After countless hours reading Swaylocks I decided to try to make a surfboard. Then another then another. So far I’d say when I’m in the right mood, making boards is great fun and really eye-opening to say the least. My 1st board I made with a friend and it was an underglassed stringerless EPS that went OK but buckled and broke under my feet once I started to push it hard. My second had balsa rails on EPS and despite a big glassing mistake and a bad design decision it still goes great and fast in softer stuff and coming off the bottom I feel like it’s catapulting me up the face. A big appeal of making boards was trying different construction methods I read about here and, I hope, getting great rides from the boards. I still do from that one.
For board #3 I again made an EPS shortboard with balsa rails and despite countless things to improve on I’m very happy with it. It’s good in steeper waves and still launches me out of bottom (and some top) turns – handling it took some getting used to but the speed through turns is addictive. I’ve been having a blast with it and really feel when I lean into a bigger turn I get more speed out of it than with any other board I’ve had. Anyways I thought I’d post what pics I have of the build. The finished board is 6’3"x19 1/4" by 2 1/8", if I recall.
I cut out rocker/foil templates and carefully got them identical and smooth. Here I am lining them
up on both sides of the 1 pound/cubic foot EPS I got from a building foam place:
The hotwire cutter I made was cheap and works well. Scrap wood, nichrome wire off ebay, assorted cheap parts. I think the spring works better in line because when the wire was wrapping around a corner to get to the spring it could get stuck and not stay taut.
I also spliced in an old extension cord so I can just plug it into the old (ebay cheap) variac and not feel like I’m gonna zap myself.
Ande here it is all cut out (rocker/foil. I hotwired the outline afterward)
BTW, I also brushed a little canola oil onto the masking tape around the edges of the template. I really didn’t want to snag the wire on the template (had a less than ideal experience on board #2 that I didn’t want to repeat).
No pics of hotwiring the planshape but here’s the tool. The wire runs through a bit of metal tube held in the wood frame, and the tubewas long enough to protect the template from the wire but not long enough to scratch the foam the template was lying on:
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I have to say, hotwiring just feels cool.
At this point I had the foam “blank” foiled rockered and outlined. I had already left it narrower than the intended finished product to account for the thickness of the balsa I was going to glue on. So next I traced the rail of the hotwired foam onto a long piece of paper. The balsa I got was in 4x48 inch strips, so I glued them together so they could accommodate the traced form, stacked them and cut them.:
So now I have long strips of balsa that pretty much match up with the sides of the foam blank. To glue them on I put the hotwired foam face down on the hotwiring offcut from DECK SIDE, then brush epoxy on the foam and balsa and stick them on.
I used the deck-side offcut this time because for my board #2 I used the bottom-side offcut, and despite my best cutting efforts the matchup was not perfect. In that case it meant that where it was off a little the balsa did not reach to flush with the foam, and I had to do a ton of filling it in afterward with foaming glue or epoxy-qcell, etc. Pain and not as good as having balsa there! So now for board #3 I used the deck-side offcut as a rocker bed because if the balsa is not perfectly flush with the foam there, no problem – it’ll be chopped off in the rail bands anywho. The balsa went a little past the foam on the bottom side and was easy to plane flush when shaping.
So I epoxied the balsa strips onto the foam and clamped them on with a vacuum bag. Overkill, I know, but it’s a cool toy and works nicely, and after my ebay vacuum pump deal, probably as cheap as a few good big clamps. Also, I really like air pressure. A pic:
Altogether the rails were between 9/16 and 3/4" thick (thicker with one extra strip from 5" from tail to about 45" from tail), in layers 3/16" thick.
They started a little stiff but the epoxy I brushed on made them supple enough to bend pretty well in the bag.
The way I went about it worked well enough. Tracing the shape, cutting and gluing wasn’t too bad, but supergluing the 4"x48"x3/16" strips into longer strips was very time-consuming.
QUESTION: Has anyone tried steaming full-length balsa railstrips then bending them to the blank? I’m envisioning getting some long strips from somewhere like specializedbalsa.com, then steaming some 1/2"xrail-length strips in a capped PVC pipe for a few hours, then taking those and putting them in a vacuum bag with the hotwired foam and using the force on the bag to get the wood to conform to both the rocker and the rail line (probably bottom-side offcut rocker bed). Possible? Any experiences? Then once bent and dry, epoxy each wood strip to the foam and vacuum clamp on till the epoxy cures.
Anyway I have to go at the moment and put up the rest of the pics later. Of course advice and questions and pointing out my mistakes is encouraged. Once again, Swaylocks has been fascinating to me and allowed me to make this board, which is working great for me, so a big thank you to all and I hope these pics and the next ones I put up are at least amusing to you all.