The exhibit is in Bordeaux - at the Musée d’Aquitaine - if anyone happens to be around. Maybe a good chance to combine a trip with some wine tasting?
About the build? Modifying the template was pretty easy once I figured where I wanted my widepoint. A bit of transitioning but not a big deal. I happened to stumble on some wide sabre saw blades, over an inch, and they did a great job of keeping the outline cut largely wobble-free.Clean-up with a rather large Hitachi gifted years ago from Balsa, then hand plane and a long balsa sanding block with some 40 grit on it. Shaping then with a combination of the beast to do the general bevels, and then a lot of work with a David plane. I love that plane on balsa! Sanded it down to 220 - I am always wary of going further because I want some traction for the lamination.
Shape is pretty classic - almost flat bottom with a slight belly to a slight increase in belly in the tail area. This is the way the original Quigg is shaped, which suprised me as I expected a bit more belly throughout. Should be more functional for the way I surf so stoked. Rails are an full eggy 50/50 that drops a bit through the middle. Again, in the SHACC collection of period balsas, you see a bit of everything - full, slightly pinched, eggy, 50/50, 60/40… almost flat bottoms, rolly polly bottoms, on this one I just kept close to the Quigg.
I chose not to do a filler coat on this one, which I usually did in the past. Instead I glassed on a dropping temperature later in the day, so that the resin would be sucked in rather than having the blank exhale as it heated. It was a bit cold for epoxy, so the drying times were slow… really slow. That being said, there’s nary a bubble in the lam - you really have to look hard to find a bubble or two of the tiny variety. Probably the most bubble-free wood lamination I’ve ever done. Oh yeah, and I dropped my usual squeegie for a roller on the lam. Kind of a heritic move, but it worked well! Hotcoat and gloss were squeegied on and then brushed with a 4 inch brush.
Single bottom, double deck. Epoxy hotcoat. Sanded that out to 220 and then roughed it back a bit with long passes of 180 for adherance.
Gloss, as I said, was simply standard epoxy with a bit of alcohol. Originally I planned to leave it unpolished, but there were a few too many dust tits so… sanded as described above.
What else? The logo is a brass plaque that I inlaid. Something that struck me one day and I went with the idea. Could have been cleaner but had a slight slip of the hand on the right-hand side. The fin is different - originally I wanted to use a piece of a local shipwreck from the beginning of the last century, but it was a bit short. And I didn’t have anything else interesting in the thickness I wanted. So I shaped a balsa fin, and then bookmatched a piece of mahagony and laminated it. Sort of a T-band fin. Glassed the fin with what I think is a leftover of 4oz volan - it shows a bit of the weave and I liked the look of it on a vintage style board. Bead is epoxy with just a bit of milled fiberglass in it for strength.
Let me know if you’d like any other info.
