I’ve paid a visit to the glasser today.
It looks like epoxy does not like tints.
It takes a really long time tu harden.
We’ve been on al light opaque blue.
Hopefully the board will be finished by the end of next week.
I think your board looks great! I can’t wait to see the finished results…
I’ve always totally dug that…
CNC hotwiring EPS.
4 cuts. 5 minutes.
Finished deck rocker, hull rocker, and planshape.
20 minutes to finish the board from there.
And people call it tough to work with.
Quote:
sbvfive / Scott,
As I can read, you’re not quite a biginer at EPS shaping.
That one was my first try ever with such a “strange” foam.
The fact is I’ve seen the limits of “traditional” shaping on that one.
I really believe I’ll try and make myself specific tools such as the one I’ve seen on shaperoom.
It looks a lot more acurate than the only surform rasp.
That’s the bevel tool I’ve seen.
Lob, that tool looks awesome. I have one that I used for awhile that was a similar concept, I posted pics on here once. I will try to get some pics again. The guide can be changed out, to accommadate cutting railbands measuring from the top or the bottom…it worked pretty well…
although, my last few boards, i have cut my railbands using masking tape as a guide. I literally tape off my railbands, and then use one of my hotwires to cut it. As long as you keep the temp of the wire down, and keep moving, you wont burn through the tape. This gives me even more accuracy than my railband tools, and more freedom. I can cut curves and stuff if I want. I also have a small detail hotwire, and I am getting more comfortable with that. I actually cut the swallow tail on my last fish with it, freehand!
Good luck and keep on it! Your board looks awesome, and each one will get better and better as you start to understand the EPS more…it isn’t like poly, its a different beast, but you will get used to it and it will become second nature. I have actually just crossed over to the point where I have now done more EPS boards than Clarks, and I feel more comfortable with EPS now!
Edited to add Pic…
Blakestah, you are so right! I can’t understand when people say it is hard to work with when I shape a standard shortboard, from hotwiring the blank to finsh sanding, in under an hour! And I am not a very talented shaper!! Sammy Barker at RR literally shaped himself a shortboard one time while I was there picking up resin, while I talked to him! It took him about 12 minutes, hahaha.
It just seems to me, that alot of people are oppossed to EPS because it is a “differnt beast” if you will. In the end, you are still removing foam with some tools to get a surfboard, right?? I think the problem lies when people treat it like it is poly…you don’t treat you friends like you treat your girl, right? I think that once people recognize the differences and treat them appropriately, EPS shaping suddenly won’t seem that hard.
A perfect example is Matt from Lost over at surfermag. I basically harass him over there because I can’t believe the audacity of the uninformed statements he made about Greg, but at the same time i know that with his resources, he could easily work up to some type of reasonable production with EPS. I know nothing about machine shaping with EPS, but I have seen you and others answer his questions numerous times!! if people spent less time trying to make EPS into a replacement for Poly, and more time figureing out the subtleties of EPS by itself, we could see alot of progress in a very short time!!
And I step off my soap box…
great board Lob , will YOU get a chance to surf it ? (I HOPE so )
I’ll be able to surf that one.
In fact, I’ll keep it to test how eps/epoxy behave.
Then, I’ll lend it to friends so they can make up their minds.
Here is the stage the board reached so far: hot coated plugged but not sanded yet.
Got my first EPS blanks today from Atua…
The foam is reasonably hard (30kg/m2 +/- 2lb/ft2) and the beads seem well linked together…
More info as I play with them…
Lob, Balsa and the rest, keep it up, you inspire others!
Funny thing thyat you picked up that thread.
I can give moer informations about the board since I’ve been surfing it for a while.
I also give it to some of my customers so they can wait for their boards to be shaped/glassed/delivered.
First of all some pictures of the finished board:
Weightwise, the board is close to an usual PU board.
Mine has been glassed with a tinted 6+6oz on the deck and 6oz on the bottom.
I did not mind having more weight but I wanted it to last forever.
And in fact after more than 20 sessions, there are absolutely NO DENTS !!!
About the surf on that one, to be true, it’s a killer board, goes fast, turns easyly, paddles with no worries from 1foot to … well, it’s summer and we didn’t have more than 1.5m (5feet).
That is a board you need to push with the front foot.
When you do so, it takes speed and start to fly accros sections to allow you to draw large cut backs.
This is not a performance shortboard but it’s a really fun machine to take tons of waves.
I could try the board in a windy condition and the epoxy didnot seem to be to stiff.
