$40 Home depot custom enclosure

Sorry about reviving a thread, but when securing your Enclosure to the deck, did you lay wax paper, then your Enclosure and taped the Enclosure on top of the wax paper? Then do the glass layup on top of the wax paste that you applied onto the tape covering the foam?

pretty much this.

I think the moral of the story is that you can take a fiberglass mold over anything, if you have enough mold release (wax). Foam is cheap, easy to shape and readily available, but raw resin attacks it, so a physical barrier (tape) is required.

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Hot damn…that’s nice. When I grow up I hope I can do something like that too.

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haha get outta town :joy:

In principle, its easy. like paper mache.
but the reality it take a lot of hard work and itchy sanding. Definitely a labor of love

Check out @glyphiks enclosure, he made some pretty baddass top mounts

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Cool, thanks! I was following your work and then started wondering what I should layer on what when actually putting the resin and glass on.

I think the hardest part was shaping and cutting the foam all by hand :laughing:

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I’ve got a thread that covers this fairly well. Anytime you are using polyester resin and foam you want a barrier…

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Why would you use polyester resin? Isn’t that extremely odoriferous?

Good question. I hate fibreglass and would normally go for epoxy. Poly dissolves most foam, epoxy not so much. Most people have easier access to fibreglass and the poster didn’t specifically say what kind. I threw out the link and warning as that’s the one that really needs a barrier.

Thanks @Nomad, your thread does cover more detail of the actual process. good stuff!

Because it’s often about 1/3 of the price. Perhaps irrelevant at smaller amounts, but if you buy resin by the 55gallon drum, it gets crazy expensive. Polyester resin is still the standard in production shops. Big Ben uses poly resin, as do pretty much all surfboard makers. But yeah, for one-off DIY, poly sucks if you’re not used to it.

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Epoxy won’t hurt the foam. Polyester resin will. Epoxy doesn’t stink like polyester resin and is more forgiving cause the dry time. Also dont use poly on carbon fiber but for the buildup its fine. Also if using poly …sand between coats cause it most likely has wax in it that comes to the surface. They do sell wax free thou

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I can tell you that epoxy absolutely dissolves the foam I used (linked above).

I’m looking at a lumpty-dumpty quasi-modo abomination of an enclosure right here to prove it, lol

Not all foams will dissolve in epoxy or poly resin, tho. Surfboard foam comes to mind, but the foam I linked was the only kind I could get at the time. I recommend testing a scrap of foam first before trusting that it won’t melt.

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cough cough photos cough cough

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it’s on the frankenboard.
I sanded and patched the outside but the inside is dog ugly.

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This is what I have so far using the home depot method…

I have about 3 layers of this stuff on there, plus probably 80-90% of the famowood resin. It feels stiff if I try to bend it longways, but I can flex the enclosure if I hold each of the short ends and twist; should I add another layer or two of glass? Or is that normal

(also ignore the bits of tape, I don’t think I used enough wax and waited too long so it basically mixed with the resin and now there’s a slight green tint)

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Dude!
This looks awesome! Nice work!

It’s always going to flex unless you go retarded thick with it. I would smooth it out as much as possible then skin it with something nice. the trick is to prop it up so that the main flat surface is level and float the resin on top. makes that surface smooth like glass

ok, who am I kidding, I would bolt it up and ride the bejezzus out of it before it even cures :joy:

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Thanks :smiley: For my first one I’m pretty happy with how it came out

ahhh okay okay I thought I didn’t use enough resin or something

Yeah that was the tricky part, especially with the concave of the deck, the enclosure basically lets any excess resin slide off the edges :confused: . Buut I did get to do one thin gloss coat to even it out before sanding.

Once the reinforcements dry I might do a little more sanding on the edges because they aren’t the smoothest (though likely not since they’re kinda thin and I’m running out of resin and I want this thing done lul) then paint it black. I was thinking of doing a carbon wrap, but I don’t want to risk a signal cutout downtown :laughing:

…my fingers hurt quite a bit after this

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remember, this will be upside down as you see it now.
So you can cover it in carbon as long as the deck is still wood.
Even then you can just leave a little cutout in the carbon deck right over the receiver and no worries.

as it is, it’s already waaaay stronger than any ABS enclosure, I’m sure

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Ahh okay. I thought if there was any amount of cf there would be some problematic interference. I might do it then, though tbh im kinda sick of working with resin for now :joy: so maybe later

This is how you know it’s done :joy:
Spray it, ride it, make the next one better :+1:t2:

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