Found a Balsa Wood board on craigslist. I have always wented a Balsa board. The board is made by Rene Burgos made in Manta Ecuador. I know nothing about Rene Burgos or his boards If anyone has any info please pass it on
The Board has a nice basic shape. It's 7'10" nose 13 1/2" Wide point est back 2' from center 21" with a 13 3/4" tail. With a Thruster fin set up with some sort of cheap FCS compatible fin plug system was used. The Allen screws were not stainless steel.The screw heads are striped. I will drill out the screws and replace the plugs with a box system. There is a bit of concave in the tail with a tail rocker of about 3 1/2" and nose about 5". I need a longer stright edge to get a better read of the rocker.
The glass on this board has delaminated and bubble I have already peeled off a large section for the bottom of the Board. The underside of the glass is slightly sticky and has a faint odor of uncured resin. The stripping part looks like it will be easy. My tenitive plans are to turn this board into a Bonzer. or a 4 five 1 I'm open to other ideas and mostly looking for advice on working with balsa wood!
Like you Artz, I've always wanted to do a chambered balsa. Good score! Photo #1 seems to show a little "pith" between the fins. Carefull around it when doing the Bonzer channels. Kind of surprized to see so many pressure dings on it. Good luck to you. Would love to help out on this one.
The underside of the glass is slightly sticky and has a faint odor of uncured resin------ That board is a perfect example of why polyester resin should not be used on wood !! So when you re-do that puppy use epoxy.
Strip off all glass, gummy areas need to be scraped off with a cabinet scraper (can use a wide sharp wood chisel pulled backwards ). Wash off useing lacquer thinner, use only white old bed sheets to wipe on and off the lacquer thinner; tear the sheets into convenient sizes and dip in lacquer thinner then scrub ,scrub ,scrub changeing sheets often. Buy some heavey duty chemical gloves because the lacquer thinner will eat nitrile and light neoprene real fast. ( don't forget a chemical respirator, 3M). This is the most important step in preping your balsa. When you think you have it as clean as you can get it then scrub it one more time. Because the Balsa is open pored there is no way to get all the crud out so you will need to seal it completely. Before moveing on let the board dry out for a few days , Don't put it out in the sun,. Keep it in the house where it is warm and dry. Next you need a quart of Zinsser, Bulls Eye Seal Coat. Steal one of your wifes cotex tampons and cut it in half and wrap it in one layer of white bed sheet . In the shellac finishing shop this is called a tampon and is used to apply shellac. (don't be tempted to apply your Seal Cell with a brush. Take about 6 oz of Seal Cell and thin it with 6 oz of denatured alcohol. Dip your tampon in this mix and wipe the Seal Cell on the balsa. Keep the tampon wet and wipe only in one dirrection on the balsa. Keep it thin you want the Seal Cell soaking in not building on the surface. Work quickly if the tampon trys to stick to the balsa you are going to slow. When you have finished this let the board dry over night. Now you do one coat useing a new tampon and the un - thinned Seal Coat . This coat you want to wipe on thin and fast do not rub back over the surface you have allready done . If there are any streaks you are putting the Seal Cell on to thick. In doing shellac(Seal Cell) allways think thin, your are not trying to put a coating over the surface . Let it dry at least over night.
Next step is a seal coat of epoxy resin. It is put on with a thin foam roller. I use the ace hardware black rollers or West systems yellow. I cut them into 3 section. You dont want the roller to wide (after all you aren't painting a house) 2 1\2 or 3 inches is all you need. You should be useing a 1 to 2 part epoxy resin. So mix 2 oz of hardener and 4 oz of epoxy resin. Mix,Mix,Mix . Aftere mixing pour into a large flat plastic pan . You will dip your roller into this . First you want to get your roller saturated all around with resin. Then you want to roll the resin out onto the board. First step is to just get the resin onto the board and the second step is to roll the resin out and the third step is to try to roll it all off. Dont be tempted to pour the resin on to the board and roll it out ,you will end up with spots. Get that resin on and just roll the shit out of it , I mean really roll the shit out of it . You are not painting a house , you don't want to build a surface coat here, just roll it untill it is so thin there are no streaks in it . In your mind you want to think ( I gotta get all this shit off of here, and roll like hell ) You got plenty of time for rolling . Use one batch of resin at a time and when it is all rolled out you can mix another batch. When the rolling is done on one batch you can drag a 2 inch foam brush (1 pass) over the resin and it will pop the little air bubbles. Let the side you just finished dry untill it is dry enough to flip , then you can flip and do the other side. What you have just done is Seal the balsa and any contaminants and the board is now ready for glassing . I do one layer of 4 oz top and bottom and 1 4 ozz deck patch . I put the deck patch down 1st and lay the top glass over that and resin them at the same time. I Tape and cut lap joints always on wood boards. I use Epoxy for laminateing and for my fill coats and spray automotive clear coat as my final finish. I don't pollish my finishes. It's possible to do your laminateing and fill coats with epoxy and then your gloss coat with polyester resin.
