first and third - a pictoral

General Discussion
1

This is my third board, the first two were a HWS fish and a 15’ stitch and glue paddleboard.

It is also my first composite board.

Was smitten by the idea of vacuum bagging as it seemed to offer a lot of solutions to problems

I was dealing with in standard wood building techniques…lumber cost, construction speed, shape

and weight.

Big thanks to all the usual suspects here and at compsand.com for the help and encouragement,

especially Paul and Jeff (silly and lillibel).

While I was pouring through the archives, I also got a couple bugs in my head…the benefits of

extra width, quads and stubby shapes.

That all came together as something similar to this:

look, some bad things happened here…

my board is like the fat ugly friend to Dennis Ryder’s sexy lady at the bar…

these shots came out a little odd because it’s leaning sideways and back…

just don’t stare too long

Big thanks to Larry for taking time to have me over and mark these boxes. Using Power Pads

in a proper sander made a tremendous difference on the quality of the finish.

7’5"x17"x24"x17 1/2"x2 1/2+"

Waxed it up and took it out last night…had a ton of fun.

Paddles great…all that width gets it up on a plane very quickly and is super fast and fun down the line.

I owe it all to sways.

2

Very nice, I would like to give a Compsand a go one day myself. Where is the best place to get the vac bags?

3

for this one I essentially made the bags by folding over some 4mil poly drop cloth

(paint aisle at the depot) and then taping the three sides.

taping is tough…best I could do is a 2 minute cycle on the pump…too much opportunity

for small holes to suck air.

I got vacuum bags (36" poly tubing, sealed on two sides) and bag clamps to effectively

close the other two…will use this on next board…people have commented that they get

10-20 minute cycle times with this…my pump is loud so the less it runs, the better.

these two sites have some good items at decent prices.

acp-composites.com

fiberglasssupply.com

4

Hey mate great thread, great board!!. So, do the skins get cut right to the template??, and then the rails add a little extra width??. And where are the glass layers, and how strong are they??

5

Congrats. I’ll bet you’re hooked now, eh? I’m on number 4 and everyone I’ve done has been a little different than the others…and it hasn’t gotten any easier! Anyone thinking of doing this to make money…well…you don’t see many on the racks do you? It’s a lot of work. Easily double the work of a regular board. Quadruple if you’re like me and make mistakes. Yeah, I’ve had a few of those.

Your number 1 came out great. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the board you won at Thraikill’s event (congrats on that too! I’ll bet that made the drive worth it!) looks so similar in outline. Was it also a quad?

What’s next?

6

it was a quad with a dash of Dennis’ special sauce.

I won’t do the explanation justice, but it’s essentially a thruster layout, but

he “splits” the center fin and puts two boxes out by the rails.

similar to mine with the rear pair set closer to the tail.

he put smaller fins back there but told a story about a rider of his throwing on

bigger sized fins in the back (equal in size to the front pair) for bigger surf and

loving it.

definitely hooked!

Beefan…

skins are oversized

I used the exact rocker that came with the blank (http://segwaycomposites.com/76LD-80-series.gif)

and cut out my profile.

Then, vacuum back on the bottom skin, attach the first rail band, take the fat off the deck

to get the foil and rail blend I want and then vacuum on the top skin.

the top and bottom skin are glued to the first rail band.

then I use a profile router bit to go around the outline of the board using the hard,

square rail of the first strip to cut the skins to fit cleanly…then I build out the remaining

rail strips and add nose and tail blocks.

by building the rail blend in to the foam, transferring that through the skins and attaching

the top and bottom to that first rail strip I eliminate the odds that I’m going to sand through;

all the rail shaping happens in the remaining rail meat.

I think the next one is going to be a bumblebee bonzer…but I’ve had some things

swimming around in my head from Bill’s talk about fins so I might just try a fat-chord

single fin egg.

7

I forgot to mention, the foam gets cut smaller than the final planshape and the added

rail layers make up the difference to get to the planned dimensions.

regarding glass…(http://thayercraft.com/Style%202113.htm)

2.3oz inside, 2.3oz with lots of patches outside using MAS epoxy which continues to be a

very user-friendly product.

8

Great looking board! I would love to stop by and see the process in action when you build the next one. I’ll bring the beer.

9

Thaks mate!