I figured I’d start a thread to document the board’s journey. Those are some of my favorite threads to follow, anyways.
I’ve started with the fins. Someone was kind enough to give me a piece of quality plywood to work with. I drew up the template on graph paper. It took me a dozen or so attempts to end up with something I liked.
I traced the template onto the ply and cut way outside the lines with a jigsaw. The ply was thin and the cutting was shaky, so I figured I’d give myself room to breathe and then clean it up with the dremel. That worked alright, but it takes a very steady hand to sand smooth curves with the dremel. I ended up with pretty rough cutouts, but I cleaned them up some with sand paper and a small plane.
Then the foiling. I’m really glad everyone suggested I shape a fish, and I’m especially glad I went about shaping the fins first. Foiling the fins with a dremel is giving me a better sense for what shaping rails will be like. It’s nice to have a testing ground for blending bands into a smooth curve and connecting them one side to the other.
The more I went at it the better I got. One fin is roughly foiled, although I’ll take more volume out of the trailing edge and smooth everything out tomorrow. The other fin still awaits. One long evening and they should be good to go. I can already tell I’m going to be slow at this
Thanks for all the help.