Cool faux fiberglass techniques .

There are ways to make a "fiberglass enclosure or door panels" without using any fiberglass. We build a lot of custom vehicles here and we have to do them fast. (Our average turn around is two weeks to one month.) So fiberglass is always a last resort here. But sometimes there are shapes you can only pull off with material and resin.

Here is one example. This is an enclosure we built for a 07' Toyota Tundra. It's nine L7 12"s. It's painted the body color of the vehicle and yes there is little to no fiberglass resin!

 

First we routered a whole lot of rings.

 

Then we routered trim rings to go around the woofers. To give them a flush mount look. After attaching the trim rings to the subwoofer rings we did a round over edge.

 

Built a solid floor and rear wall for the enclosures to sit on. And then choose the shape of the boxes. This shape of enclosure is call "slot machine" style.

 

The beauty of working on a router table, is once you get the shape of your enclosure you can duplicate that shape again and again and have them all match exactly in just a couple of minutes. This is done by using a flush trim bit.

Once we have all of our sides done. We start assembling the boxes.

 

That'll be cool. We'll just need to schedule it. I'll be slammed for the next couple of months, and when SEMA season starts in August I don't get to sleep or even go home. :no:

 

With the center enclosure in place, we decided to build the filler pieces that will go in between the boxes. Using the same template that we used to make the sides of the enclosures we routered 8 pieces out of 1/2" MDF. With 4 of the panels being the structure of the filler pieces. The curve on the other 4 panels were reduced 3/4" with a rabbet bit on the router table. Then just the curve was cut out using a jigsaw and attached to the inside of the filler piece structure. This gave us an edge to attach our 3/8" bendy plywood. Since these pieces are purely cosmetic strength is not important here.

Used Duraglass and body filler to finish them up.

 

Construction of the side "slot machines". These have to be built a little different, because you don't want them to interfere with the door panels. And also we want them to flow with the C-pillars. We attach a square piece of 1/2" MDF to the sides, and with the door open we can trace the shape of the C-pillar onto the square pieces.

 

This is after the square pieces on the sides were cut to follow the shape of the C-pillars. If you look at the above picture, you'll see the pillar start to taper in. So we simply cut some 3/8 bendy ply and glued it to the top and let it naturally rest against the pillar to get it's shape. While still in the vehicle we put Duraglass onto the backside of the bendy, and when it dried it kept the shape of the pillar.
This section will not be part of the actual enclosure so again strength does not matter here.

 

Alright, now for the important part. You cannot execute this technique without these proper tools. These are "rasps" they are used to shape and sculpt Duraglass or body filler when it starts to "green". They can be purchased from just about any autobody supply store. Greening is when the body filler starts to harden, but is still soft enough to shave pieces off. When you purchase these make sure to buy an assortment of different shapes for different applications. In this case I like to use the round one to shape the rounded edges.

 

We mixed up a large batch of Duraglass and started to fill all the gaps in the in enclosures and around the rings, sculpting it as it started to harden. I know this sounds like a lot of work and trouble. But we were done in 2hrs. Compared to the time it would take to stretch fleece, saturate it, put fiberglass chop on it, and wait for it to dry over night.

 

We run some tape behind the holes to keep from sagging, but yes it is thick enough to fill small gaps and holes.

94'! Lol! I was still in high school. Yeah, now I try not to use fiberglass whenever possible. It just takes too long. I'll keep adding to this thread as I do more examples of glass, no glass techniques. I do a lot of projects each month, but never think about photographing it. I'll start doing that.

Thanks for the comments guys!