Hi guys, welcome back aboard good old Spiffy—our 44ft hurricane-damaged Antares 44 catamaran. I’m still deep in the “let’s-make-our-own-windows” rabbit hole, because the factory wants almost $20,000 for a new set of 10mm curved acrylic windows. Over the last couple of weeks I built a massive (and dare I say rather sexy) electric oven for thermoforming, and this week I wanted to do two big things: check for hot spots with the oven fully loaded, and test a much cheaper mold idea that you guys suggested—plaster of Paris. I made a set of small plaster test molds, learned about mix ratios, exothermic heat (yep, 90 “French fry units”), and then discovered the first real challenge: drying. Even after days, the molds still felt damp, so I used the oven at low temp to drive off moisture before going for a full forming test. The results were honestly super promising—dead smooth surface straight off raw plaster and way fewer texture issues than my aluminum molds. The main issue is heat distribution: the edges get to the sweet spot before the center turns properly “nougaty,” so next up is longer soak time and maybe a second heat deflector. Also, the oven lid was getting ridiculous, so I built a pulley-and-counterweight setup. It’s a 10/10 solution—I can open the lid with two fingers and it even holds itself open. Next week: bigger molds, high-temp plaster, and (if customs stops being weird) a comparison against high-temp epoxy/carbon fiber molds.