Beautiful.
Just running your hands along its surface would be fun.
Looking forward to more.
kc
I was still rolling deep in RR after a 7.5 gallon order, plus, everyone in town quoted me a 2 month work time to get 'em done. That, and my crappy shaping job wouldnt be complemented with a pro glass job… so its SUPERHACK to the rescue!!!
I found a better pic of the Knee wells…
I was having a bit of trouble planning out the glassing, then george at plusone helped me out with the plan. Glassing from the side, where the lap goes down the middle. I wasnt to worried about raildings because Im not surfing it. Its 1.5# EPS from segway with 4/6 total wrap. So I hope this is a beefy enough glass schedule. So here goes nothing…
Taped off 1.5 inches off of center to give me a middle lap of 3". The 4 oz. glass under the 6oz. is trimmed straight down the middle (well, as straight as I can manage things). The 1/4 tape was yanked after I trimmed my bottom layer of glass and was only there as a guide, alas I am stringerless…
What follows is a testimonial to please make sure all your glassing supplies are in order before you mix up your glass. After throwing in the hardener, I realized my roller had seized up from the last project and wasnt going to cut it. So I used a brush to saturate the cloth and a squeegy to lay it out. Around the knee wells can only be described as “problematic”. Ignore the 40 dollars on the floor.
Other side of board 2 (which went alot smoother) glassed, sanded for hotcoat and skirted for the show… I suck sooo bad at glassing…
Tape pulled, only minor zits ( Ihave the dirtiest room known to man and take full resposibility. Nothing on these boards are Greg Loer fault)
A better shot of the knee wells
The fin boxes in. I dont really know what to run in these, so I dropped boxes to be able to play around. Im looking at the RFC rescues right now, but I suspect Im more into them because of the truckstop hooker red color than design aspects… sigh… Im such a victim of fashion.
I went ahead and glass the green one (Im thinking of dubbing it “the incredible bulk” or in espanol…“el bulto increíble”… it has a certain ring to it dont you think?!)
before the fin box, but I put in the finboxes before the second glass layer on curious Jami so I could lay glass over it. I have no idea the advantages of either way, but was curious so I did it…
Next stop… more sanding… sigh…
Very nice! I like the shape. That looks like a tricky bit of glassing to say the least but the boards are going to look really good when they’re sanded and done.
Oldy: Thanks, I spent a lot of time building the board, but the hard part (design) was done for me so I was fairly well assured of a decent finished product as long as I didn’t get impatient. The board is a lot of fun to paddle. What it lacks in hi-tech raciness it makes up for in style. By the way, I’m going to check out Lines from a Poem in the next week or so when I can find some time to sit down and watch it. I’m looking forward to it.
Jack
acheateaux: great progress. looks like a pain in the you-know-what to glass. it’ll be worth the effort.
johnmahogany: be assured, your board has plenty of style. also, i hope you enjoy my film mate.
Hi Allan,
wow, looks like what was once an idea sparked by desire has come to fruition. As for
the technique and outcome, I must say I’m very impressed. It takes some sack to
glass a 14 foot board using a method you are about to do for the first time!
Question: did you do the green board all the way (girlfriend’s) to get it done first, or
did you do it as practice for the blue one??? lol
Just a side note: we built a 19 footer with a similar method, cut it in half down the center
line, partially hollowed out the EPS using wire brushes, glued it back together and put
a carbon tape over the seam. 19 footer ended up 16 pounds, and my business partner
paddled a Catalina race a couple years ago (36? miles) and got fifth (out of a huge field).
Looks like fun, keep the ideas flowing,
George
P.S. what was your resin consuption like for each board? Did you seal the 1.5? Finished weights?
George…
I sealed to 1.5# EPS with DAP and so far, resin consumption is a bit ridiculous, as I ere on the side of caution. I would like to come down and watch you glass some epoxy some time to smooth my technique out if youre ever into it. If not, I completely understand. So far, I havent glosscoated (waiting on my brother to finish up painting) but Im around 120 oz. per board, which about a 1/4 of that is covering my floor. Now that Ive got the roller thing down though, it is going abit more “swimmingly”.
That unlimited sounds sick. Ideally, that is what I would eventually like to have. After these, IM going to jump into a downwinder or 2 for SUP and I need a 6’4 quad for the winter time. I also buckled my favorite log, so Ive got to get into one of those… yeah… projects…
I think the boards are looking great, you really took it head-on, commendable.
120 oz:
Ouch! consumption is a bit high. I figured about 5 ounces/foot for moderate width and 2 glass layers/side
with hotcoat.
That is about 70 ounces (on the board), figure you got about 90 ounces on the board, did you spreader it
down tight? Maybe pour the whole batch on the floor and then roll the board around on it?..lol
Oh believe me, I relate… …lots of, errr, “learning” taking place. I haven’t done much epoxy these days as
I’ve been dialing our machine, I could do some on a weekend or night, thus out of the way of our production.
