board #0001 EPS Teardrop

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I’ve finally completed board number 1 - its the 6’ 10" “teardrop” right out of the Surfboard Design & Construction pdf. I build my own rack & tried just about everthing I could to screw it up: #1 EPS, planer, lammed 3 layers of 6oz fiberglass all at once, acid swirl, cutlap, resin pin line, rice paper logos, wood fin, etc. I looked at it as a learning experience & if my daughter was happy with it & it floats… then its perfect.

I’d like to thank everyone for their advice (direct & posted in the archives), there is no way I could have ever done this without all of you.

Thanks!!!

p.s. daughter #2 wants a board now… hmmm…

2

It’s a good feeling when you make something for your kids, you must be very proud of an outstanding 1st board.

Well done mate, now where’s the start of #2…

3

Hicksy,

Thanks for the kind words! Board #2 is in my head somewhere - you should have seen daughter #2’s face when #1 got the board! My little one said she didn’t want to surf… now she has specified the colors (blue/yellow/green)… I feel another acid swirl comming on!

Little do they know that its all a secret program designed to make boards for dad & uncle to ride… heh heh heh.

I’m thinking of looking into getting some better EPS and maybe making an egg or pig or something along those lines. I’ll have to search the archives & look for something that will be easy to ride in the east coast US surf.

My basement is a mess - the planer spewed EPS shavings all over the place & boy do they stick to everything…

-jay

4

Jay, great job. your girls will love it. I have a half shaped blank for my boys that I need to finish. it got circumvented by Uncle’s b-day present (between hot coats as I type).

Quote:
My basement is a mess - the planer spewed EPS shavings all over the place & boy do they stick to everything....

As for the mess… I did this board with a vac attachment, made all the difference in the world. No really mess until I started finsh sanding. It did take a little getting used too with the vac tube pulling on the planner a little but worth it.

I rigged mine with PVC going up the wall and accross the cealing to get centered over the racks. I have pictures posted somewhere on the site.

5

What a great first board! For trying every trick in the book, it looks like you did everything right.

I’ve been monkeying around with a hotwire bow. Just finished it up and connected to 12V/10 amp battery charger. It cooks! Melts through EPS like butter.

Maybe using an outline template set a couple inches inside the rail edge and shifting a rocker profile template down an inch or so from the deck line it could be used to cut rail bevels by following the templates? No dust or beads flying around.

I think the vacuum sailboard guy (Tom sullivan) showed something like that in his video but I can’t seem to find a source anymore and emails to him bounce back?

6

You should proud!!! That’s an awesome board (even more so because it’s #1).

7

John, yes Tom Sullivan uses an adjustable angle guide on a hot wire bow to cut rail bands. kind of like a rail tool for cutting bands. Pretty slick. He also used tape to stop the bow from cutting to cut in V bottoms and such. been thinking about similar approach to dome the deck, but I haven’t set my hot wire cutter up yet. Got 2 boards to finish up first (one being hot coated and waiting for finish sanding).

But yes hot wire is a great way to eliminate the mess. That 1# stuff sticks to everything.

8
Quote:

Hi all,

I’ve finally completed board number 1 - its the 6’ 10" “teardrop” right out of the Surfboard Design & Construction pdf. I build my own rack & tried just about everthing I could to screw it up: #1 EPS, planer, lammed 3 layers of 6oz fiberglass all at once, acid swirl, cutlap, resin pin line, rice paper logos, wood fin, etc…

WOW !!!

That is such a GREAT looking board …no. 1 !!!

WOW !!!

9

Excellent!!!

Would you, please, post some shots of the building process, please???

My #1 in the avatar.

10

Wow! Real nice!

11

I’m having tons of fun riding a 6’11" mini log in small surf. Been thinking about making a shorter one.

Now you have me day dreaming about a tear drop. I downloaded “Surfboard design and Construction” the first week I was on Swaylocks. saved it onto a disc.

Great job. Please add to resourses.

Now, as soon as I can get all these fish out of here maybe I can do another board for myself…

Ray

12

That’s really nice, cann’t wait for #2!

Can you please post a close up in the pinline zone? i’d like to see if the small eps holes are visible or not, have you sealed the EPS? how?

Thank you Flavio

13

That’s a mighty fine no.1. Have you given it a gloss coat as well and at which stage did you put the resin pin line on?

