locally we call that wood ‘dao’, pronounced da-o’ (stress on o’), you’re lucky to have gotten that priceless stash considering there’s hardly any remaining virgin rainforests throughout the archipelago hehe depending on which scientific source you’d quote, it’s said that there’s less than 7% left of what we had 100 years ago and whatever precious hardwoods end up at custom furniture shops such as narra, dao, kamagong etc-- they’re bound to be from illegal loggers " )
that compsand you got right there is stunning by itself, but if you’re looking for an eco-friendlier board blank, the coconut fiber test panel i posted in another thread seems to fit the requirement :
it’s just that the local inventor hasn’t given me feedback yet on its availability as he developed it originally for architectural applications. that means if we’re to pursue its development as a foam alternative, we’d have to dictate the specs (density, flex, rigidity, weight, water impermeability, etc) so he can formulate the material accordingly.
meantime, once i’m done glassing i’ll be able to get back to my daily plyometric workout hehe we’ll see how much weight i’ll be able to shed in 2 weeks or so " )
final bottom layer (cotton fabric) with resin seal coat also got stuck at both rails near the fin cluster area which i’ll need to sand off before i can do the actual deck & bottom lamination. heaven help me
,like the look of the cloth 'fiber,must have been tricky keeping all the lines straight while filling the rattan lap beneath…
your not gonna cover it with something else are ya…! haha
cheers for some background on ‘dao’, that quickly became a favourite when i was given some that had been damaged by fork lift and on the way to the skip,salvaged with perfect timing,was like christmas for me…got three boards out of it!
Sad to hear about the diminishing rain forest tho’, too many people getting rich on the destuction of natural resources on this planet,and too much corruption to ever stop it…
the worlds gonna wake up too late
thanks for your appreciation,luckily the boards only got to hold up under the lip,not a microscope…haha
the coconut fiber looks real interesting,if you could keep the wgt down,and stop it water logging between the fibres could you add the process from ecocradle?
looks like that myco bond might shape,i’d be getting on to that company,if i were you…
lost this mail a few days ago at this stage last time
the multiple woven layers right before the cotton sheet are grass & raffia which are thin enough to keep the bottom flat, so the seal coat was pretty much fuss-free. but some rail sections needed to get re-sanded after taking in resin with the cotton fabric. on the other hand, the bottom lam got seriously screwed up. i thought laminating right up to the deck’s inner rail edge was going to be quick, turns out i was wrong. the 6oz. fiberglass cloth didn’t want to cover the rails fully, it just hung straight down after saturation while several air pockets all over the bottom just didn’t want to deflate. IMO the risk of delamination is very high. i still have the deck to lam but most of the resin went to waste from mixing too much when i needed less, and too little when i needed more— which made me mix a little bit more that mostly went to waste. that means i’ll need to buy another gallon for the deck lam, 2 fill coats, fin box & leash plug installation. and pay rent for the workshed just a little bit longer. we’ll see what happens afterwards.
re coconut fiber blank, i think the binder is water-repellent-- actual specs to follow soon as the inventor gives me feedback.
after nearly 7 months fidgeting about the half-finished lamination, my sched finally opened up to let me work on the board again.
i’d been moving my stuff since mid-july to a bigger place that would allow me to build HWS during evenings & weekends, and decided over the weekend – on impulse – to finally remove every bit of the lam coat that had sizeable air pockets underneath. the difference in height between the rails and the final woven rattan deck layer prevented the fiberglass cloth from laying down all around the perimeter. there were also height gaps between the left-to-right and head-to toe weave directions, so naturally the deck lam needed major chipping as well. i finished poking all the air bubbles off the bottom and right when i was midway through the rattan deck lam, i got a nagging feeling i was " fixing " it wrong.
the question is, would a heat gun help solve the problematic lam?
the idea is to make another test lam on a woven rattan offcut, like this :
but instead of poking the air pockets with a chisel & blade cutter ( which i did) and re-coating with resin to fill the gaps (which i’m hesitant about), simply take a heat gun and melt the long-hardened lam coat to fill the gaps.
there’s probably at least one unit within the city that i can rent, but i’d like to know if the step is worth a shot before i make my wallet take a steep dive again
would it be any good to try to lam the fiber pre install? like lam it before cutting the deck shape then fitting it afterwards? similar to fin lam techniques maybe…
to avoid the bubbles on the deck lam… or try out the vacuuming technique to get rid of the bubbles… i hope that would help…
pre-lamination won’t do much as the curvature of the rattan weave’s outside face naturally features the height gaps that create air pockets upon lamination. vacuum-assisted lam would be ideal if i had the eqpt (and budget) for it. my test lam on hindsight worked because i laminated the sheet’s inside face which was flat— but didn’t have the ethnic look & feel of the outside face that i wanted.
incidentally a recent thread had someone asking whether glue-spraying fiberglass cloth in place prior to resin application was ok, which i actually considered but didn’t go for. i was concerned that the glue spray flecks would interfere with the bond & clarity of the resin. then again the local resin i bought turned out to be amber, the white glue flecks would have been imperceptible in any case
surf fiber,, glad to see you around still. So you think you screwed it up and don't know what to do.? Heres a thought, I used to do this with red oak ,something I learned from the famouse finisher George Frank.. Your going to need some color pigments to do this. In Vietnam they sell color pigments in powder form at most paint stores . Maybe the same in PI. Mix up about a pint of epoxy resin then devide it into a bunch of small cups no more than a couple oz per cup.Add a little pigment of different colors in each cup. Say red, black, yellow, blue, green. What ever you can find. then dribble each color onto the boar in a sweral, or just randomly..Pour all your little cups on so the are evenly destributed across the board. Then take a squegee and spread the resin into all the little holes.Then squegee all the resin off into a cup leaveing only the resin in the holes. now you have a spotted board. After a couple days clean the board with solvent. Mix up about 4 oz of resin and spread it out with a small foam paint roller. (I use 9 inch rolers cut into 3 sections. Roll that resin on try to keep it as thin as possible , just roll the shit out of it just make sure you get it all covered (1 side at a time,taped off do the second side laiter.) When that coat is dry to the touch ,do a second coat, and then a third coat allways trying to role all the resin into any little holes and not let it build. It should take about 15 or so minutes to well role a coat. Soon as you have rolled a coat ,take a black foam brush or a section of black foar roller and drag it lightly across the surface ,1 pass ,this will pop all the air bubbles.The foam brush should not load up with any resin , it should come up dry in fact when you drag it it will make a sound kinda like scapeing your fingers over a clalk board. After you have done 3 coats this way you should have build up enough thickness to sand without sanding into the matt. And hopefully it will be smooth enough to do some kind of clear coat (spray varnish) Just my thoughts !!
what a brilliant method, using tinted resin to ‘mark’ and fill the craters! i’d really like to keep the deck pattern as natural as possible, let’s see what i can use locally to get it done. i’ve only been lurking in the interim, planning my transfer of residence and now i’ve got enough space to work on the board and the next ones-- classic woodstrip HWS that’ll honor the methods you’ve shared here " )
i’ve decided to resume work on it alongside the 2 wood-strip boards i’m building so i can make use of the excess resin for the patchup job. the prior lam gave me 2 solid resin disks a little over 3/8" thick, i’m thinking of turning them into a simmons quad finset. i still have enough fiberglass cloth offcuts to wrap around them after shaping, i’m just not sure how tough/brittle they’ll be during actual use, hmm
