Well, after a year doing nothing but snap and sailboard ding repairs, it’s time to have some fun.
I’ve finally got some free EPS foam from scrap. They’re 100cm x 24cm x 7.5cm panels from 30kg/m3 EPS foam.
I’ve got a lot of them, around 50 panels.
My plan is building a core big enough to fit a 7’0" version of the DISC SINGLEFIN from MORNING OF THE EARTH (MOTE) surfboards.
First of all, I took a capture from their website (some months ago; it’s no longer at their website) and scaled the outline to reach a length of 215cm (7’), so it achieved a width of 62.4cm (25"). I know it’s quite unusual width, but I’d like to maintain the outline “as it is”.
MOTE website has no rocker pics, so I had to copy it from another site. BECKER has some nice pics and I chose this one.
Scaled it to reach 215cm long and drawn the deck and bottom rocker lines.
Here is the result:
Next step will be building the blank.
I want to spend time at this stage so I can minimize the shaping stage, which is a very fun but also a very dirty job for doing it in a room of my flat.
This should be the sequence:
White panels are EPS. Brown rocker templates (2) would be okume wood. Orange panel will be a 3cm thick XPS sheet for adding width and adding some “stifness” during the shaping process (not structural).
if the photo of the board you scaled up was not a 7’0, which it doesnt seem to be…when you scale it up to 7’, from say a 6’5, its going to bloat the width to a very odd number like 25".
the original board couldnt have been that wide, and i think this is the reason you got that width…my best advise would be to take that photo into aps3000, make it the background, copy the outline, then type in the length at 7’ to stretch it out a little bit…add a little width too, so its not a spear…but 25" seems pretty out there to me?
Hotwiring the gluelines. in my (limited) experience the hotwire snags at gluelines, perhaps you should test this before proceding.
Bonding XPS to EPS. The XPS I have seen just doesn’t bond very well. I know Bufo makes boards with XPS but they carve deep grooves and fill these with fiberglass “anchors” to hold the skin to the blank. Perhaps a different stringer material would work better for you.
Is a big block of EPS difficult to get where you are? I have found a local supplier which actually blows EPS for industry use and they can simply adjust their machine to blow EPS200 (EU standard) foam for me in blocks as big as I want, it is inexpensive. Gluelines suck…
Hotwiring the gluelines. in my (limited) experience the hotwire snags at gluelines, perhaps you should test this before proceding.
A) No, I’m not going to hotwire. This is the reason for going at 15cm EPS “blocks”: my plan is to use an arch handsaw running along the wood templates.
Is a big block of EPS difficult to get where you are? I have found a local supplier which actually blows EPS for industry use and they can simply adjust their machine to blow EPS200 (EU standard) foam for me in blocks as big as I want, it is inexpensive. Gluelines suck…
A) No, in fact there’s a factory in town, within 5minutes from home. I’m just trying to use that EPS panels from scrap.
Hi Neira, love the project, nice photos, but lots of work! Looks like you use Autocad for your CAD work, do you think you get a good fair curve when working with splines? I have it as well but have not yet tried board design with it.
I love the saw you are using to cut the rocker profile into the foam with. Where did you get it? what is it’s intended use? I actually have a fine toothed bandsaw blade that I was going to use to make something similar. I am on my 4th board pieced together from scrap foam and need a better tool for #5 (an SUP).
Yes I use Autocad for design since I can then take exact measurements every 10cm, which I later transfer to cardboard or wood templates. I first draw a polyline along the pic outline or rocker, then I modify it into a spline, which smooths gently my eye mistakes.
Hola ‘carne de tigre’,
That handsaw I use was bought at one of those chinese hold cheap stores, which are called “allfor1euro” in Spain.
It costs only 2€ (2.5$ approx.) so imagine how good it is…
The good thing is you can dettach the blade and turn 90º the ‘holders’ for doing an horizontal cut instead of the vertical cut.
You call this tool “butcher saw” or “hack saw”, and you have something similar at
“the wall” [Pink Floyd] would be a great colour scheme for that board when it is finished , what with all those small, brick-like pieces of foam visible . But , then …I suppose when it has "the creeping evil " applied to it , though , that ‘another brick in the wall’ will suddenly not be quite so visible . [Pity , really !]
Not that I have anything against someone trying to duplicate a CI flyer from a close tolerance blank… but gluing a bunch of pieces of eps together and shaping a very nice board out of it catches my attention. Niera you have posted some awesome stuff. Keep it up.
Got a bunch of EPS scraps glued into a blank in my back shed kept mostly out of the rain this past winter. Hope to get to it in the longer days ahead.
I’ve still got a couple of not quite completed boogie boards on my racks inspired by stuff you posted so don’t think no one is paying attention. Going to go boogie board shape with a hard shell for better or worse.
