Today, we began removing the bottom shell mold that we created over spring break. We made a fair amount of progress, but the vertical walls of the fairings and canoe (large center piece) are still being quite tough. If we had put bottle caps on the vertical walls, it would have made removing the mold much easier–we should consider doing that next time. Every technique we used did not succeed by itself, but together they were able to get us somewhere. For example, prying with big crowbars released much of the back section of the mold, but that wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t hammer in chisels and then wooden shims first to initiate the separation between the mold and foam.

Take a look at this video of some of our work: