How To Skin Parts in Forged Carbon Fiber | DIY Chopped Carbon Fiber Tutorial

today i'll be showing you the process that i use to save restore and enhance this hard top here by skinning it in real carbon fiber by the end of this video you'll know the exact process that i used so you too could skin parts in carbon fiber if you're up to the challenge before we get too far into this video though let us know down below what parts you're considering skinning in forged carbon fiber before i show you how to skin something in forged carbon fiber let me tell you a little bit about this top when i got this top it was in very rough shape the front corner was broken off there was a big part on the back here that was broken off and this latch was super flimsy also about to break off before i show you the full process on how to skin a top in forged carbon fiber i'm going to show you how i did the rest of the body work on this top if you're here just for the forged carbon fiber i have a time stamp down below so you could skip right to that the first thing that i did was remove all of the trim from this top this gave me access to the damaged areas so i could get in there and really restore it and you're also going to want to do this regardless on the part that you're skinning you want to take off all the trims so you have really easy access to all of the parts that you're going to be working around and you don't need to work around things that will get in your way once all the trim was off of this top i went ahead and hit all of the damaged areas with a fairly aggressive sandpaper this roughed up the surface which gave the body filler something to bite into and it also knocked off any loose parts of the composite material that this top was originally made of once all of the damaged areas were sanded back and roughed up it was time to start using that body filler to do this i used some packing tape to make basically a dam for that body filler that would almost act as a rough mold for the shape that i was trying to make then i went ahead and mixed up some body filler based on the instructions on the can and i applied that to the areas that i was trying to build back up the body filler that i was using is bondo glass so it had strands of fiberglass in it which helped strengthen up the body filler areas once the stuff was all cured i went ahead and removed my tape and got out a sanding block and began to sand back the body filler here you're trying to get your shape as close to as what it originally was so once it's skinned in carbon fiber you'll think that there was originally no damage at all and of course for bigger areas you might need to re-skin them to build up slightly more thickness to allow you to get the shape that you need i used the same exact process to fill the large chunk that was missing from the back of the top i used tape to create a mold filled it up with bondo sanded it back and repeated that process if you want me to do a more in-depth video on this process let me know down below and i'd be happy to edit that for you guys for areas like this latch that's a critical structural piece on this top i went ahead and used some 30 minute epoxy this area here had a broken layer that was basically cracked off and i wanted to re-bond that to the rest of the top to make it nice and strong so i went ahead and filled these areas with that 30 minute bondo and then used clamps to hold it in place to keep its shape while that epoxy cured once complete this latch was much stronger and much more how it was originally so i didn't have to worry about this top flying off after i put all of that hard work into it now that this top was looking great and it was shaped just how it was from the factory it's time to actually jump into the process of skinning this in real forged carbon fiber to start let's take a look at what we need to complete this process i'll have links for all of the materials that we're using down below to make it easy for you to purchase materials and get your projects done the first thing that we will need is sandpaper i used everything from 60 grit all the way up to 1500 grit for this project but more on that throughout the video as i actually go through this process with you the next thing we will need is carbon fiber i ordered random orientation one inch chopped carbon fiber from venom composites which again i have linked down below you'll also need a resin which is what's going to hold together the carbon fiber and also give it that shiny appearance before you even clear coat it for this i went with mass epoxy's lv system with the slow hardener i've used this system on a lot of different projects with great success every time next up i used a peel ply fabric which is a fabric that helps give you a uniform texture on a composite part but again more on this one later finally for some more little things you'll need a cleaner like denatured alcohol i ended up using a roller that was specific for making composite parts like this and then i used some mixing supplies and brushes now that you know what i used let's get into this actual process to show you what i did so you could learn it for yourself the first thing that you're going to want to do is prep the surface of the part that you're skinning in forged carbon fiber to do this you're going to want to rough it up with some pretty aggressive sandpaper what this will do is give you scratches throughout the surface of your part to give your resin something to bite into and really hold on to so it doesn't pop off and delaminate if you went ahead and skinned over something that was super smooth it's almost like skinning over a mold surface and it could pop off over time you don't want that so go ahead do the necessary prep work and really scuff it up to do this i went ahead and used a 60 grit sanding disc on an electric sander this gave me a really nice uniform dull looking surface on this top another consideration is the color of the part that you're coating since forged carbon fiber by nature is random orientation and you're not necessarily going to get 100 coverage like you would with a fabric some areas of the part might show through the carbon fiber in really small areas because of this you want to think about the color of the surface and make it black so it blends in