Hey that weight figure for the 19 footer is deceptive as we came up with some real crazy lay-up techniques
(kinda like glassing the floor) to save weight. What’s funny is that board is still going…
…so you are painting in-between epoxy coats??? What kind of paint?
George
to make it even tougher on myself, Im doing opaque tints… fun…
Looks great, and fun. How much did the foam run you?
a little over a benjamin a blank…
thank you much, just wanted to see how many cars i had to pawn.
its not the foam that gets you. Hell, you could build a blank ala Home Depot style for next to nothing. The glass layup and the epoxy is what does it…
can you ballpark the amount for the glass and epoxy, for a single board and garage floor?
the emotional pain and suffering is where the true costs lie…
60ft glass per board $60
about a gallon per board for me and my floor, (I didnt factor the squeegy full I dumped down my leg into my shoe) $70
fin box and vented sailboard box for water bottle holder on the deck $10ish ( I cant rememebr )
Cheap camping pad at Target for knee pad (buy 2 because youll just glue it down wrong the first time) $5
water bottle holder $4 ( I hear you can use your hand too.)
Fin (Im using a wingnut cutaway I found in the rocks at Churchs one day at low tide while I was coming in)
plus blank runs up too about-… 260 ish… somewhere in there. I bought resin in bulk so it was 53/gallon I think,… Still mo’ betta for me then buying one, but the quality/craftsmanship is no where as good. But I still learned alot and will continue to make all my own boards, unless I get sponsored for playing bad guitar by someone…
thanks much for the play by play. if you find some sponsors before i do, send them my way. if they’re looking for bad i got it, and i dont mean bad in a good way.
"the emotional pain and suffering is where the true costs lie… "
ouch.
"about a gallon per board for me and my floor, (I didnt factor the squeegy full I dumped down my leg into my shoe) "
double-ouch.
sounds like a disaster but the boards look good!!! hopefully you’ll get counselling, clean yourself up and get out there soon! LOL
Hey Allan, I was serious about the floor glassing for our Unlimited. A more advanced technique, but if you ever want to subject yourself to more masochistic practices, just give me shout.
OK, I’m curious enough to ask - what the heck is involved in “floor glassing”? (One of my buddies just laid up a paddleboard at my house, and has one more block of foam still to go…)
Thanks for posting your build…AWESOME thread. I want to BUY a paddleboard after seeing this. Now way in %#@# I’m gonna attempt to build one!
Hi Keith,
I was referring to “floor glassing” in two ways: the first was ending up with 30 ounces of “gold” on the floor…
The other was an actual technique we used to make an extremely light paddleboard easily and quickly. I don’t really have a name for this method but it has to do with pre-pregging and glassing half the board like Mr. Chateaux did.
I laid up the cloth on a plastic sheet that was on a long flat table (our ‘floor’). The table was made
from two hollow-core (they stay true) narrow closet doors end-to-end. The epoxy resin was pulled from the cloth until it looked almost dry. The cloth/plastic was rolled up and transferred to the blank and unrolled on it. The plastic/cloth was formed onto the blank (the 1 pound foam blank was UNsealed) and the plastic was pulled away thus
drying the lamination even more.
What you end up with is VERY dry cloth, no soak into the blank. No vacuum is to be applied to keep the thickness
of the weave maxed-out (cloth actually acts like a sponge and it wants to spring up very slightly). So once this
kicks, the “framework” is in place for the filler. MicroSpheres were mixed w/epoxy to create a thick paste almost
as thick as cake frosting. This filler mix was smeared into the weave (not too hard). Remember the glass filaments
had straight epoxy on them and the adjacent voids now have this filler. This proved to be stronger than I thought. The fact that the weave was left “tall” acts as the thickness guide for the skin.
This assembly gets a light tune-up sanding (sands very fast!) to just knock the highs off. I got some Pro-Line 2 part epoxy primer (they’re by the Coronado bridge) and used a roller brush to get a controlled amount onto the board section, then I used a quality brush to smooth it out. (I added alcohol to the epoxy to further thin it). This got wet-sanded with 220 grit. I used black spray primer and fogged the hull and wet sanded that with 320 grit. Used spot-putty to fill any lows. Punched and potted all the hardware (included air vent) and ideally would have painted the board.
(I didn’t do the final paint to save weight, the board looks ‘ghetto’ so it was cool that it did so well in the races).
I failed to mention that I cut the paddle board in half and chambered it as well.
Finished weight was just over 16 pounds and it is surprisingly sturdy (it also had a carbon-graphite spar down the middle of it tied to the kneewell).
We always had to keep an eye on the board when it laid on the beach or lawn as the wind would send it rolling away!!!
PlusOne, brilliant. I’m going to give that glassing method a try. Do you have any trouble peeling the plastic from the wet cloth?