Well, I finally finished the 2 paipos I was working on for a classmate of mine. She said they would primarily be wall-hangers, so I went nuts on the graphics with metalflakes and pearls. The tops are the designs she wanted (heartagram and the Kill Hannah logo), and the bottoms are more what I like doing; angular, simple panels. Very good glosscoats, these pics are before any polishing steps, just after gloss was cured enough to handle the boards:
The Heartagram board with red and copper metalflake:
Unfortunately, these pics do not do the metalflake justice…It is such a cool effect.
Man… they’re still in the glovebox of my truck, waiting to go. One of those deals where I get in the water so rarely I have a hard time doing anything which requires multiple paddles-out. I will make a concerned effort to get them in the water this summer though.
I know you’ve been away a while, so you might not be up on the latest trends… But if you called those “mini-simmons” boards instead of “paipos” you could probably be selling them to the westcoast hipster set for like $1500 each, easy.
No hurry, whenever you get a chance will be fine. Although I am encouraged to hear that they have not melted in that glove box…
Did the board I gave you last year ever find a permanent home? Did you get to ride it?
Mike,
Good to hear from you! Actually, the inspiration was Paul Jensen’s hollow wood “Prone Attack Tool” as well as John Mellor’s hoop fin paipo…one of them has a ‘hull’ bottom, with a convex nose leadding into a flat mid with low and fat rails, leading to tucked edges in the tail, no vee.
What the pics cannot do is show you how the flake pattern changes constantly, flakes winking in and out all the time, depending on where your eyes and the light source (sun) is…Unfortunately, the flake panels get hot quick, so when they are not in the water, they have to be in the shade.
$1500??? Ha! I charged $300 for the PAIR…but this is a good friend, on her way to becoming a surgeon…
Mask off your panel/design, and (optional) shoot a layer of clear acrylic (Future) to seal the masking tape edges, and flash dry the acrylic with a hair dryer.
Begin with a black basecoat (other colors are possible, but blak will show you only the flake, and the most flake effect), lightly sprayed coats until you have enough down to call it ‘black’. I use the little jars of paint from Hobby Lobby or Michael’s (FolkArt Artist’s pigment), mixed one part paint, one part Future, one part water. Sprayed through a Paasche H airbrush with #5 tip, 35-45psi with the trigger down. Between light coats, use a hair dryer to speed up drying (flash dry)
Now spray the flake, I just mix the flake into straight Future, and use the same airbrush, sometimes I need a little more air pressure to shoot the flake. Begin with light, even coats, and then shoot a few coats from high above to ‘stand up’ some flakes. Hair dryer to ‘set’ the flakes.
Seal the flakes with a wet coat or two of just Future, with less pressure on the airbrush. Hair dryer to help dry.
Pull tape and be less than astonished. Flake will only look good with a good gloss on top of it…do not be discouraged if it doesn’t look right after spraying it on…once the gloss is on, you will keep staring at the goodness…
Caveats: These panels essentially are black panels, and on an epoxy board, will get very hot unless precautions are taken to keep them in the shade when out of the water. Possible solutions are to use different color basecoats, to lessen the heat buildup, or just use flakes on pu/pe. Also, the nice convex tops of boards make for better flake effects than the flatter bottoms. More changes to the flake pattern with the convex shape…probably best on rails, but paint on rails makes me nervous about sandthroughs during polishing…
The outline should be credited as a collaborative effort of Jeff Chamberlain and myself. We bash heads on all of his projects and usually come up with something that works pretty good.
His latest bellyboard is a design cooked up by Jeff, Kirk Putnam and Brian Hilbers. Kirk and Brian are working on some unreal stuff not the least of which is this cool bellyboard they made for Jeff.
I’d like to thank everyone here at Sways for the advice they have given me from my first board to these (#s 10 and 11); I have avoided so many pitfalls following the advice here.
Now I finally get to make a board for myself! Other than my first, I have yet to make one for yours truly…
