So I’ve had this Kongo plug for a couple weeks. Just got a chance to open it up. Have a short week off the day job and going to get this mold moving. It had a little bit of shipping damage, but overall in good shape. Nice Work Kevin! Updates to follow
Not really. I am planning on possibly making a WWII kongo plug/mold in the future, but that wouldn't be until next year at the earliest
Now with three sidemounts, even for the WWI one. That's an Allied ship , since Japan was Allied in WWI. Mostly just to take German islands for their own, but a good sneaky move.
Allied Kongos. Allied Kongos with three sidemounts. Tigers with three sidemounts. this will be interesting. I might have to build a fiberglass boat after all.
Very sorry for the long wait to get this mold rolling. Good steps forward today in my 14 hours in the shop. Deck lip attached Parting Board cut and fitted Parting board struts all fixed and square Indexing blocks installed. Started on filling the lip gap with clay. Ran out of patience and was better to stop and get some rest. Goodnight Moon.
Thin, thin bottom and real thick sides please! Wow after thinking about it, that applies to several things that are totally unrelated.
3 LB of clay, 4 coats of pva, (after a redneck repair of my spray gun) And tooling gel is on the port side.
I have limited experience with creating fiberglass hulls - what is the clay used for? Is it to fill crevices and resist the unwanted intrusion of epoxy? Beautiful work by the way, looking forward to the finished product...
I use clay to secure the center parting board because I can pull the board and scrape the clay off clean without damaging the plug. The deck lip board had a hard time catching the true deck edge. So had to build up the board to hold the line of the decks top edge or molds and subsequently parts will all be wonky lipped. I’ve built entire molds of nothing but clay
Gel needs to be thick and I let this cure in what turned out to be the wrong position causing a drip edge on the casement decks. So I had to define the edge with a tape line and surgically grind it off with the Dremel on high speed. A very trying process without cutting into the plug. I then cut some fine pieces of glass to lock in the beautiful casement work Kevin did making this plug. When this cures I’ll be shooting the whole thing in black for a wear indicator to the mold surface
Port side skinned solid enough to remove the parting board tomorrow and start on the Starboard side. Things should move pretty quick now
In a “better safe than sorry” move, I added ribs (in my dress clothes on my lunch break) before attempting to pry the parting board away from the port side later tonight.
