can virtually eliminate gel coat breakout at the top surface and give a cleaner cut underneath.
Just remember, measure 2 or 3 times before cutting. One of my old fiberglas instructors use to point out that it takes minutes to remove the stuff but hours to rebuild a miscut.
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