with the rest of the carbon fiber to do this i went ahead and painted my top black in areas that were really not covered just to help everything blend in a little bit with the finished product after painting and letting the paint cure i went ahead and re-scuffed the surface again to rough it up and give the resin something to bite into once i was really happy with how the surface looked and felt it was time to thoroughly clean it to do this i went ahead and blew off all of the dust with compressed air this gets this all off of your surface so it doesn't end up in your carbon fiber and in your clear coat later in this process after it was all blown off with compressed air i went ahead and wiped it down with denatured alcohol and a microfiber rag this gets the last little bit of dust off of the surface and it also gets grease and other debris that would prevent resin and paints from sticking well this is the exact process that i'm gonna do whenever i say i clean the top later in this video and now with our surface prepped we could get into the exciting stuff it's time to actually lay down our first layer of forged carbon to start you're going to want to mix up a pretty good sized batch of resin based on the instructions on your resin system this mass epoxy system was super easy it's just a two to one mix ratio once it's thoroughly mixed you could go ahead and start putting a nice thick layer of resin over the part that you're trying to coat this resin here is what's gonna wet out your carbon fiber that you put on it from the bottom and adhere it to the part if you don't put enough resin down here you'll get dry spots in your fabric which won't look good it won't be strong and it will be harder to work with in the future so make sure you put enough resin here once you have a really nice consistent layer down you could start putting your chopped carbon onto that you want to go ahead and carefully spread this over the area getting the best coverage that you could without clumping up the carbon that you're putting on there if you get any clumps it's going to be thicker and give you a hard time later when we're flattening down this surface if you put enough resin down you'll feel the carbon sort of stick to the surface and not really want to move once it's down of course you can make small changes but it's not like you're going to be able to totally move this all around everywhere on the top and then once you're to that point and you're really happy with the coverage you could start wetting out the top of the carbon fiber with resin to do this i went ahead and used a brush and just dabbed on the resin in a bunch of different spots it's easier to go over the surface by dabbing resin on rather than brushing because if you brush it you could mess up the carbon fiber and make it not look so good because it will move a little bit and then instead of getting nice strands and even areas you might get a bit of a mess so dabbing is better and that's a good way to wet out your fabric do this until your fabric looks uniformly wetted out with no dry spots once you get to that point you're in really good shape and you can move on to the next step which is actually an optional step but it's something that i really like to do this step is laying down a peel ply over your layup to help even out the surface and give you a really nice texture once you pull it off and once that resin cures to use this stuff simply lay it down over your carbon fiber and it will look really uniform and you could almost see the carbon fiber through the peel ply fabric i ended up going ahead and using a carbon fiber roller that's made for making composites like this to get the air out these are also linked down below and it makes for a much easier job getting air out of your part and also evenly moving the resin around under this peel ply fabric next all you have to do is wait so if you have something else to do you got about 24 hours because that's about how long you should wait for most resin systems before you come back and start sanding them the first thing to do after the resin was cured was remove that peel ply fabric to do this you simply lift up an edge and carefully pull it back you'll see the nice uniform texture that it reveals underneath unfortunately with this part as you can see there are a few areas that didn't quite get enough resin and the carbon was left a little bit dry and the texture wasn't quite so uniform we're going to go ahead and fix that note that problems like this are a lot easier to have with forged carbon versus carbon fiber fabric because of the random orientation and different thicknesses of carbon that you're putting down over the whole surface anyway the next step is sanding and i mean a lot of sanding really i mean a ton of sanding so get ready for it i used an aggressive sanding disc to go over this whole surface and flatten it down if there are any drips or high spots i made sure to sand them as flat as possible so this top was as uniform as possible note that a respirator is critical here since carbon fiber dust and resin dust is really bad to breathe seriously don't play around and don't breathe this once this thing was as flat as i could get it without really burning through the resin and really burning through the carbon fiber fabric i went ahead and touched up any spots that were white with some black paint this helps blend everything in with the carbon fiber that you're skinning after that i went ahead and cleaned the top and got ready for the next step which in my case was another layer of just resin in some cases you might want to go ahead and do another layer of carbon fiber but i didn't feel like that was necessary since i got really good coverage in my first coat with this next resin coat i went ahead and did the same exact process as putting the first layer down before the carbon on the top at this point after the second coat the top looked really good in the sun but once you really looked closely you could see that that resin layer really wasn't flat and needed to be sanded down again so that's what i did i got the aggressive sanding disc out again and i flattened down this whole surface again this takes a lot of time but when doing wet lay-ups like this without molds it's a necessary step to get the results that you're