Maybe because the flex is everywhere on the board as it’s a stringerless blank.
The overall feeling is not that far from a standard pu with stringer board.
Well to be true, I love it.
And I think that I’ll shape some boards with that technique during winter and put them in a shop as test drive boards.
As they do not get old as fast as PU/poly boards, you can use them to help (disabled thruster fanatics ?) people discover new shapes.
@ Surfer Dave = where are you from ?
Lob, I am in The Netherlands but I am from la belgique originally.
Really cool board by the way!
PS your buddy Stephen from atua was extremely helpful in helping me with my order and gave loads of tips. They have a good shipping agent for the EU shipping and it ain’t too expensive either. The above blank and glass, resin was aboout 60 euro shipping. Compare to other blank manufacturers this is very reasonable. Now lets see how the eps foam works…
Oh, Lob, you used an elecctric planer on the eps? Did you have slow the bite speed or just make slower passes to avoid ripping foam?
edit:
stoke is too much and curiousity got the best of me… couldn’t wait till shape room was finished so I attacked the excess foam at the end of the blank “box” with my Bosch…
I hope the pictures are a bit clear but the planer at 0.5 to 1.5 mm depth doesn’t rip the foam if you take a slow pass with just the weight of the planer.
Well actually I did everything with the surfoam rasp.
Took me hours…
But it was worth it.
hi Lob !
the board looks GREAT !
and , thanks for the riding report , mate …could you feel it flex through turns ? or in the tube ?
Final question …
…was the board heat cured , in one of those oven thingys ? [sorry for the lack of technical terms]
cheers / salut pote !
ben
No tubes yet, summer waves do not give tubes often in my area…
I couldnot feel difference betwin pu and standard epoxy glass job.
The board has not been cooked.
have you heard of people heating their eps before glassing to remove gasses? I guess if your board has come along so well after a while there is no delamination due to out gassing… maybe just a scare story I picked up from a PU lover but I was wondering if anyone here had heard such problems.
So there is no stringer? I have never seen this before. I thought even eps boards all had stringers? Anyway, I was thinking that a real easy way to hotwire one of these yourself would be to first make yourself a template out of thin ply or masonite sheet for the shape of the board, and then make two ply or masonite rocker templates for each side (Make them exactly the same shape as your stringer is you have them). Make your stringer shape beforehand, and glue it into the blank, with the bottom of the blank even with the bottom of the stringer or close enough to make aligning the templates on each side line up easily, and then hot wire using the templates and stringer to guide you on the rocker shape and the top template on the shape.
Hi nathan, actually you are correct, when working with a block of eps one would make the stringer and use it as a guide for the hotwire. These blanks are cut by a cnc machine (atuacores.com) so we skip that step. As in Lob’s board, you don’t need to make a stringer, eps/epoxy is strong enough. I will be making a stringer for my longboard though, if I can find a nice piece of wood I may do a thick stringer on the fish, otherwise not.
Nathan,
With high density (30+kg/m3 or anything above 2lb/ft3) EPS, stringers are optional, at least on short(ish) boards. The resin and glass should give it alot of strength, Lob’s board and story seems to confirm this. I will be putting a stringer in the longboard and probably a nice piece of wood in the fish…
okay the first eps is almost finished… had some problems with cutlaps drooping and hardening in the drooped position but other than that my first eps try is a big yellow ugly son of a long board that I hope to test asap…
This board was made with glued up excess foam and not the blanks I got from atua, they’re up next…
grinded down the obnoxious cutlaps and replaced with fresh glass… mixed about two spoons of glass bubbles to make the resin stick a tad better, kept the cutlaps in place whilst still penetrating the glassfiber, it seems like the resin soaks in and leaves the bubbles on top, nice side effect as the laps are well stuck to the board and I can easily sand the excess drips and droops, also got few airbubbles under the glass as I brushed on the resin over the fresh laps. and yeah the stringer has a wobble in it… eh, first time I laminated plywood, realized too late I hadn’t enough bar clamps…
the nose will get a separate “cutlap” overlap as I actually hit some foam whilst sanding so glassbubble paste touch up in progress…
she ain’t a beauty but I trust she will ride well enough for a board made out of scrap foam and totally built by hand for the first time…
okay, now you guys can laugh at me for the bumpy big banana board!!
The following two are waiting in the side lines…
the small one has a 18mm hardwood ply stringer and the rightmost a 9mm hardwood ply stringer, the middle one is now “bananaboard one”