Does any one know how to vacuum bag a skimboard or any other kind of board. Do I put stapples in the rails to hold the fabric in, any pointers will help. I know very little on this subject. Sorry for asking so many questions. Thanks.
Look on YouTube, search “Vacuum Bagging”.
Good luck!
Byron
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if you are just doing a skim board go buy an extra large spacebag storage the kind with the one way valve vacuum hose attachment instead of buying all the other stuff. Silly would say plastic sheeting and mastic tape. BUt these sapce bags are cheap at those YousawitonTV places.
that and some shade cloth sleen and paper towels work fine
Hey Kswaz - I’ve just put a vacuum bagging thread up last week - titled ‘first time vacuum bagging build’ - that may help in some way.
Is the skim board going to be foam cored?
Cheers
Rich
www.thirdshade.com
Ya the board will be foam core and E-glass if that matters
Ive never made a skim board but presume you’d appraoch it in the same way as a surfboard. If I were to build one I’d make a former for the rocker - usually referred to as a rocker table. If you then laminate the board in the standard way you simply wrap the rails round - you wont need staples!!! The resin will hold the cloth to the blank. If you’rre bagging I presume you will be using epoxy? You’ll need to wrap the wet laminate in peel ply, release film and a breather fabric layer before putting it in the bag. Again, if epoxy you’ll need ot pull the vacuum for about 3 hours each side.
Cheers
Rich
Why do you want to use the vacuum? You could just laminate the foam normally. Vac bagging is a lot more work. You would laminate first then place that into a vacuum bag for pressure curing. There are reasons why you need to do vac bag laminations. Some are because of the type of cloth or veneers you are laminating, some are for advanced high tech builds.
I’m a bit out of date on Skim boards, but in my day they were very thin, and very flat. We used to make them from plywood and just varnish the wood to seal it. I know they’ve come a long way, but I think they are still fairly thin.
For thinner boards you can get away with a rocker jig and just tape the bagging material to a work table. Check some of the vacuum bagging videos on Youtube. Look at the ones where they build skate boards too.
The reason I wanted to use a vaccum bag is so I could get precice rocker each time. Also ive heard it makes a lighter sronger board. Thanks for the ideas guys.
check out the roarrocket guys
they vacuum bag skate decks out of mulitple layers of canadian rock maple
they might have a bag and kit than would fit your needs (all hand drawn pump action bags)
make your rocker mold out of xps foam just like a skateboard deck
"The reason I wanted to use a vaccum bag is so I could get precice rocker each time."
If you are planning to do a few, a vacuum table (mold) would be a good idea. You could make one out of plywood with arched strips glued/screwed to the bottom to hold it's shape. A finished fiberglassed top would hold vacuum - plywood by itself might leak.
There are a couple of ways to go from there...
You could build a riser that is just a bit narrower in all dimensions than your boards. By wrapping your overlaps so they end before the riser, you could use a single side membrane and attach it to the table with butyl rubber double stick tape... the kind of tape that is sticky on one side as you peel it off a roll and a paper strip peels off the back so you can stick stuff to the backside.
Another option is to place the glassed/wrapped board on the rocker table and slide the whole thing in to a double sided bag.
Either method will hold your rocker and prevent twisting.
You would do yourself a favor by practicing with small test panels to see what sort of peel ply/perf ply/ absorbant layers, etc work best for what you want.
One more thing just came to mind... You might consider making 'skins' for the top and bottom, vacuum those to your core. If you leave a bit of overhang you could fill the gap along the sides with a urethane or butyl rubber compound out of a tube. That gets you out of having to wrap the rails with glass and you wouldn't have to have a riser if you do your vacuuming with single-sided membrane on a table. I don't know if it's good to have flex on a skim board but the urethane/butyl rail thing would help with that. Overlapped glass gets pretty stiff.
We used to make our skimboards from plywood so is that what you are doing ? How thick are you looking for ? If you were to use 1/8 plywood and vacume on a rocker table , 3plys would get you 100% rocker profile. With 2 plys you would get some spring back so would need to over bend on the rocker table , If you want thin ,two 1/8" plys with 1/42 " veeners on each side. You want your plywood core veneers running diagonal to your rocker profile. 1/8 " marine Okume is light and good flex but expensive. PI mahogany is heavey and stiff . If you go to a large lumber supply company you may be able to get 1/8 okume veener plywood which actually has 5 plys the two outside veeners are only 1/100 th inch thick so you cant sand it but it is light an bends really well and is made with phenolic resin glue so is water proof and is cheep about $12 dollars per sheet. Use it as the inner plys and us 1/42 " veneers for the top and bottom veneers. oneula post of useing shade cloth and paper towels and a space bag works very well (thats what I use on standup paddle blades. A vacume cleaner will probable pull enough vacume and the valve on the space bags will hold that vacume most of the time. If you see it is loseing vacume you can just pull it down again. Stack your veneers on the rocker table with wax paper or thin plastic (Garbage bag )protecting the rocker table . It would be like, rocker table , cover with garbage bag ,1/42 veneer, 1/8 ply, 1/8 ply, 1/42 veneer, you can tape the veneers with blue tape to hold them in place. If you make your rocker table and veneers 2 inches longer then you can screw the starting end to the rocker table and then bend the other end down to the rocker table and screw it down (drywall screws ) You will have everything pre bent to the rocker table before you even put it in the vacume bag. If you can do this pre bending and let it sit over night the stress will be bent out of the plys.It will be real easy for you to back the screws out seperate the veneers,apply epoxy glue to veneers with 3 inch roller, re stack them on the rocker table, screw them down , put the shade cloth on top then paper towels , slip into the vacume bag, seal the bag and pull vacume. In 3 or 4 hours you will be able to take it out of the bag and scrape of the tape, It you leave it over night you might need to heat the tape a quick pass with heat gun to get it to peel off real easy. Haveing said that I have never done that for a skim board, but do it with hundreds of curved cabinet doors and side panels even round columes. I can do about 4 cabinet door to a pull and just slip them in my 12 ft vacume bag. So it should be easy for you to do one skim board at a time. The most important thing is for you to do a dry run with no glue before you do the real thing so you have all the steps down before you do it for real. Once you spread the glue if you forget to do something it can get real messy. All of the mateing surfaces of your veneers get a coat of epoxy glue, beter a little to much than not enough , Not enough means de-lams. It to much , the excess will just pull off through the shade cloth and be absorbed by the paper towels. If this isn’t clear enough just ask and we’ll try to explain more.
I was planning on doing a foam core. I guess I just need to build a rocker table and go for it. Thanks for all of the advice guys.
watch and learn
seemple
don’t need no rocker table
just a male mold out of some scrap blue dow foam or some other high density material
they make bags of all sizes
if it’ll work with rock hard canadian maple
it should work with foam and fiberglass