Fiberglassing Season Arrives!
Peter and Brandt carving away on Brandt's ERA, while the Maserati rests on the right.
As usual, the pics click through to larger versions (except above.)
Progress is made in October, as the Maserati & ERA are fiberglassed!

After a period of testing in the plywood box stage, we got a big block of foam and got to work on the shaping. Bags of foam dust later, pretty smart-looking machines emerge, but not without some effort. Both cars were covered in 17oz. bi-axial knit with a top layer of 6oz. cloth after the sculpting was finished. The glass was dry-fit carefully, the fibers all worked as closely to the shape as possible before the resin wet out everything. They both went pretty smothly, which was nice
The ERA ready for glass...
Before...
...and after!

Early in the process above. On the left, the ERA in the foreground. On the right, the Maser in the background, and bits and blocks of 2lb. foam.

On the left above, the ERA ready for glassing—and on the right, the Maserati 8CM.

The tail-end of the ERA waiting for the engine-compartment cut to be made.

The tail-end of the Maser waiting for more shaping.

The Whitney Straight Maserati needs a pretty distinctive grill shape and it took me three tries to get it close enough to glass.

Dry-fitting the glass. The biaxial really takes a nice shape, even without resin.

Concentrating on the wetting out...

Brandt getting a bond lesson while the Maser kicks off. Go Catalyst!

A Little Healey Action...

Our first look at David's new 3000. A very elegant sports car indeed. We were surprised at how swank this car is. I guess we'd never really looked closely at Healeys until this year, but they're certainly nicer than we thought. Both the Mysona's and the Bates' cars have lots of power, good sound, and corner very flat. They're much more capable machines than the MGAs we're used to. This augurs well for our winter drives—New Idria, here we come!

The Bates' machine: their 100M in the British car show at San Juan Bautista. We tried to get Chip to peel out in front of the judge's stand, but saner heads prevailed.

Brandt's baby...

...And More Work On The Buffy-Porson.

This is a little movie of the Buffy which shows the rear modifications. It's coming along; the car's slowly evolving into a "bar car", with the back as a potential cooler (all that insulation foam!) It should be able to keep several bottles of Champagne, lots of beer, and shaker-fulls of Cosmos chilled for hours. I suppose it would keep lots of hot food as well, which might be good for the coming winter...Hot buttered rums and such.