This is a glassing question for anyone who’s made an agave board. I was just wondering what glassing schedule you’ve used on your agave boards in the past?
I’m about to (have been “about to” for about 9 months) make my first attempt at agave and am not familiar with the compressive strength of the wood, ie. does it dent on the deck the same way PU foam does, or is it more durable and not require the same weight of glass as its PU counterpart? My instinct tells me that overall board weight may be an issue, so minimising the amount of glass/resin would be one way to keep it down to a manageable level.
Timber selection plays the biggest role, parts of the stalks are soft and the very outside is really very hard , if you can get most of the hard stuff facing out you can prob get away with a standard glass job otherwise chamber the stuff and put two 6oz deck on it… Unless you have really good stuff and are able to be really pick the best strong pieces my thoughts are your better off just using it as stringers or skins… have fun!
First and foremost, board needs to be finished flat. No bumps or low spots.
Lots of hard and soft spots with this wood.
I like to coat the entire board with sanding resin with UV powder added. Apply with a squeegee and put in the sun before it soaks in completely. Coat both sides, and pre-sand with 80 grit to remove shine. Now it it ready for glassing. Agave soaks resin fast. Faster than foam for sure. That’s why I coat wood with resin first. My first one, I got fancy and chambered it to make lighter. Put my heel thru it.
You can glass regular glassing schedule. 4oz bottom, 6/4oz deck. I use one layer of "S"glass.
You can get a nice, strong glass job by glassing with Epoxy as well.
Thanks both for your responses. Great tip with the pre-glassing sand coat Barry, thanks. I have 18L of UV poly resin in the shed, so I’ll go down that route for sure.
I didn’t plan on chambering it, as it’s pretty light as it is, but is a finished agave board significantly heavier than a similar PU version?
Yeah I would never chamber agave… that’s like making a chambered foam board. All you’re doing is weakening your core.
Barry has a great point about sealing the agave first before you glass it as well… I did mine in epoxy and I did a sealer coat but not with UV cure so the board soaked it all in and didn’t really seal it. When I glassed the thing it pulled in more resin and did get a bit heavy - but I’m not super opposed to heavy boards so all good (it’s gonna be a wakesurf board anyway so no need paddle it). It’s still sitting in my garage waiting for fins. I had a couple future boxes I was going to install on it but now I’m leaning more towards making the fins out of some poplar I have left from a wooden paddle I made. I feel like the super light wood would contrast well with the dark and variable agave.
As for the glassing schedule, here’s the way I see it. If you made your board like I made mine, you most likely spent about 2-3 months hiking around the jungles of Maui searching for viable stalks, cut them with a machete and dragged them back out of the valleys (usually VERY hard work with the wet stalks), dried it yourself, milled it yourself, glued it up yourself and then started the shaping process. With all that factoring in to your glassing schedule… would you rather have a lightweight “performance” agave board with minimal glass that might snap on you someday, or would you rather beef it up with all 6oz and protect your investment in the long-term? Seems like a no-brainer to me, but then again I got all my stalks from the pineapple fields up by Honolua and the river at Peah’i - so I wanna protect all that mana.
Am taking it to a mate’s dad’s shed next weekend to mill the logs with a bandsaw. We’ll see how it goes from there.
Shushka - Mine were harvested from random patches spotted in the arid inland of South Australia, but the concept is the same (just a little less humid). I get what you’re saying about the strength/weight compromise though. I would hate for it to snap within six months, after going through a process that’s now stretched to 18 months and counting.
Ben - I’ll be putting in four plugs plus a finbox to allow for maximum fin experimentation. I’ll send you some offcuts to play around with, and might keep a few myself to have a try too. It’s pretty foul stuff if you breathe it in, so make sure you’re all masked up. I got a lungful the other day when I was preparing them for the bandsaw and it felt like I was breathing in little shards of glass. Wouldn’t recommend it.
Dude holy shit yeah… the stuff contains oxacylic acid crystals and it’s highly toxic. I think somewhere in here, floating around the various threads about agave is a quote from Jim Phillips regarding his experience breathing the stuff in (or maybe it was someone visiting with Jim while he was making one?). If I remember correctly, it was described as having the sudden desire to grab a fork and scrape out the inside of your throat with it…
I did some work without a respirator when harvesting the stuff but it was still mostly wet so it didn’t produce a lot of dust. I always wore my mask when milling and when shaping I had a vac line hooked up to my planer. I’ll say though I milled the stuff in short-sleeves and I had no issues with the dust irritating the skin, but I’ve worked with fiberglass insulation and such for so long that I think I’m just used to skin irritants and don’t notice.
