Resin cast guitar neck part II

Following on from our rubber mould-making last week, after leaving the silicone a good four days to cure fully, it was time to actually add some resin and cast some shapes!

After removing the original fingerboard from the silicone mould, we quickly found a weakness in our design. The rubber mould could easily be flexed and twisted along it's length; meaning a slightly banana-shaped fingerboard was very easily created - even if unintentionally.

To get around this, we put the fingerboard back in the mould, then used some contact adhesive to glue the silicone mould to a flat board - the idea being that after removing the fingerboard, the mould should stay - roughly - in the right shape.

Before filling the mould with resin, we removed the fret-wires from the original fingerboard and placed them, tine-side up (smooth curved side down) into the indentations in the bottom of  the mould. The resin should set around the tines, ensuring that each fret wire is completely and securely embedded into the final resin fingerboard.

With the mould prepared, Jake (the resident BuildBrighton surfboard maker) made up some two-part epoxy resin and added chopped up strands of super-fine fibreglass webbing. A thin layer of resin was poured into the mould, then a long, thin, strip of fibreglass, then more resin - more fibreglass, more resin and so on, until the mould was completely filled.

The resin takes a good 24 hours to cure fully, so at the end of another slightly-more-productive-than-usual BuildBrighton "nerd night" we left the resin to go off in its own good time.