So, a customer wanted a fish as a step-down from the longboards/funboards that he has been riding. He was set on EPS/Epoxy and a length of 6’1", which wasn’t a problem except that the only EPS blank I had on hand at the time was only about 5’ 10.5". The solution? Add a noseblock. This was my first noseblock, and the following pics show the process of making it…
I started with what I had lying around, an old piece of driftwood and a thin piece of birch. Here is the driftwood before and after cutting into 4 strips.
Glue-up with lam resin + blue pigment…
After I had the 2 pieces, I flattened each side with my planer and made a miter cut with my hand saw. I glued up the two pieces with more lam resin and cleaned up each side again with my planer…
After shaping in the thickness, foil, rocker, etc. I was ready to template the blank. I traced the template as if the blank were 6’1"…
After shaping everything but the rails, I used the completed nose block and traced its outline on the blank.
The cut was cleaned-up with my surform and a sanding block…
…and it was all glued together with 5-minute epoxy and blue pigment:
As you can see from the previous pic, the glue-up was kind of messy and needed to be cleaned up with the planer. After planing each side, the template was drawn again and cut with my hand saw.
The final shaped nose block, all ready for touch-up…
Because the wood had some soft spots, I had to patch a couple of places with resin and sand…
I wasn’t concerned about the extra blue on the wood since I was going to add lams and a blue/white resin swirl to the block anyways… The first pic below shows the lam in place, and the second one shows the glassed block:
The nose block sanded, and blank spackled. All ready for glassing. Note that the blue pigment bled some into the foam. Nothing that pinlines can’t clean up!!
…And the final result. 6’1", EPS/Epoxy, LokBox turbo speed dialer fins. The customer is stocked 'cause the birch used in the nose block came from the same forest in VT (literally about 3 miles) that he grew up in! Try to get that kind of customization from Asia!
cool thread: well documented, concise, thrifty, educational. if only more threads on swaylocks were like this once again. thanks for sharing.
i like it…normally i would like to see the natural wood color but the dragon lam is cool