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"most" rockers wil fit on 5'1/2" wood, at 3-1/2" you would have early 60's rocker, the norm for what was available in balsa at the time.
You can extract it though, draw the deck line on the wood within about 1/2" - 3/4" of the bottom of the plank, bandsaw it out, take the piece that came out of the deck and glue it to the underside of the top piece, the glue line will be on the underside of the finished shape.
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I was thinking the same, but didn't pursue it as the o.p. didn't seem inclined to talk about it. I like your solution for getting the glue line on the bottom, I was thinking it wouldn't look good on the top of the nose. If you did a good job of clamping, you could keep the glue line to a minimum.
I believe I’ve described this before and Huck has put up the image before, the 16 footer I’m in the middle of now is way beyond trying to make it look “pretty”, the nose rocker is beyond the parameters of the wood and slip jont scarfing 2 ten footers together leaves glue joints in the near middle of the deck.
The bowing that exists in the side dimension is drastic enough that spot gluing isn’t going to hold it, I’ll have to drlill sideways in several places and use allthread to pull 'er together.
I did a balsa for Gene that was Mad Dog’s blank, one piece of wood was so light and soft that as soon as I loosened the clamps, the glue spots tore out of the wood, this was my first at using allthread to hold it, even then I had to inlay a section of red oak to hold the washer and nut from pulling through the wood.
Every wood board has it’s own set of hurdles to over come, Roy’s big boards are an example, rather than use 16-18 foot wood on the deck and bottom, the bias method results in much less waste. I don’t know if he lays them in opposite directions top and bottom, I would, to balance out torsion, Roy ?what say you on this
Thanks for everyone’s response. Today I am syeaming the worst piece with water mixed with windex, then I will place it in my jankback for a couple days. We will see if this works. Steaming on the left, brace/jankback on the right.
I’ve left them in my strongbacks for days, balsa is so fibrous that it resists steaming or bending back, Channin sought of a dept. of forestry expert, said to steam with ammonia, but the wood is wide enough that it had little or no effect.
Weighting between sawhorses over time helps, but it takes a lot of time.
Clampimg twp pieces together with glue is the best solution, to bend, one needs to get longer on one side, this becomes impossible once they become one section
I agree categorically
the phenomenon of bowing is called destressing.
Destressing
is what you want to see when selecting timber to laminate into a surf board the
ideal thing to do is appose the bows during the lamination process this process
can be referred to as tuned laminating which basically will make the finished
board far stronger and percussion responsive. To cut the bows out will make the
board [laminate lumbar] to floppy and less responsive. From John aka hydro-skipper
[third generation carpenter boat builder].
After letting he bowed piece of balsa sit in the form for about 1.5 weeks I pulled it out. Since I didn’t measure the bow prior to placing it in the form I can’t say how much of a difference it made. Honestly I don’t think it did much.
With the bowed board I glued it to a straight board the same way I have glued boards that are to be later chambered and let it sit overnight. I positioned the boards so the bow is greatest in the center as opposed tyo the end.
Some of the glue spots held and others didn’t. No big deal, just use more glue, but less than needed for a perminent hold.
The 16 footer I recently did had about 3" of deflection in the center of the sticks, far too much for glue spots to hiold. I drilled side to side in 4 places and ran 1/4" all thread through, counter sinking enough for a bolt and fender washer, When I took the clamps off, it was pulling the washers through the wood in a few places still, with the rail piece spot glued over them it kept it from moving very much.
I always have the tips touch with the bow in the center, this way the tips can’t spring loose
