Thanks Bert.
Greg, your resin was wonderful to work with. I’m hooked.
Doesn’t look to chubby to me 
Zoom zoom! Nice work. Surfed it yet?
Nice! Very cool!!
nice winged swallowtail …are they futures systems fin boxes ?
what fins do you use on that ?
how wide and how thick is the board , too, please ?
cheers mate !
ben
“Chubby Stubby”
great looking board… give us some highlights and some low points…
foam? glass? weight?..
looks like great fun…
looks real fun …well done show some water pics please.
how does it go?
5’4" x 20" x 2"
1/16" balsa taped on the inside with cheap 3/4" masking tape
RR Epoxy w/ slow hardener
Held at 25" Hg for 8 hours for attaching the skins (I put a sample piece of eps in there with it and it got destroyed! probably 1/2 the thickness it was when it went in). No bubble wrap, no bleeder or peel ply – just bag.
Basic attack method:
----4 oz e w/ tail patch and full rail patch-----
=============balsa==================
----------------4 oz e-----------------------
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XX Superblue clark blank w/ 1/8" stringer XX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
----------------4 oz e-----------------------
=============balsa==================
----4 oz e w/ butterfly patch for fins---------
Tried to wrap the entire rail but ran into a bunch of problems near the tail (hard edges and wings don’t mix to well with a full rail wrap). Next time I’m going with solid 1/2" balsa rails. I patched up areas that didn’t wrap correctly with pieces of 1/32". Not too difficult but just time consuming.
Took the easy route and built it using a clark blank (rocker already in, stringer already in, no need for a vent, no need for a hot wire cutter, and no need to go searching for eps billets). The thing feels bullet proof, but it’s a bit heavy at nearly 6 pounds. I built it for the puerto escondido trip I’m taking later this summer. Should be a great board for the head high and under days. I’ll put it to the test.
The hardest problem I ran into was moving the glass onto the balsa and in position after wetting it out on a wetout table. Any advice on this process would be much appreciated! Not only was it hard to get the glass in the correct position, it also seemed to shrink a bit after the initial wet out. In the end it would always stretch back out to size, but it was a real bitch to work out all the little folds and air bubbles in the center.
Finally got it out in the water this morning and I loved it. Catches waves better than my 6’1" but tops out at a pretty low speed while paddling. Rides really well – fast and flowy. Going backside took a little getting used to with all that extra width. I’m used to 17 3/4" - 18" boards, so getting this extra 2" onto rail in my backside bottom turn will take some practice. The thing pops though – comes off the lip great going backside. Haven’t had the chance to try to air it frontside but it should be a little booster. Just wish this damn wind would let up on the central cal coast so I could try it it decent conditions.
Lay a piece of plastic film on your wetout table and lay the glass cloth on that. Do your wetting out there - you probably already do it like this because I don’t know too many guys with sacrificial tables.
Put the board down onto the wet glass & plastic. Reach across the board to the far side of the plastic film & grab the edge. Put 2 or 3 pieces of blue tape to hold the plastic on the far side to your board. Grab the far rail with th eplastic taped to it & turn your board back over so the glass & plastic are on the top. Pull the tape & remove the plastic…
Works every time. Even on 12’ers.
Same technique for the inside glass except the balsa is on the plastic and glass on balsa (like the video).
The flip technique works wonders
If you are really adventurous build the entire glass+wood+glass sandwich on the wet out table and apply them all using this technique and then vac using perforated release and a blotter.
Thanks guys. I’ll give that method a shot next time. For the bottom I actually folded the glass up and wetted it out in a little tupperware container. Never going that way again unless Bert let’s us in on his secret of unfolding the whole mess cleanly (this method left me with a bunch of loose strands). For the top I tried to wet it out on my kitchen table (yes, with a plastic sheet underneath) and was going to flip the whole thing onto the board but I was afraid of the excess resin dripping everywhere off of the plastic. Next time I’ll do it where I don’t mind making a mess!
When doing the skins, do you have to do a double flip? One to flip the glass onto the balsa after wet out, and one to flip the glass/balsa onto the board? I didn’t do a test, but the balsa didn’t seem to soak up much resin. Can you just wet out the glass directly on the balsa?
For bagging the exterior glass, how large do you make your laps? Seems like you could run into a bunch of problems with the laps getting bunched up if you don’t do it just right. I had planned the bag the exterior glass on this one but decided to do it conventionally at the last second. The board had come out pretty good up to that stage and I was afraid I might botch it by attempting the bag.
For all those out there that are trying to plan out every stage before making the leap… just get started. I was surprised by how much room for error there was in this process.
I don’t double flip for skins. I wet out the glass on plastic, flip that onto the blank, pull off the plastic & lay on the skin’s core (balsa, d-cell, or veneer). Seems like if the glass is already smooth on the blank, I can jimmy the skin around a little if I need to until its straight, but if I had the glass on the skin, it’d be trying to stick to the blank or peeling off the underside of the skin and making it hard to align. And maybe wrinkling under there.
Good call Benny. You’re right – the accuracy of the skin is much more important than the accuracy of the glass.
I’ve got two more blanks waiting for me but I’m in the process of moving right now and don’t have a bay set up yet. Can’t wait to get started on them with all that I’ve learned from this first one.
The one thing I’m still really curious about is how people are going about bagging the exterior glass. My conventional glass jobs always leave much to be desired!