it's child proof hi i'm paul brodie we are in my
shop here in behind the camera is mitch we had a comment it was on the acorn nut video and and
colin wrote in he was saying that when i put on a decal not decal someone told me that i should use
windex because it allows you to move it round well i don't know about that tip i've never tried it
myself i'm unsure about it but he wanted me to tell this and mention his name colin because if
i do this which i'm doing now his wife will go absolutely nuts that's the exact wording he used
now i could make an assumption if someone told me that their wife went absolutely nuts my assumption
would be well maybe that's not such a good thing but i think in this situation it kind of sounds
like it is a good thing moving on we're going to work on the cub today and i'm kind of excited
about what we're going to do we're going to make the pattern for the seat base i need to
make these pieces here because i'm not going to reuse well actually this one's
welded on this one's bolted but it's an eye lock i couldn't take it off without
taking off the seat and i don't like this i want it to come down and go in a bit like that because
this is hitting the frame and it scrapes it so i got my metal basically the same metal i've been
using red sharpies since i was a teenager that's how long i've been using them and i really think
that red sharpies should sponsor this channel i've been thinking of contacting them as i'm moving the file i'm going away from the
radius if i go straight i can make a notch so i'm always going away a little bit as i mentioned
over on the surface table you see how these are basically at a right angle to the seat base as
i put it down there it scratched the frame it's no big deal because it gets hidden but i want to
put an angle on there so we're going to go to the go to the vise we're going to use the soft jaws
and we're going to use a big orange hammer and we're going to bend it over a little bit not a
whole lot but enough so that there's an angle and then straight if i do them both at the same time
they both get exactly the same bend so here we go things are flying there we go they're both bent exactly the same so now we'll mount them on the bike
and i have to figure out the height and then we need a cross piece and that's going
to get welded on or tic tac today anyway so so what i need to do now is to figure out the
height of the cross piece because it's got to be above the fender so this is not the shape
this is just the mounting point so there we go so there that's that's what it
looks like so it's pretty low but maybe i'll make it a
little bit higher than that look at that i want to put one piece in the
middle just to join them up to that'll kind of be the base
baseline for starting the shape okay that just kind of sets the level
and i know that these are perpendicular because if you haven't had an angle you can't
slide them over the bolts on either end so that's what i was thinking so that's enough
just to get started okay so welding's done next stage okay so i've got
16 inch aluminum welding rods and i've got a hot glue gun nothing fancy so
what we need to do is to come up with a shape and the shape is going to come around and i
want it to it'll match approximately the contour of the hoop here and i also want it to come up
over the fender and it's going to be a little bit longer seat not a two-person seat really
that comes to him it's a a solo seat there's going to be a little hump at the back but we're
only working on the base now so what i can do is i can i can glue it right onto the seat base
onto the to the loop it won't affect the paint because i'll put it right onto the masking
tape here let's just see what happens here so this is easy to modify because
you can cut it out you can re-glue there's a lot of things you can do with this
it's not just you do it and it stays like that easy to modify so we're looking for a shape
i think you want to have it about right there oops oh it's quite a bit okay so what i'm going to do now i'm going to
anchor it to here put put a piece across here and the glue sets pretty quick because the
aluminum wicks away the heat quite nicely okay so we're starting a structure you can see it's got a little bit of
of stability to it just a little bit so so see that's kind of a nice shape see that that
curve at the bottom there how it comes around like i kind of like that and then if it came in more at
the back and then went up and over that might work because then it would it would
tend to hide this a little bit okay so can you see how the shape you start
to look for lines so what we're defining here is the bottom of the seat what the shape
is looking at it this way how it contours to the frame fits on the bike and then we're also
looking at what it looks like from the top as well so that's what we're working
on and then it has to have a lip that comes down because when the upholsterer
works on it he wants to have something that he can he can tuck the norga hide or whatever
fabric whatever it is up and under so we're working on the shape so we're not using
this as the shape we're using the bottom here and i think it matches the tank kind of okay so
it's going to get bigger because we're going to we're going to build this up we're going to
fiberglass over top of it and then we're going to put some bondo on we're going to paint it wax
it and that becomes the male mold i think i'm pretty happy with with this shape so now i'm just
going to fill fill things in that's my plan here so so i'm changing the shape here i'm
putting in a lower profile for the for the phone because that seems to be what what we want and this is bronze rod so it's
got a little bit more of a stiffness to it and see if we can glue that in right there
is that gonna fit yeah look at that yeah i like that better so we'll have
i'll have a little bit extra foam in there okay well i think i got enough of the welding rods on here that it's
going to hold up the masking tape so let's put the masking tape on next i got
a drop sheet this is what's going to protect the rest of the frame and cycle parts from the
fiberglass resin because it doesn't come off like like a glue gun does it's very different if you've
ever worked with fiberglass it sticks like crazy so we need to offer some a bit of protection here so it all came off in one piece more or less okay i just put a little masking tape over there
just to help protect it and then we're gonna put masking tape right over this because the fire
otherwise the fiberglass just leaks through you can't have that so so so catalyst acetone i think this is an ounce and a half mat i
think i like to rip it i don't like to cut it i'm just gonna make a mess on my floor here okay that'll be good for the first layer okay so i kind of estimate i know you
can measure this out perfectly but i'm guessing here there we go
taking them taking a gamble there here we go i'm going to wet the mat it's been a long time since i've done this i'm just putting on on two layers if you put
on a lot of layers it starts to what's called exotherm and you get a lot of heat and it's
not a good product so you only want to do a couple layers at a time usually if
you need more layers you just go back so i don't need as much on this one because it's going to settle into what
i've already done there so let's see how this works so on top of this when this is all hardened up i take out all the aluminum from underneath
and then i i mount this on a piece of plywood and then i put bondo over top smooth it all out
so it's basically perfect and then that gets waxed and that's what is the mold for the base so
what you see here is a little bit crude but with bondo and a bit of thyme you
can you can do wonderful things i like working with 3d shapes and once this sets up this will become basically pretty rigid and then you add bondo on top of
that that adds its own own strength as well it's pretty strong so what sets off the resin is heat and
light it's the combination and if you've got ultraviolet that sets it off even faster
so that's why you should never fiberglass out in the sunlight or even if you're under an
awning because the ultraviolet it bounces in and it'll it'll it'll set the resin off much faster
so i've done some fiberglassing and i i did have a mentor for a while his name was george and he
was well he's in his 80s now he still runs the store and it looks like he's uh he's been in
the fumes for a long time but he's a good guy okay i think we're basically done here we hope you've enjoyed this episode of
making a seat base or a seat based mold and i think it's going to work out quite
fine a bit of a bit more work to do here thanks for hanging out in our shop
here and uh mitch and i like coffee if you buy us coffees much appreciated helps
to fuel the channel take care see you next time
How to make a fiberglass mold for a motorcycle seat // Paul Brodie’s Shop


