Ok, some of this I’m doing a little out of order at the moment – for example it was actually a couple weeks later that I started sussing out the fiberglass ’cause I had to order the stuff, but I figured I’d at least keep the seat plug forming and the fiberglassing together purely for continuity.
That being said, one quick thing that happened was I -finally- figured out the rear shocks. Remember earlier when I mentioned that the Savage used a lot of non-standard parts? Well, the bushing/eye size for mounting rear shocks is one of those things. Most bikes seem to use a 12mm inner diameter eye, the Savage uses 14mm ID. Trying to suss that out literally took me months of on-again off-again searching. I tried to figure out if I could retro-fit some 12mm, but couldn’t find proper bushings, and man, I looked EVERYWHERE. I knew folks had done it, and I even looked in the forums for a clue. It was always the -one- piece of info that wasn’t covered. You’d see “Here are the 13″ shocks I swapped out” but never how or where they found the proper size. In retrospect I’m pretty sure I was overthinking it, but I finally shot a note to the folks at Dime City Cycles, and got a note back from a guy named Zach, who was ridiculously helpful. After clarifying a couple things he pointed me at this shock, which came with multiple bushings, including a 14mm set. They were perfect!
As with most of this project, I’ve never messed with fiberglass in my life. I vaguely remember my childhood buddy Mark Master’s dad doing something cool with resin casting of leaves – but we’re talking probably around 45 years ago, maybe more. Another deep dive into the hive-mind of YouTube and what was Lynda.com, and reading a ton of articles.
I finally figured out what would work best for my skill level and started pressing the ‘order’ button on various sites.
One thing I didn’t get any photos of is the massive amount of Bondo application I had to do to the seat plug. You can see in the above photo there’s a thicker wooden base I cut because I realized it needed more height to fit over the frame the way I wanted, and also the tapers coming from the cowl to that little hourglass-like bit before where it meets the tank weren’t very precise. This got them closer to symmetrical and useful.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and fly in the face of convention. I spent a TON of time trying to get the plug perfectly smooth and flawless, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. If I was going to use the plug/mold/part method, then yes, absolutely… but since this was essentially going to be a one-off, then I was going to a lot of trouble to make the -inside- of the final fiberglass seat pan lovely and smooth, and lord knows it was going to be a hot mess on the outside, so I’d be smoothing that regardless. More on that later…
Also, some folks talk about mixing chopped strand and fiberglass mat for better strength. I wholeheartedly endorse that idea, but I just went with the chopped strand. Budget is still an issue on this, and since I’d never done this before I didn’t want to botch the job and have wasted resources.
First order of business, apply a liberal couple of coats of the Allpart wax. First coat on, wait til dry, second coat on, wait til dry. I believe I did three coats. Then it was time for the PVA. This stuff is kind of amazing. I used my airgun and sprayed a nice coat on. The Allpart wax -should- be enough to allow the part and the plug to separate nicely when the fiberglass is cured, but way too many sites kept drooling over how well the PVA enhances that process. It’s basically a spray-on super thin non-stick plastic film.
After letting the PVA dry I started applying the fiberglass. I don’t have any pix of this ’cause I was gloved/masked up to reduce the -really- annoying magic of little bits of fiberglass getting on/in me. Also, fiberglass resin is sticky as hell and has a pretty short set time. Once I started that process I was committed. Honestly, my technique was slapdash at best. I cut a couple pieces of the strand in roughly the shape of the seat area, strips for the sides and a couple of medium-sized pieces with darts cut to lay somewhat flat on the cowl. I -suck- at manipulating anything fabric-related, but this was passable since the resin completely saturates the chopped strand and it lays pretty flat to the plug automatically.
Another aside – speaking of the voodoo magic of working with fabric, it’s not like I haven’t tried. From 2004-2006 I was the technical director at Madcap Puppets, a touring children’s puppet theater company based on the west side of Cincinnati. The founder of the company, Jerry Handorf, worked for Jim Henson back in the early 80s before starting Madcap. It was probably the coolest job I ever had, and I made some amazing stuff working with even more amazing humans…but my builds were all in the internal rigging of giant puppets and creating set pieces that could fold up or easily taken apart, shoved in a van and set up by the pair of touring actors easily at every stop. But that was all wood, plastic and aluminum. I can deal with wood, plastic and aluminum, as they are pretty rigid and do what my science-brain expects. Fabric and foam stretches. Flops. Folds. Tries to kill you when you’re not looking. I tried to learn to work with the stuff, I really did… but that’s why they have seamstresses and, well, almost everyone else there.
But I digress. Again.
In the end, I applied between four and six layers of glass on the part (depending on how structurally sound it had to be).
I was a little worried about the separation process – at first it seemed like it wasn’t going to work at all and I’d have to destroy the plug… but once I got some purchase under the fiberglass it came out -almost- flawlessly, I just lost that little bit of the front of the plug. All I can say is Allpart wax and PVA is a friggin’ AMAZING thing.
A test fit, some trimming with the angle grinder and a cutting wheel, and hitting it with my orbital sander convinced me that this was going to be completely usable.
