I’d been really trying to understand the process of making the seat pan mold. I don’t know how many countless videos and ‘how-to’ articles I clawed my way through. The process seemed sooo contradictory depending solely upon which one you were referring to. So, I’m going to go through the process -I- did, which is an ultra-modified conglomeration of sage advice, tried-and-true processes and complete and utter guesswork.
First thing though – there is a LOT of video out there that suggests if you’re going to make a fiberglass seat pan from a foam form, what they actually want you to do is make the foam plug, get it shaped -perfectly-, fiberglass it with a couple/three layers with a hunk of wood down the centerline as a break for the mold, break them apart from the plug when cured, THEN use these two mold pieces you’ve just made, bolt them together and lay fiberglass on the INSIDE, which will become your finished part.
This makes perfect sense if you’re contemplating making a mold that can be used over and over to generate parts you might be wanting to sell. For me, it was complete overkill. As I’ve mentioned more than once before, my whole setup is a little off-kilter and definitely designed for my bike alone. Even if I wanted to make fiberglass seat pans to sell, there’s waaaay too many other bits of my build I’d have to duplicate and also sell. Well, and I just don’t feel like it.
So my version is – make the foam plug, gel-coat it as prescribed, sand it down smooth and fiberglass over it. Hopefully the plug will survive in case I need to do it again, but if not, I’ll have my part and that’s fine.
I bought some blocks of florist foam at my local Michael’s, got a can of 3M 77 adhesive and glued it all up. I then got a chunk of luann, cut it in half length-wise, double-sided taped the pieces together with the square edges flush. I drew my template profile and cut it out on the bandsaw, and tacked each on either side of the foam and made a bottom profile template, also out of wood. I then used that same ‘hot-wire bow-saw’ that I used for the attempt at doing a new fuel tank so many months back. This time it was much more successful.
I did a little more shaping to get it to the side profile that made me happiest.
The next step didn’t go quite as advertised. Everything I read said I needed to coat it with marine-grade gel-coat. Gel-coat cures best anaerobically, so once you got the thick stuff nicely coating your foam, you’re supposed to essentially bag it up with shrink or plastic wrap to ensure no air can get in. Whatever, I’m not going to argue with science.
What I didn’t realize would happen is that the plastic wrap would make all sorts of ripples, waves, tsunamis, and thrust faults in the hardened surface of the gel-coat. And you know what? That stuff is an absolute bitch to sand out. I mean – like 80 grit on a belt sander hard to get out. Ok, maybe not -that- bad, but you get the idea. Another problem I ran into while sanding it out is that the gel-coat would sometimes break away in little chunks and take bits of the foam underneath with it, especially in the rounded-off bits of the cowl where any heavy-duty sanding was hard to keep from wearing down the contact point between sander and curve faster than anticipated. A real craftsman would say, “Fie! A pox on ye for not usin’ your two hands instead of that infernal machine!”, and they’d be correct. But I admit to having an impatient side, and spending a thousand hours hand-sanding down a mess like this was beyond the pale. So… I got it pretty close, and then hit it with Bondo to fill in the potholes and sharpen the sharp parts.
While going through the close to 1500 photos I took of this whole build, when I got to this point I was a little dumbfounded… As of this writing I had been contemplating what I was going to call the bike. I knew it was going to have a bit of a steampunk vibe, but not overtly. Something that felt rough around the edges but more than capable. Always have been a huge fan of Jos Whedon’s “Firefly” series, and the bike sorta had that vibe. So, what do I call it? “Serenity”? “Inara”? “Jayne”? “Firefly” was the top of that list, but also didn’t -quite- feel right. I posted my thoughts on my IG feed, and one of the guys following me (@potsbyryan aka Ryan Rakhshan) said “it’s got those iridescent dragonfly colors though” and I was sold. And now, a couple weeks after that post, I find this. The little guy landed on the cowl as I was getting ready to start smoothing down the Bondo:
Life can be very serendipitous sometimes, can’t it? 🙂