As before, huge thanks to PierreB for the initial inspiration!
6’10" travel board, colaboration with jeff from www.spindriftsurfboards.com, known as Joyride here on the forum. He did the shaping (and the modeling for photos), I did… Well, pretty much everything else.
And I must insert a “mea culpa” here. Forgive me, my sway-brothers, for I have sinned. I told a lie. I started a thread some time ago asking about types of plastic to use for finboxes, but what I really intended to make was this.
Aw, you flatter me too much. I’m a backyard hack compared to a lot of the guys here. I just like the engineering part of it. But thanks for the kind words all the same.
You know, I couldn’t feel any flex in the first one I did, and the clamping system is much improved in this version. I think having the perfectly mated facing plates is the most important thing, followed by a really strong clamping force. I lightly sanded the facing plates, so there’s friction between them to minimize any chance of slipping laterally. The board is thick enough, and the the facing plates and boxes hefty enough that I really don’t it will flex to allow any gap to form. With the glass over the boxes, the whole thing is tied to the overall structure of the board, so I’m thinking it should act as a solid unit when assembled.
I’m also interested in self-made boxes…yes, boxes, no porkies…so did you just jerry up a die and make a silicone mold of it? What rating PU did you use?
I actually milled them all out of solid chunks of ABS. It would certainly be more effiecient to mill out a mold and get them injection-molded, but only if I was looking to turn out hundreds of them. For one-off boards, this will work just fine.
Oh man, yeah now I can see the mill marks…looks like hard work…If you do that again, make a mold of it…a run of casts is fully in your grasp right there in the garage…
I did a short course on mold making at one point, made some dinky keyring statuettes, and I say its not rocket science. I just can’t be sure what PU would be as hard as ABS, but pouring is relatively easy…
There’s probably an obscure forum that has guys discussing mold making and casting.
Just the fact that more than one person have patented differing styles of collapsible surfboards leads me to believe that it is only Pope’s method that is protected…
It doesn’t seem like cutting a board into two parts can be protected, only the unique method that is used to do it.
Here’s a few patents cited within United States Patent 7347755 (Katzfey, L)
What was the thinking behind carbon rails? Seems that once you cut it in halve, most of the advantage of carbon is gone. My carbon railed longboards were great, but damage was hard to repair and those damned things get too hot to even touch in the summer. Which I assume counts for some post cure. ha.
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