The slightly bluish-green bridge cover pegs this as Ridgewing Serial #3, here nestled in its attaché case, the bridge battery getting topped off before being shipped to the customer. This bridge cover shows how well you can cast a part in a soft mold, do-it-yourself style. When mixing the plastic goo, you have a set of plastic equivalents of food colorings to play with to get the color tint you want. After mixing, the goo is de-gassed in a high-vacuum chamber to remove bubbles, and is then injected into the mold with a big hydroponic syringe. Finally, the mold fits into a pressure pot where the part cures under pressure, squeezing any remaining bubbles down to invisible. These molding pressure pots are available in sizes large enough to put a frame or neck mold into at 6-7 atmospheres, which would cut down on post-processing of those parts, but it would take up too much room in our shop, and cost around $25,000. So for prototyping, a little Bondo, sandpaper and steel wool do OK and also build up arm muscles.

The five threaded brass inserts visible in the in the bridge cover bosses are molded right into the part, as is the polished gloss outer surface, resulting in just the right amount of post-processing, which is zero post-processing. In the surface of the bridge body you can see the signature swirling carbon fiber pattern from the wet-layup process. The nice satin sheen of the bridge surface is from a final rub down with 0000-steel wool.