Hi Everyone,
I have been following Sways for a year or so and even if repeating the same thing over and over is not my cup of tea, I just wanted to thank everyone here who spent their time explaining things, answering questions, and keeping their passion intact after all these years of committment. It is just invaluable, and I think I would never have been able to start shaping boards without all of you, so again, thank you.
I am 36 years old, French, living north San Francisco, enjoying California as much as possible after spedning the last decade moving from a country to another (France, Australia, US etc) but enough for the presentation.
Here I am, shaping my second board.
I am using poly foam and epoxy resin, started with poly resin on my first board but the smell was just unbearable as my garage is directly connected to my house, and I my wife doesn’t really enjoy toxic vapors… neither do I:)
I have been following threads by Stingray and Greg Loehr a lot, and I think what they are doing with Epoxy is very inspiring.
To be honest, I was a little bit bummed out when I checked how Epoxy and Pigments seemed to end up with messy results, but after seeing what stingray was able to pull off… I saw the light at the end of the tunnel 
I really liked some of the work from Lucky Bastards (vive la France!) and decided to try their “Sand Through” look on my board freshly hand shaped.
The board is a speed egg 6’3 x 20 1/2 x 2 3/8.
I did my first lam as a swirl epoxy:
I first prepared my Dark Blue mix with RR resin (PH) + Dark Blue/Green Pigment.
Then I prepared a small amount of RR + white pigment.
I added the hardener to the blue batch and mixed it until ready.
Did the same whit my white mix.
I then added additive F to the blue resin batch and mix it slowly.
When the blue resin was ready, I poured the white resin in with a swirl pattern, I didn’t mix the blue and the white at all.
I then poured the swirl onto the board and applied it as if it was Poly.
I then did the same on the side of th eboard, then I sanded the free laps.
At this point I was already happy with the result, I didn;t expect Epoxy to react that well when applied in swirl, and even if the swirls are different from Poly, there is still room to do crazy stuff with Epoxy IMO.
But I was just half way through what I had in mind.
So I decide to apply a black epoxy Hotcoat on top of the swirls.
I prepared my mix and applied the hotcoat. The hotcoa came out very nice, I almost didn;t want to touch it, but it was all black with not transpenrency at all, and having a black board is cool, but not what I was committing to do
When the hocoat finally hardened enough, I just plugged my Sander, and I started to sand with 120 until I hit the lam, then sand with 220 and 320 and repeat the process on the entire board…
Next step is second Hotcoat clear, and then gloss it with some behr or equivalent.
Here are some pictures, I’ll post more when done.
Top view
Nose
Close up
MaNgOuStE
https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/#002-1_0.jpg
https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/#002-2_0.jpg
https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/#002-3_0.jpg
