Think tank this one...
a. Make a mould with desired rocker and rail thickness, tapering thickness at tail and nose.
b. Line mould with a wax type paper.
c. Make a mix of bean bag balls and epoxy resin. Consider using q-cell as well to increase the thickness of the mix.
d. Pour mix into mould and true up the top in line with the rail thickness.
e. pop in the sun to bake.
f. once dry take out of mould and shape.
g. glass....
h. surf it
i. buy a lounge to replace the bean bags.....
You do it and let us know how it works
pretty sure it would bee very heavy…
Or you could get packaging foam from computers and sureform it all up stick it in a form shoot steam on it and compress it!
one word,,,,,,,,,
EXOTHERM!!!!!
Hahaha… totally
I had my first experience with exotherm a few weeks ago. I had mixed up too much epoxy for making my leash loop, and left the extra liquid in the cup. I looked over a few minutes later and saw some some smoke coming out of the cup. I could feel the heat just by putting my hands near the cup. Luckily my garbage can was full, and I just poured it out over the top to spread it out. It kept smoking for a while, and I got scared that my trash would catch on fire. Luckily that didn’t happen.
Might be better to make a hollow molded board and put the bean bag balls in thru the vent.
Tho I like your thinking Bee.
Youre not in Australia are you ??
I've been kicking around a similar idea only using the foam shavings that I collect from shaping.
I thought that if I could get it to work it would be a good way to recycle foam packaging as well (feed it through my joiner planer and collect the shavings in my shop vac)
Epoxy would not be a good substrate due to weight and exotherm.
I've tried some others with no success including: gorilla glue (sample had poor consistancy), ehlmers glue (sample dried like granular sand rather than a solid), Spray foam (small sample looked extremely promising but larger sample failed to cure all the way through resulting in a gooey mess when attempting to shape).
Others I've considered but haven't tried yet: Thinned spackle, flour and water (probably a bad idea), 5200 (too expensive?), styrofoam glue (haven't been able to locate any locally but also probably too expensive).
The challenge is to find something that is cheap, light weight, will cure with little or no air flow, remains at least somewhat flexible, can be mixed or purchased in sufficient quantity (and consistency) to be mixed thoroughly with foam beads/shavings and can be acquired with less fuss/expense than a production blank.
So far I got nothin...
How about a giant baguette board?
- Flour
- Sugar
- Yeast
- A little salt, but not too much. Let the little yeasties go crazy eating up all that tasty sugar, and farting out CO2.
- Knead everything together in a mold lined with foil. Put it in some sort homemade solar over, and let it cook until golden brown.
- glass it, and throw on a fin
I went to an EPS factory and (as I understand it ) the foam balls can be reheated and they will expand even more. Thats why cheap foam has larger cells.
So I guess it would be possible to make a blank shaped metal box and feed all sorts of EPS offcuts in and 'reblow' a blank with steam.
The downside would be uneven density. possible incomplete expansion or cohesion between ingredients.
Maybe for 100K it would be possible to do it, but in the end its all about affordability.... Is it worth the time and R&D to make something thats not too expensive at present ?
My EPS offcuts get mashed into the compost tumbler and make for a light and fluffy garden topping.