Bamboo Breakthrough

Bernie, I’m doing the woven thing the same way, after you told be where to find the material.  How are you dealing with it on the bottom of the board?  I am counter sinking it as best I can, but it is a bear to handle.

Great work Greg.  A couple of questions.  1) What’s wrong with pink?  2) No glass under the bamboo?  How many oz of epoxy did you use to bag the skins on? Pretty wet or minimally wet?  

 

You can pretty much eliminate the curling by simply wetting the other side of the veneer.

Aloha Greg

remember this is the homedepot hacker bozo brotherhood you're talking to.

we apply the wood bottom layer when we glue up the two flat sheets to create our blanks

it helps set the rocker and kills two birds with one stone as we also make our hd insert cutouts in the flat EPS sheet and insert either some 8lb precision board or corecel plugs under the bamboo mat during glue up. This way we glue in the middle horizontal "springer", two sheets of cheap flat EPS foam, the HD fin box inserts and the bottom skin all in one pull.

we then cut out the final outline once we pull it out of the bag and immediately attach balsa or 1" thick HD foam perimeter rails with epoxy glue or this new waterbased EPS contact cement I found using plastic stretch wrap to hold everything inplace until the glue sets. 

I make the rails a little thicker than the blank and then shape the deck and turn the rail at the same time before bagging on the deck skin which overlaps the rail joint a tad but doesn't wrap around it. Since the wood along the edge is usually 1/8"-1/16" balsa it's usually easy to fair down flush. From that point its glass as normal and bore out your fin box plug holes in the HD inserts.

Its a pretty rapid and not to messy process if you got it togethor especially with the full band HD rails and the contact cement.

Benny was the one who clued me in to putting the bottom skin on while I was setting up my blank's rocker. Other than Bert's original post with the full dcel rail bands Benny also showed me how to do full rail bands out of end grained balsa scrim(?).. 

Personally I don't see the structural benefit of this paper thin bamboo veneer compared to 1/8" balsa, corecel or the bamboo mat I use which is like 5-10 times the thickness of the fuzz backed bamboo veneer. Seems like more of a looks thing than anyting else. Plus you need 1.5-2lb cores for it to make sense to use. That's why I coined idea of BamBlue which is using the 1/42" bamboo veneer skin over a 60 grit roughed out blue dow blank for a snappy water repellent solution. Just a tad heavier though.

I acquire a bunch of hickory, cypress, and tulipwood veneers I want to try and we glass up a bunch of sapele, birdseye maple, birch, and makore veneers on some 4oz and 2oz backing cloth like Loehr showed that we're dying to try. I also have boxes of 1/16 canadian hard rock maple veneer used to create skatedecks that I haven't found a use for.

Kind of retired my board building stuff(although I've been bulding and storing away blanks for later use) and moved on to real woodworking using a lathe and some handtools. Also cleaning up the mess you make is a much more pleasant experience and less lif ethreatening experience.

Hi Greg,

You don’t owe me anything.  But, I’ll take some if your offering.  I’d like a template of your board, too.  I love the outline. I’d love to see the foil, too. Mike

thx.  nothing wrong with pink.  if you are a commie pinko.  (I was just trying for a bright red and it missed)

under the bamboo I used 3 oz which I thought was too much as I mixed it, but it took every drop, moved around with a squeegee.  i usually use 1 oz glass under and honestly can’t say whether it is better.  never had any spliting when using it.  so this will be a good data point since this board will get a good work out.  this time I just thought I’d try to trim the weight wherever possible.  i wet it out pretty good, fearing that it might otherwise delaminate.ll

double post

This is way too funny, deserves to be on p1 for a while.

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Kind of retired my board building stuff(although I've been bulding and storing away blanks for later use) and moved on to real woodworking using a lathe and some handtools. Also cleaning up the mess you make is a much more pleasant experience and less lif ethreatening experience.

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That's funny because I started with a lathe and hand tools and after about fifteen years I'm about to retire that and make boards.( for me not professionally)

Nice looking board Greg. Funny post.

 

Glassed it. Pic’s below.  I put a double pinline on it and it just didn’t look right, so I stipped it off.  The board weighs 5 lbs and 10 oz without fins.  Glassed 4 oz top and bottom with some patches under the feet.  On another thread, I noted that the FCS plugs ( 8 of them) added 6 oz to the board after final install.  The splay is 8 degrees on the front and 6 on the back with toe at 3/16 front and 1/16 back.  Fusion might have been lighter but I didn’t want to cut big holes in the bamboo and the deck rings won’t show under the bamboo anyway. The outline is 14.5/21.5/16.5 and it has a fairly flat rocker.  Probably too curvey, too much flip in the nose and the tail could be too wide.  But other than that…

I just like to go fast and turn. And duck dive as deep as I can.  Everytime.

Oneula, I’m calling you out good buddy.  Don’t be dismissing this paper thin bamboo as only cosmetic.  I can loose the stringer and add back a better buckle resistant bamboo skin and have a better looking board as well.

But I am really intrigued by your Bamblue.  Don’t know how I missed that.  Hope you don’t mind if I dedicate another thread to it.

 

 

That came out very, very nice.

Did you make those fins, too? :-)

Really like the template