Normally I'd spray the orange tooling gelcoat onto a plug, cover it with fiberglass and then pull it off.  The side of the gelcoat you'd see is the side that was against the surface of the plug.

I never really thought about making a mold without making a plug first.  I thought maybe the problem wat that I used a gelcoat dump gun instead of an HVLP gun.  I started reading aobut using an HVLP for gelcoat and it seems people do use them.  Most HVLP guns seem to come with a 1.5mm nozzle and you have to thin the gelcoat with styrene or acetone (depending on who you ask)  Someone said that they reccomended using a 2.5mm - 3.0mm nozzle for gelcoat but others were saying they didn't have that large of a nozzle and just used the 1.5 with good results.  The dump gun has a 3/16" nozzle which is 4.8mm. (1.5mm is just under 1/16")  So anyway, I think a smaller nozzle would help if you can get the gelcoat through it.

  That said, I don't think that's the best solution.  I think what I should have done is used something that was made for doing it this way.  Duratec makes an addaitve that you mix with gelcoat 1:1 that will spray on smoothly and not orange peel.  I believe you still use a dump gun with this but I just realized that I'm not sure.  They also make a "surfacing primer" which mixes with MEKP that sprays on smooth, builds up easy, is easy to sand and can be brought to a hi-gloss finish.  I actually bought some of this a good while back to use on the go-cart but haven't used any yet.

I am going to go ahead and pull parts from both molds (hopefully today) because I'm pressed for time and need to take them to Grand Rapids next week, but after I get back I think I will sand both molds and spray them with the Duratec gray surfacing primer.  The other option would be to spray them again with more gelcoat or gelcoat + the additive.

As long as ShishiKabop is free, I'm in.

http://www.stickam.com/profile/tim_miller

Anyway here are a few pictures...

White gelcoat:

3 layers of 1.5 oz chop mat:

Popped off the mold:

Trimmed:

Right now I am spraying layers of PVA on the big mold.  I've sprayed 12 coats so far and will do at least three more.  I wouldn't have thought to spray that much until I saw the guy in those videos spray 25 coats.  That's what I did on this last mold and it worked great plus the PVA just peels off like that layer of protective plastic on plexi-glass.  You can see it in one of the photos above, it looks like a wad of cellophane.