strengthening MDF molds

[vinman]

I am up to the point of thinking about designing my molds. I have read many thread on here and could not find what I am looking for.

Has anyone played around with sealing the cut MDF surfaces with thinned wood glue? Would this create a stronger mold or is this overkill?

I found this discussion that describes this.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/archive/i ... 33092.html

I'm planning on MDF molds with threaded rod and finger joints with spacers like twizz and kevy although a bit thinker to prevent the cracking they experienced.

Ideas anyone?

[KevyWevy]

we're starting to remake our molds. we're going to do an adjustable mold now. i'd say look into doing adjustable if you think you'll be making skis for friends or anything. the mold i made for my non camber pow skis held up fine. but yeah if you have any sort of camber make sure you use threaded rod. we also put down a piece of mdf to go under our molds to make sure our press base was a little flatter.

as for the thinned wood glue, i don't really think its needed. you could always put a layer of fiberglass over the top of the mold if you wanted.

[vinman]

I like the finger joints and spacer idea you guys did for adjusting length.

With your adjustable camber mold did you just made different center sections for this?

[skidesmond]

I made adjustable molds. My bottom mold is mdf bolted together. Top mold is wood because working w/ that much mdf would be heavy to secure in place but mdf would work also. I didn't use any glue.

Check out the link below for pics of adjustable top and bottom molds.

viewtopic.php?t=1965

[twizzstyle]

I like the finger joints and spacer idea you guys did for adjusting length.

With your adjustable camber mold did you just made different center sections for this?

We haven't had adjustable molds yet, that is our current project. I hate having to make a new mold for each ski (the last 2 pairs I made were reverse camber... now I want normal cambered skis so I need a new mold). So we're making a fixed camber, adjustable length mold right now (designing it anyways, not building it yet, soon).

Our original idea with the finger joints was to have seperate center sections so it was reconfigurable, but we got lazy and ended up just gluing the center sections and tips together for two different complete molds.