Hi Ray
I know for sure I've seen a couple of mine twist after they've been glassed. Poor storage and heat are the usual culprits. Sometimes they can be straightened out.
my favorite shortboard twisted a bunch sitting in our storage unit. like a BUNCH...
it was already at least a year old when it twisted. before putting the board in storage, i had stripped one of the finbox screws and was going to change them out for Probox but, when i went to get the board out of storage, it was ridiculously twisted to the point where i didn't even bother putting in the boxes. the board was PUPE with 1 layer of 4oz top and bottom... even though it used to ding like crazy, i liked that board a lot.
Somebody explained to me that triple stringer boards can get terrible twists, particularly in the ends if they are shaped too thinly, due to the grain in the wood. Ever look at old solid wood cabinet doors? They all twist so much they don’t close flat anymore! Usually one corner will be closed, and the other will be gaping open. This guy’s theory, and I buy it, is… if the grains are not mirrored and oppose each other… if they both curve in the same direction… the thinner you shape them, the more they are likely to twist. A while back, before I knew this, I was shaping a three stick classic longboard, and was working on the tail. I noticed it had a slight asymmetry. I tried to shape it out. It got worse! I kept going, and it kept getting worse! Finally I stopped, hacked off a few inches, and put a tail block on it. The final result was a brand new board with a twist in the tail. By chance, it had more rocker on the tail side than the toe side.
Rode great.
Good questions, marsh. The compsand guys are building a fairly rigid ''blank'', so they would see less effect. In GL's original T-Flex build, he had perimeter stringers and hd rails.
Yes, I highly recommend setting the rocker on a table. It's more accurate and repeatable.
Howzit chrisp, I used to buy my blanks for personal boards like 6months before shaping them. That way they could twist like hell but then I would just shape the twist out of them and by then they wouldn't twist anymore. Aloha,Kokua
ahhh, that makes sense Kokua… the board was a “team” board from a local shaper… i’m sure it didn’t get any special treatment.
probably just get it out as fast as possible…
Kokua… I thought about that a while back… shaping the twist out of a blank. Do you thing that doing so leaves the stringer at an angle not perpendicular to the plane of the bottom and deck, and so the flex will be different? Will it flex more? Can you even tell?
Stringers are so 20th century.
Yeah but they make it easy for us neanderthals to shape Mike :) Shape, glass, sand the next morning, surf in the arvo, $150…happy days.
Yeah, but we have our own efficiencies, it doesn't take much longer; and the product has more life (both feel and longetivity).
Come on over to the darkside, it's gooood here :)
Plus my rockers are consistent and twist is history, more smilies.....