Hi,
This stringer rocks !
Will you use some colors or do a 100% clear glass ?
If you do colors, maybe a matching agave/colored fins like those ?:
The black contour add a very nice contrast to the wod fin…
Hey guys it’s been awhile since my last update. Been busy with college courses. Decided to go with a faint turquoise tint. Really didn’t want to out do the agave grain with the color. Picture doesn’t really show the turqouise color too well. Looks more like volan cloth instead lol. Once board is done, I’m sure the turqouise will show better in a picture on here. As you can see, the bottom has a glass patch at the tail end. The deck will also be getting a glass patch 3/4 of the board. Will update as it comes along.
I like the tint, how it deepens in the laps but is not overpowering. Nicely done!
nice , bluefin!
if you didn’t mind a bit of tail weight , perhaps you could go with a a[n 8-10"] fin box , plus four sets of fcs plugs ?
some light blue tint keels would look nice . Also , setup no. 2 … a quad set of 'standard ’ fins , perhaps ?
[if you went with a ‘twinzer’, perhaps a 5th small trailer will help hold that wide tail in a bit better ? ]
these are only MY preferences , though …others may differ eh ?! 
cheers !
ben
Dang, Bluefin.
That thing is looking nice!
Dude…
I FUCKING LOVE THIS THREAD
That tint you used - very volan feel to it. Really compliments the agave well and helps to bring out the subtle blues in the wood.
Got my blank all glued up and ready to start cutting and planing this week - seeing yours just makes me want to blast it out now, but I’m gonna have to get my foam boards finished first. If that shit gets into your skin so easily, I could just imagine how hard it would be to get the agave dust out of a foam blank haha.
I keep coming back to this thread to look at the stringer. That wood just pops out. Nice work!
Looking forwad to hear how she rides, when you finish.
Thanks guys for the compliments. Shushka, the agave wasn’t hard to get off the foam. Had my compressor set high and it blew right off like normal foam. This is my first time working with agave, im hooked. Very easy to work with when shaping. I have enough agave to either do one more board like this or two boards with thinner stringers. Might do two.
… will you make agave fins , too , Bluefin ?
Fins, yes agave fins it will be. Will be working on them this week. Not sure though if I’m going to make the whole fin agave or mixed with other wood. I was also thinking of doing keel fins like the ones above with the red resin in between the wood but only instead of red, maybe either the turquoise tint or just clear. Dont know if that would be too over bearing though for the board.
lightly turquoise-tinted agave inlay fins would look GREAT on that board !
will you go with a few fcs plugs and a finbox ?
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[ only not as bright a blue as professor blue-beard , to the left , perhaps , though …
Anyone made compsand type skins using agave ?..Ive never had my hands on the stuff , but it has very distinctive grain , and I believe is a very light timber (?) comparable to balsa…does it take a lot of resin to seal it up ?..what happens if salt water from a ding gets into the agave ?
I can’t tell you enough how awesome this is to hear - I kinda feared ruining the other blanks I’m working on because I imagined the dust would penetrate the foam so much it would be impossible to get out. Now I don’t need to worry about waiting so long or keeping other boards out of the shaping room while I do it. I just need to set up my vac to my planer now before I start.
is like a fast acting sponge for salt water – some of the stuff is worse than light eps – if the board gets a ding, you have to fix it right away or you will have a very heavy wet board in short order (wettest board I’ve ever seen during ding repair for a guy who didn’t follow this rule!). Agave has uneven grain/density and I don’t think I’d use it for skins, unless you sort your boards very carefully or plan on glass on both sides of it. It has great looks though.
It’s a pithy core so like a cross between palm and balsa. You can take a machete and slide it down a stalk to pull full layers at a time off, but it’s not so fiberous that it’s tough to shape either. Very close to the consistency of foam when properly dried - definitely more of a core material than a laminate/skin material. And yes, INCREDIBLY absorbant. The things weigh like 50x heavier when wet than when dry
bluefin , just on the fins , again …
… the one pair of agave fins that I made , I had a very thin , foiled core of agave , a couple of layers in from the ínside edge’of the fin [ hope that makes sense ?]
I then went with , from memory , around 25-30 layers of 6oz cloth . This was in order to build up the tab thickness , for fcs .
[ if interested , see : http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/agave-fins ]
But … if you were going with glassons , you could obviously do MANY less layers of cloth …less foiling , and a bit of flex , perhaps ?
I look forward to seeing your agave fins !
cheers !
Ben
Is she in the water yet?