I had all the planer work done on my 1.5 lb. individually cast EPS blank I posted about last week. Last night I went by John Kies house to give him my keys so he could pick up his finished blanks I had for him. The were two of my personal boards on the shaping racks and I told him to put them on the floor and blow off his foam before putting it in the truck. The EPS blank was resting on a rail and the added weight of another board against it forced it to dent where it was resting on an extension cord. Ah, no problem, I can always heat out the dents in polyurethane blanks easily, I waved the heat gun across the dent and it puffed right out, just before it suddenly shrunk back about 3/8" before my eyes. I guess the very airy beads lost the air inside and collapsed or condensed. Oh well, it’s my own board, lesson learned, a little plaster of paris and styro dust will make a nice filler. Pretty doesn’t count here, only performance, the shaped blank with 2- 1/8" basswood stringer weighs in at 4-1/2 lbs.
I feel your pain. When I’m shaping a blank, I sometimes feel like I’m working with “Kung Fu rice paper” wrapped around an extremely thin & delicate egg shell. Sometimes boards go from start to finish without a single hitch. Other times I seem to be cursed by the “God of Foam”. When I can shape it and deliver it to the glasser without a single dent, life is good! But, then the glasser, with fingernails that haven’t been cut for 3 weeks, and a gorilla stength grip, has the board…Is there no end to this insanity?!?
I tell my customers that carving eps is like shaping with power steering!!!
try this http://www.partridgecreek.ca/eps/epsdecoys.htm this may sound dumb,but if you had a mold you could make blanks the same way, i used to do it the same way years ago they come out ROCK hard, this same methods could apply to surfboard blanks
…They just come up with new tricks. http://www.thirdcoastsurf.com/images/table_boat.jpg
seems like alot of work for 1 blank.
Yeah Skippy, but this all aluminum mold cost 35,000$ to get it milled from a solid billet
http://www.duckdecoys-sports.com/Molds.htm noooo, the molds arnt that much$$ they set us back $50.00 YEARS ago,i know im comparing apples to oranges, i got a uncle who is a cnc milling genius, i think ill call him, he has his own business and a building full of cnc milling machines. i did a search on yahoo, and there are sites that show you how to make cast molds to make artwork, bronse sculptures, etc… all i know is those things came out rock hard, we would shoot them with our 12 gauge shotguns for shits-n-giggles,and they still held up