14

Hey John,

I’ve seen a site before with all kinds of shaped hot wires for hand shaping foam sculptures. Seems like it would be easy to bend a rail, dome, or concave shaped hotwire - maybe a little oversized - and follow simple scrib marks.

I’ll see if a can find the site again.

15

Holy crap! That’s a nice looking board for numero uno. Nice job!

16

Wow - you all have me grinning from ear to ear! A very heartfelt thank you to everyone!

I’m going to try my best to some questions in one post:

4est - you know I actually have a shopvac with one of those special filters that grab fine dust. I was going to use it and a trash can + one of those trash can adapters lid that help catch most of the debris before it gets to the vac itself.

John, 4est, waaahoo - Good ideas. I’ve thought about using a hotwire on the next one & have seen the posts about making a bow. Most of my “dust” problems actually came from me gleefully mowing the deck down to meet the stringer shape. Of course, fire-ing up the power pads (Kokua/Wild Dog - thanks for the tip: they were not warped!) to grind the laps & smooth the lam coat out added to the mess, but I think most of my problems can be solved by a combo of shopvac + a hotwire. I kinda like walking up & down with my 36 grit sanding block too… very relaxing & not too prone to catastrophic mishaps.

bbgdsunfish, “Mr Coelacanth” (chipfish61 - that STILL cracks me up everytime I see it…), neira, havaard, stingray, flavisan-san, kitesurfer, gunkie:

I’ll do my best to get some other info out there asap - I took some more pictures (in better light) that hopefully will show the #1 eps leakage & tearout from the cutlap.

I did hotcoat it (all my epoxy was RR - thanks to Greg for picking up the phone on all THREE of my calls to answer my (dumb) questions!!! I will definitely do business with him again.). The resin pinline was put on before the hotcoat & was sanded down a bit to take the gloss off it (Mr Cleanlines & Glassing DVD - hard to screw up when someone like that shows you how its done!).

I hope to put up a quick web site soon with more pictures and some description of what I did, what went wrong, etc. BUT, I gotta watch the show tonight on the discovery channel about “dirty jobs” & see how my mess compares!

It still boggles my mind → responses from Australia, US, Japan, Spain, Norway, Norway, UK - I hope you all know what an awsome place this is to have folks from all over the world collaborating (arguing… :>), learning, laughing, etc.

Thanks again.

17

Stingray,

I just uploaded some better quality pictures to the Resources section - thanks for reminding me. I’m kinda interested to see how it rides as I have only been surfing a 10’ longboard (and I’m not very good yet). I made this teardrop not quite to the pdf specs - its about 20% thinner than the 3.3" thickness. For some reason that escapes me now I didn’t want to glue 4 layes of EPS together… Should still be kinda floaty at 2.75. I sealed the blank but we weighed it & it came in at approx 10lbs. Either its all the fiberglass or my sealed blank sucked in lots of the epoxy.

Had to pull up the pdf to get some info for the Resources post & just HAD to look at the other shapes… Since I’m such a lousy surfer, I’m kinda liking the 5’3" fish kneeboard… hmmmm maybe its gonna be board #2 I can claim that I want to go “old school” and ride on my knees… My youngest daughter would really like a fish…as long its the proper colors :>

18

Flavio,

Hey - sorry I mistyped your screen name in my earlier post. I’ve attached some photos that show 2 types of #1 EPS cutlap missteps. I did seal the board with DAP fast & final spackle + a little white acrylic paint. I probably sanded most of it off though. Used good tape for the cutlap masking - it ripped up some of the EPS when I pulled it… I think next time I’d seal the blank with epoxy just to get a good surface & maybe seal better - I think my blank sucked up a lot of the epoxy.

I had to whip out the india ink pens to “hide” the biggest leak - of course its right where you’d always see it. I also sanded off the double wide resin pinline at the tip of the board (poor blank shaping error #1 + going crazy wiht the Power Pads…) and had to reapply it again. I’m still debating whether to try to fix it better. The double wide pin does hide most of the obvious leaks around the deck though.

19

Thank you very much for the pics, that’s exactly what i was looking for, my sealing was not so good, next time will be better, but i’ll never use again #1 EPS, it’s too spongy and delicate.

Flavio