Hi
Does any one have pictures of building a chambered wood board from start to finish?
Cheers
this is a good one…
http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=318494
personally if your the same crabman from the old grain forum I’d go back to hang at the Tree to Sea forum
folks seem to be extra bitchy around here lately
more interested in word fighting than doing something constructive like building something and posting it…
Bravo Oneula. Well hit good sir.
Crabman, The thread Oneula gave is good but there are many threads available. You could always go to the search feature and type in chamber. You’ll get many matches.
Maybe I’ll go check out that Grain forum. Sounds constructive.
Quote:
Bravo Oneula. Well hit good sir.
Crabman, The thread Oneula gave is good but there are many threads available. You could always go to the search feature and type in chamber. You’ll get many matches.
Nice…
are my eyes deceiving me
but Skip how do you get rectangular hole with a forstner bit?
are they chiseled out later for clean up?
nothing in the mowing foam business that comparable to the sound, smell and feel of wood peeling from the stroke of a sharp block plane
Crabman
go look up Jim writeup on glue ups
it’s really important for this lightening phase witness in Skip’s photos
just remember use dots of glue
completely different process than the skeleton-skin build out of the HWS designs…
My brother in enthralled with Mike Casey’s Technique shown below looks like a hybrid
beautiful koa and wiliwili gun
Interesting! I’ve never seen the technique that you are showing, the putting back, where in J.A.’s boards, he’s taking away. He used to come over to use some of my stuff and learned a lot by watching him do many boards. He’s still powering out the balsa’s w/ the Rhino Balsa crew in SB / Ventura.
The two pics are different boards. One with a forstner drill bit and one with a plunge router. I’ve also watch R.Yater do some w/ a hole saw, liking the radiused chamber structure like the forstner bit.
I’d be keen on finding out the genius’s thinking.
I absolutely love that method. Wish we could get decent sized blocks of Balsa over here.
Question. How did you glue the blocks, shape the board then disassemble and chamber? What glue did you use, was it the old paper trick or are the photos out of order?
Cheers
Rik
Had a search through last night to try and find threads .The reason I ask about chambered boards ,is ,its a pig to try and get wood required to build a hollow in the UK .Im thinking pine glued up with epoxy .Thankyou for the response and fedback .
CrabMan - Check out Robins timber’s in Bristol, large range of marine ply, bending ply, and veneered ply, every thing for boat buildding, frewe delivery if you spend over £150. a quick search on yell.com should get you a link to there web site.
Rikds - Know what you mean, the lack of deasent balsa lead me to consider pine, but I think it would end up too heavy, balsa is loverly to work with, I’ve almost fininshed a scale modle balso board for a friends birthday, just putting on the gloss. Its 18" long, made it exaclty like I would a real board only smaller and learnt much more than I thought I would!
I did find Balso in 4’ lengths at the “balsa cabin” website, but they couldn’t get anything longer, have been thinking about joining sections together.
Swied - Killer board mate, very well done, love the fin looks super slick. love that method.
Oneala - Very interesting method, I notice there are no pictures taking in the ends where the section would meet the rail and a compound curve. I’m really racking my brain to work out how Mike does it and the all I’m coming up with is a solid end peice or the whole thing from a solid section, which would kinda negate the whole balsa block arrangment, and it would seem like a lot of extra work to reduce wieght. Any ideas.
Guys I know pine’s cheap and available but it is heavy and a pig to work if it has knots and being resinous does not laminate well.
I use Obeche and Western red cedar for light tough stuff.
Timbmet in Oxford do Obeche
PO Box 39, Cumnor Hill, Oxford, OX2 9PP - <a href="http://javascript:" class="bb-url">Road map and directions</a>
South Midlands & South West Region 01865 860350 01865 860340 South East & Anglia Region 01865 860351 01865 860341 East England, North Midlands & South Wales Region 01865 860352 01865 860342 C. Leary & Co Ltd. 01865 860668 01865 860373
Clarks and Robbins in Bristol do Cedar.
Obeche is very cool stuff, it shapes and finishes beautifully, comes in big sizes, glues and laminates well. It is very light at 380kg/cu.m. Western Red cedar comes in at about 370 kg/cu.m. Neither as light as Balsa at 100-200kg/cu.m so just make bigger chambers!
I used pine as it was cheap, and id agree with the guys its not ideal. but if your costs need to be down, then its an option.
I used these tools to chamber, however the router used in the other pics above would be much better. this was a very time consuming process with the harder pine. What do you want to use? Balsa? Is that scarce in the UK?
Here’s some other threads that assisted me:
http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=303092;search_string=chambered%20balsa;#303092
and
http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=318494
Goodluck.
hey guys what about jellutong? ive just got a load of ten foot legnths delivered at work and was wondering what you think to using that?
it might be worthwile to look for aspen wood, since there must be growing plenty of those trees in the uk guessing from the climate. it´s weight is around 330 to 360 and the logs should be by far straight and long enough to make for a good supply of the right sizes. maybe someone has worked with it already and would be kind enough to share their unvaluable experience.
regards - d.
So far I have been quoted £19.00 a metre for Cedar ,and £16.00 a metre for Obeche + vat and delivery ,= £381.48 not including epoxy to glue it . Thats to build a chambered board . If there is a good alternative to these two woods ,let me know .Hollow me thinks . Whats your thoughts guys ?
At that price you may as well order a pre-shaped balsa blank from homeblown, but that would take the fun out of it a bit wouldn’t it.
The Wood I used for my hollow came to about £80 -90 including vat and delivery.
1 x full sheet of teak faced 4mm ply
1 x full sheet of 5" bending ply
4 x 6" strips of 4" WPD ply
2 x packs of cork floor tiles.
a strip of hard woos and a strip of pine for the fin.
Woody I have looked for the last two days for solid wood to build .Its going to be a hollow ply wood single fin . Thats it .Woody have you any pictures of your build? Cheers.
A couple of lessons learned regarding chambering…
– Use a small radius router bit. Your chambers will be more square looking that way. The more square you make them, the more wood you are able to remove.
– Don’t make your chambers too big. Lots of small chambers will provide much more support under your feet. The danger with big chambers is that you might hit the board with an elbow, knee, … or your head – which will cause the deck to collapse.
– Be careful buying long router bits. Longer bits can’t handle high RPM’s and may break. I used a 1 1/4’’ long bit. On the thicker boards I would chamber on side, flip it over and then chamber the other.
– Draw your chambers out with a dark pen before you start routering. Thin pencil lines are hard to follow when the router is flinging saw dust around.
– Have fun and take lots of breaks. Chambering a full board requires several hours of guiding a router free handed, and it is tiring. You want your mind to be as fresh as possible when doing this. Routering balsa is kind of fun. It cuts like butter.
–Shape your board first, break it apart, and then do the chambering. If you do it this way you can be very aggresive with your chambers. As long as you keep your chambers small you can router up to a quarter of an inch from the deck.
If you chamber your board correctly you can make it weigh close to that of a HWS.
One more hint…
- I have a plunge attachment for my PC router, but didn’t use it for chambering. It is just too heavy and requries more work. After drawing out my chambers I took a hand drill with a 1" diameter Forcner bit, and made a hole in the middle of each chamber. I then placed my router with the extended bit down into the hole, and turned it on. Make sure the bit is in the center of the hole and not touching the sides when you turn on the router.
Thanks for the tips Swied .The problem in the UK is the cost of wood .I am going to try and build a hws first then do a chambered board . Hws works out cheaper than a chambered board .