Wood Ogre , Thank you You are a very generous man with your knowledge and information. As a side note my sweetheart is well beyond the cortex years. I'll just have to man up and buy some. They also work well with cleaning up oil
Hey 'Verb, thanks for clarifying that. I've ridden a Diff balsa so I know it could be done with poly. That particular board is still in very good shape and has since been retired. Those are good tips...Thanks.
ps. Kotex pads make very good emergency bandages as well. They should be in all first aid kits. Before the anti-coagulent gels, they were one of the only thngs to put on a bleeder in an emergency...very effective.
All the glass is now striped off. I drilled out the fin plugs and removed the fins. I'm now thinking of using a long fin box for the center fin rather then an using FCS style box. This way I will get more adjustment for center fins.
My other thought was to just take this board to a contract glasser here in Fla. If anyone has the name of someone in Florida who has worked with wood and epoxy please let me know.
I used to do ply glass boats in the 1970s to 1985 . At that time polyester was the only show in town and yes we had few problems with the polyester resin if done properly. I met a epoxy chemist in 1985 who explained the big differences in polyester resin and epoxy and I have used epoxy ever since. The adhesion difference is big . The pull strength of most epoxys is over 2,000 psi. The pull strength of polyester is less then 500 psi. Shrinkage of epoxy is around 2 %. Shinkage of polyester is from 6% to 11%. There have been several postings recently showing hair line cracks in the glass jobs on newly glassed boards. The more catalist you put in polyester resin the more brittle it is so the more likely you will get thes cracks. Guys that glass with polyester resin seem to be haveing a hard time with the epoxy. Why? Because they try to use the same methods to apply epoxy as they do with polyester. Yes you can do it if you are really good with working resins. But epoxy is not polyester so ya gotta learn how to do it . I allways hear about contamination of the epoxy . Well guess what, epoxy is used as a glue and will stick to dam near anything, so a few bugs some dirt or dust or other crud is not going to effect the bonding or strenth of the epoxy. Fish Eyes, Fish Eyes !!! The big problem with epoxy, why because the film of epoxy is to thick, you got all that surface tension. If epoxy is done like epoxy should be done there is never a fish eye problem because you never build a surface coat thick enough to have fish eyes. With epoxy you need to learn when and how to use a roller, a squeegee,and a foam brush. So which is better? For wood ,epoxy. For foam boards, well , use what ever you want, I dont do foam boards anymore so I don't much care !
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Wood, I hear ya. I have interviewed two shops so far One Island Surfboards has been doing epoxy since 1978, He claims to be the largest buyer of Resin Research Epoxy. I have seen a couple of his wood boards and they look good, Mike Daniels said I should talk to Balsa Bill I have sent him an email.
Bill's having his annual ''another year in business party'' today, if you're around it would be a great time to stop by. If today wasn't my wedding anniversary i'd be there, lol. I already made the family go to a beach clean-up this morning so I'm outta chips, lol.
As I told you, Ed Townes is back in Brevard and I think he'd be very capable of the job. His cell (still VB area code) is 757 374 0424. He's been working with RR for a long, long time.
Thanks Mike, I stopped by Bills shop on Thursday. very cool place I like that he has almost all his shop filled with things other then the Big surf brand names. Wish I could have made the the trip back for the party I'll be giving Ed a call soon. I'll be posting more pics of the stripped board. Leash plug is proving to be in there better then I thought.
By the way, Happy anniversary. It takes a special women to be married to a surfer, especially one who works in the surf business.
Mike, Ed's number is no longer in service! If you have another number or if you see him pass my phone number along.
More on the board the side fins were set way off. The left fin was set a 1/4" further up then the left fin. The left was 13 1/2" and the Right 13 1/4" from the tail . Neither fin lined up with the with the fin placement marks that were on the board. one was set with a 1/4" angle toe in and the other was just off toward the outside by about a 1/16"
Still working on getting the sticky resin off in places. I have found that wiping on some lacquer thinner then scrubbing on some Oxiclean solution. Then more Laquer thinner has worked best. after the Oxiclean and Laquer thinner I scrape off as much as I can. When dry I then sand with 80 grit. working down to 220 grit.
