In the spirit of Swaylock’s, I wanted my first post to be a helpful tip—so here goes.
I’ve searched and found some discussion on taking rail templates, even found a method I hadn’t seen
before(wrapping the sandpaper on the rail and grinding the profile into a piece of scrap foam), but I
didn’t see this trick…
what you need: a heat gun, leather gloves, and 3 mil sheet PVC in a 2" x 6" piece
how to: UNIFORMLY heat the PVC while holding one end and wearing leather gloves. (Insert hold
harmless legal mumbo-jumbo here) When it becomes plastic, put the heat gun down in a safe
place and wrap the "noodle" around the rail and hold tight. It'll set in about 20 seconds.
I got the idea for this about ten years ago when I saw a guy bending PVC pipe to make lawn furniture.
He heated the PVC and bent it in jigs to get curved parts. Right down the street from my shaping room
was all the scrap PVC sheet I’d ever need. It wasn’t a big conceptual leap from there.
Rail temps are very useful as references and essential when trying to hand shape replicas.
You can also check your side-to-side symmetry,etc. And these temps can be made long enough to
template well into the deck roll.
I’ve had no thermal issues, but all the EPS boards I’ve templated have had a lot of fiber on them.
You might want to be cautious on thinly glassed EPS. Test on your friend’s board. No problems at all on PU.
Hope this helps!
Mike