The Taming of the Mould
Part 3
At this point, Rob revealed that, by using magical drill-bits, our heroes had impregnated the mould with magical properties, and by rubbing it, they would be able to conjure up a genie. First the mould was rubbed with sandpaper to smooth out the filler. Next the mould was rubbed with wax. Eventually, after much hard waxing, during which our heroes developed many outstanding martial arts powers as a side-effect, a genie did indeed appear, whose name was Amber, and granted our heroes three wishes.
For the first wish, Kento wished for CFRP as black as ebony.
For the second wish, Kento wished for nomex as golden as the sun.
For the third wish, Lucy wished for cookies.
The heroes were therefore left without any resin. Lucy’s wish was not in vain, however, since Rob was easily won over with a cookie and readily agreed to supply resin and hardener in exchange for a yummy snack.
Yet there were more challenges, because, as it turned out, Amber the Genie was particularly mischievous. As a result, on unwrapping the carbon fibre, our heroes encountered something never seen before, but which looked like someone had tried to make a rug out of recycled VHS tape. It was apparently created by the same entity that came up with the Medusa, since it was liable to disintegrate if it was so much as looked at. In addition to this, Rob’s vacuum pump failed to function. With this new series of mishaps fully uncovered, our heroes, undaunted, began to mix dangerous chemicals together to form the resin, and painted the mould with it. The first layer of carbon fibre was pasted on top, in a vastly scaled-up version of the traditional ‘cutting out and sticking in’, and although our heroes tried to avert their gazes, they could not help glancing at it, resulting in a first layer that did not resemble the beautiful shell but rather an average shell with more holes than a tea-strainer. This was covered with more resin, and then pre-ply (a special sheet to roughen the surface of the CFRP) was laid down. Due to the lack of a vacuum pump, our heroes had to spend an hour or so squashing out 10 square metres’ worth of bubbles by hand. They then put lots of weights all over the mould to squash out all the warps. Kento narrowly escaped toxic resin being flicked in his face after he became unnecessarily violent for no apparent reason, possibly due to being overwhelmed by the fumes. Snacks were had by all.
On to the exciting conclusion…
