my next board is a personal board, and im hoping too add two additional stringers to the board out of im not so sure what wood. Maybe some left over basswood from the wooden board i am working on.
Anybody seen any good plans for a hotwire?
Its in the first 30 seconds. perfect way to cut lengthwise for stringers with a hotwire
you can make a big bow out of PVC pipe and let it hang on the blank (cold). Line it up and turn on the power. I use 2 inch for the long piece and reduce to 1 inch for the two short verticals. long piece of wire and you are good. what GL shows is a production set up and may not be worth it for just a few blanks.
Get a long nichrome wire and some paintbrush handles. Do it like a chalk line, make a cut-notch at each end and put the wire in and pull tight. A few seconds a almost full power and you have a clean cut.
Ian
Ian- Very nice results. I am still foggy on how it works. Are you clamping one brush and pulling the other tight and down, or do you have an able-bodied assistant and each of you holds a brush? Or something completely different?
Angus-Balsa mentioned this on mattwho’s glue line thread http://www2.swaylocks.com/forums/first-glue-lines :
The timing of the posts is amazing as I have a blank to cut. I have the stuff for hot wire but the circular saw idea sounds really easy, two clamps and a batten and done.
-J
Typical circular saws have a 7-1/4" blade and won’t cut through anything thicker than about 2". There are very few circular saws that can cut 3" thick material and those can be pretty expensive.
Sammy, that is a good point to mention. Normally my blanks are thicker so I would be out of luck. In this case my saw and the blank are about even at 2 and 3/8".
Sammy
I have an old Skil circular saw that could easily cut through the thickness of a blank. If you very carefully remove the depth stop, and replace it with a smaller screw you might be able to change the final depth. Even if you couldnt cut all the way through, tape off the cuts and flip the blank over and cut through on that side. As long as the foam doesnt snap i dont see why you couldnt just flip er over.
As for the hotwire, i bet that would leave the best results. im just not sure where to get nichrome wire. Maybe welding supply stores.
The goal is a tri-stringer longboard kinda like terry’s or Barry’s
EDIT: I looked over the boards im looking to make, and it looks as though the dark lines in the foam are actually glue lines. This would make sence as ive seen some of Barry’s posts in which he shows this. That seems to be his thing and i dont want too copy that. Im going to stick with adding stringers. Any ideas on wood that is nice and dark? or would match the original US blanks stringer?
Angus-
A 7-1/4" blade is only going to cut just so deep. Changing the stop screw might gain you 1/4", at best. Some older saws use 8" blades that fit small table saws.
As to glue lines…boards have had glue lines instead of stringers going back to the 60s. When lightness became a desired property many boards were built with just a glue line or colored paper glued in where a stringer would normally go.
My Weber pig had a glue line, no stringer. The practice was pretty much a variation on stringerless boards. Other 60s longboards had a wood stringer with glue offsets. Some had high density foam and glue lines with no wood. The variations were many.
you mention US blanks - please dont try to hotwire a polyurethane blank
Haha I’m glad you caught that, i assume there’s some melting or fumes problem with a Hotwire and PU?
And I’m not sure what’s going on with the depth of mine then. Maybe it’s the depth guard that’s been modified? It’s my dad’s tool. I don’t mess with it. I’ll be sure to ask him about it!
Most PU foam is fired with TDI, the DI is for dyisocyanate. Trying to cut with hotwire could produce cyanide-related fumes. We want you to have a long life.
EDIT: This technique is not for everyone. Power tools are dangerous, try at your own risk. Running a circular saw at maximum depth of cut can result in personal injury and/or damaged material. Binding, due to a misguided saw path and/or incorrect matching of blade to material to feed rate, may also occour and is usually not the material’s fault.
The two threads got me motivated. The circular saw went well this time except that it crept under the batten and made a swirl when I stopped to fix it. I was within 1/8" of going all the way through. -J
Hot Wire for EPS. Skill saw for poly. Got it?..If you Skill your EPS the saw will bind big time.
US Blanks can be ordered with colored glue on your stringer at no extra cost. Plywood and color almost free. 1/4 inch dark Cedar with black glue $14 extra. I understand the “do it yourself” thing …But…
maybe you guys need to talk to US Blanks before you go cutting up blanks…because a few bucks to add some glue or stringers compared to a shop full of clamps …well…you decide…
Ray
…a japanese pull-saw is a very handy and accurate tool , when machinary and equipment are not available…the more I use mine , the more accurate I get with it…I rely less and less on machinery for many jobs now…I wouldn’t be without one.
the skil saw will cut better on foam if you put a masonry style blade on it. If it doesnt cut all the way through you can finish that last bit off with a handsaw and a sanding block. also a speed control is good especially with EPS.
Ray, Kayu, Grasshopper-thanks for the tips, my respect to all. I added a disclaimer to my previous post.
I am working on homemade EPS blanks, so I am the guy who has to place all of the stringers. I see Ray’s point in ordering the stringers in place when possible.
Ray, when you do your hot wire stringer cuts, do you do it like Greg Loehr- wire fixed on a big hinged frame- or something more manual like Ian showed with the paintbrushes? Any tips for keeping those cut true? I have done some hot wire cutting and my usual result has a small bit of wave to it and would need to be planed or sanded before being glued to the stringers.
Thanks, J
ray,
I dont have the ability to order blanks. Im strapped for cash, and i certainly dont have the money to throw down on a 5+ blank order. Even if i were to jump in with other guys ordering. Luckily im on good terms with lots of the shops around here and i buy blanks off of them at cost. I agree it would be easier to just get it from US blanks. Unfortunatly i dont have the ability.
Angus-
One day Clark Foam closed…the surf world went crazy. Using Swaylock’s a group of people from So Cal began networking. We bought a big block of foam for close to $500.00. It was 24 inches wide. We made hot wire bows from information we got on Swaylocks. The massive block got split up and people went on their way…use the search box at the upper right hand side of the page. The thread is something like “Open letter to san diego…” search for “hot wire” too…The next time around I got a BRO deal on a block of EPS foam. The block was 12" wide…perfect. We had a factory cut that was square and 12" is muck easier to hot wire. Then you glue the two pieces…
and then one day US Blanks came to town. I learned alot making my own blanks. I also learned that making them is not cheaper than buying them…stingray