really gonna want and i ended up actually doing a third coat of resin and a third sand just because i wanted to get this thing as close to perfect as possible again it's the same exact process for every coat here as a final touch i went ahead and filled up a syringe with resin and filled any low spots or voids that i couldn't get with the full coats you might want to do this sooner rather than later and not wait three coats because it is a really good process to fill all those voids once that was all sanded down this was the final surface that i was going to go ahead and clear coat it wasn't 100 perfect but it was definitely good enough for me so we can move on to the next step which is clear coating the clear coat that i ended up using is rust-oleum 2x clear here's why i picked it i picked this clear coat because it's uv resistant which is important for parts that are going to be outside it's indoor outdoor and it adheres to plastic resin is basically a plastic which is why i picked this over some other automotive clear coats that said there's probably going to be a lot of debate in the comments section about whether this clear coat's going to hold up but i could do a video on that in the future if you're interested regardless of what clear coat you use the next process is pretty much going to be the same i used a sprayer handle on the can to make it much easier to spray this down after thoroughly shaking the can i went ahead and applied the clear coat to this top when you're clear coating you're going to want to go ahead and do fairly heavy coats as heavy as you could get away with without it dripping or running and you're going to want to overlap your previous coat this will help ensure that you get a really nice really glossy uniform layer over the whole part that you're clear coating you'll want to follow the instructions on the can for recoat times for mine it suggested recoating within 30 minutes so that's what i went ahead and did i ended up doing four pretty heavy coats on this thing to build up clear coat thickness you will note that the clear coat started to orange peel while i did this and it initially didn't look very good but don't worry i'm going to show you how to fix that and make your parts come out looking perfect after applying those four heavy coats of clear i let this top sit for about a week to ensure that that clear coat fully cured once it was fully cured i went ahead and got out my wet sanding supplies to even out this surface and make it look pretty much perfect to wet sand down clear coat you'll want to make sure that you don't burn through the clear coat itself if you do this you're going to have to re-coat it because the thing that you're clear coating and protecting is going to be exposed to start i went ahead and used grit sandpaper with some water and some dawn dish soap to lubricate the part that i was sanding this is pretty much the most aggressive paper that i would recommend and you might even want to start with 400 or 600 but anyway the process is going to be the same so i took a foam sanding block and just blocked down this whole entire top trying to knock down all those ridges from the orange peel and flatten back that surface from here i ended up going to 600 grit to 1000 grit to 1500 grit sandpaper to get the surface as smooth as possible between coats i went ahead and dried off the surface so i could see if there are any low areas any high spots that i missed or anything that i wanted to change before going to the next finer grit again it is absolutely critical that you don't burn through the clear coat here otherwise you're basically going to have to restart this process to polish this thing i went ahead and used mcguire's heavy cut compound with a foam cutting wheel that i got from ebay or amazon absolutely ages ago i went ahead and applied quite a bit of polish and just worked it throughout this whole top and it really started to shine this was super satisfying because for the first time this top actually looked awesome and all the hard work was paying off once i went over this thing with the heavy cut compound i step back to a slightly lighter cut compound to bring out the rest of the initial shine the last thing to do here was buff off the top with a microfiber to get all the excess compound off and wow this top was looking absolutely awesome and i was super super happy with it here's a few glamour shots of this thing now just so you could see how it looked the final thing to do once you get to this step is to remove all of your masking and reinstall any trim pieces that you took off also you might want to consider ceramic coating or waxing the part that you're working on to really protect it and ensure that all of your hard work looks as good as it can and doesn't get damaged by the sun by rain or by other debris that's gonna settle on the part that you made now let's go ahead and get this top on the car so you could see what it looks like installed and well guys with all that that's gonna wrap up this video on skinning a part in forged carbon fiber if you want to skin a part in carbon fiber fabric it's going to be about the same process but it will actually be a little bit easier for you there are some things that you have to do slightly different like keeping fabric orientations and things like that in line but again it's about the same process if you learned something don't forget to like this video if you have any questions or comments definitely feel free to leave them down below and i'll get back to you and i hope you subscribe to the channel so you could get more videos like this with all that thank you for watching and take care [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: CashedOutCars

Views: 153,374

Keywords: CashedOutCars, carbon fiber, forged carbon, forged carbon fiber, carbon fiber skinning, carbon skinning, forged carbon skinning, forged carbon fiber skinning, epoxy resin, carbon fibre, diy forged carbon skinning, diy forged carbon, chopped carbon, easy composites, chopped carbon fiber, carbon diy, real carbon fiber, how to carbon fiber car parts, how to carbon fiber motorcycle parts, how to carbon fiber overlay, how to carbon fiber skin, forged carbon fiber process

Id: wr2Z2ZcNKDM

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2022