First board progress post (with pics)

General Discussion
1

So this is my build journal of a 7 foot square tailed uhhhhh… Funboard? haha idk. its going to be about 21 at widest point it has a 10 inch square tail with a quad fin setup :slight_smile:

 

 

Okay so finally my blank and fins/finsystem have showed up today, i thought id share the excitment as i recieve my shipment at work :slight_smile: (i am currently an apprentice for bench work joinery)

 

 

and the temporary shelter i built for my project

 

 

 

the inside

 

Those are plstic stackable milk carton boxes 3 per stack covered in garbage bags for when im glassing (today i added padding to ensure no damage to blank)

 

The blank with template

 

rough cut with a jig saw :), sorry i have no pics of me actually cutting it no one was home to take pics :frowning:

 

Messy messy room but this is where it will be staying during the night :slight_smile: plus a better look at the rough cut

 

 

2

I love these board progress build threads!!  Thanks Noob for sharing, and looking forward to following this one through to the happy ending!

3

I may be foiling my blank tonight and I was wondering how I would take the foam off. I know wih a surform or planer but to thin out the nose to I take off the deck or underside? And would it e a good idea to use a planer to skim the whole board like a 1/16 of an inch to remove the skin on the urithane? Or is it easy enough by hand with a surform

4

dont foil the bottom... you will mess up your rocker... remove thickness from the deck...

study some foil pics before you start and go slowly... make it look like the board you see with your minds eye... good luck

5

Before you get to skinning/thinning/foiling, you should spend a little time cleaning up your outline. I realize that's a ''rough cut'', but there's like three distinct ''parts'' to the curve - it should be more blended. The CAD outlines you posted looked clean, your actual outline as it stands has some bumps.

Planer is way better for skinning. Surform would be hopeless for taking down thickness. That blank is very thick (as I said on the other thread it's not a close tolerance or ''quick shape'' blank). There's a lot of foam that needs to come off unless you want a boat. The upside of that is you have the opportunity to learn how to use your planer, taking full passes off the bottom. Watch some vid (the good ones, not the amateur youtubes).

Contrary to what chrisp says, this is a PU blank with a density gradient, so you want to take most of your passes off the bottom; leave the deck close to the skin to stay in stronger foam. I think he means taking some off deckside at tips to thin.

There are some good planer-use threads on here. It can be scary at first, but try to take one full set of passes off bottom. Start on corner of tail, place front shoe of planer on bottom, hold planer at slight angle so baseplate rides on just-cut foam behind shoe, and follow the outline curve to nose. Turn around, put shoe on uncut foam, let baseplate ride on previous cut as ''guide''. Each succesive pass follows the outline a bit less, so that you're straight (the path is straight, planer is still on angle) by the time you get to stringer. Unless your blades are very sharp, you should plane with the grain on stringer and go a little slower.

That blank is, what, about 3.5'' thick? You need to take about 1/2'' off bottom, which would be 4 x 1/8'' passes. Plenty of room to practice on....

6

Yeah I see those I’m going to get a surform and fix that all up for sure or it will look baadd I just cut it roughly 1/2 inch away from the line so I have the space to slowly creep up on the line. Thatnks for the planer info one question about them is will a woodworking hand planer work?with the regular blades and all? It wont tair the foam?

7

A handplane will work if the blade is super-sharp. It would be better than a surform, especially for skinning. For taking down thickness, there's no good substitute for electric planer.

8

Yeah, along the lines of what mike daniels said,

Clean up the outline, it looks as if about 18 in. or so from the nose there is a bump. Then it gets super straight, and then there is a bump towards the tail.

Take most of the foam of of the bottom, not the deck, because  PU foam gets softer and weaker the further from the skin you take it down, and the deck takes the hardest hits while surfing because you stand on it.

Other first board advice, USE YOUR PLANER!!! Typically, guys are afraid of the thing, but it is the only way to go when shaping a board. It'll give you perfect lines as compared to a surform which is sloppy. Set your planer on a shallow cutting depth. Skin it, check the thickess, take a mental note, and shape away. For your first board, constantly eyeball rocker, foil, and overall thickness. Keep posting pics, so people can tell you further steps to take on your board. Good luck, and keep up the work. Your doing great!!

9

Mike I ment an electic woodworking planer with the regular blades is that what most people use ? I got a nice boche planer for woodworking just wondering if it will work

10

The Bosch should work, although it helps to round the edges of baseplate and shoe for work on foam. I think there's people on here who use them. The normal blades are what most shapers use. If you go faster than about 1'/second, you might tear the foam. You'll find the pace. If you've used the tool before you have a head start on those who haven't. Cuts a little different on foam, though. You can take more off in one pass.

Planer would be best for primary trueing of outline also, surform is ill-suited for that job. Large sanding block after (or instead of) the planer.

11

Hey Noob -

Make sure your template pattern is sweet, trace on blank with pencil, and cut/shape the outline to the line.  If your pattern is smooth and you follow those steps, you'll have a good smooth symmetrical outline on the blank.

One trick I've used is to trace the template on both sides... deck and bottom.  They won't line up perfectly due to the rocker curve but you will have a better guide for getting the outline square.  A T-square or carpenter square run along the edge will also show you where the saw might have drifted out of square. 

Many of us have a hard time getting a 90 degree edge when cutting the outline.  Having the template drawn on both sides will help when you go to square it up with your planer or surform.

Try to get it square from the start.  It's a foundation that will save lots of work later if done right from the beginning..

12

Eah the first thing I was planning on was cutting to the line with surform or planer then square it then go to the thinning part, why happens if I have the middle thickness I want but te nose isn’t thin enough?? And what happens if I want to keep the tail thick but still cut the mid thiknes down? I guess that’s were your hands get involved and you have to slowly plunge down well your moving to the nose? But I can’t do that as I do not want my rocker to change. When I get home il definatly try it out

13

yah, when i read "foiling" i figured he meant thinning the ends. i didn't even consider that he still needs to take the thickness down over the whole board... i'll humbly bow out now... still enjoying the thread tho. stoked for you Noob

14

I’d stop and think about several things before moving on.

Your rocker first, you need to know what your rocker will be. The rocker is so important to how well the board will move through the water.

Outline, the blank may already have the rocker you want if you can move the outline forward or backward, but you need to have the rocker figured out.

Bottom, flat, vee, concave, belly (convex). The bottom shape will make the board faster or slower.

Rails/profile, what kind of rails do you want? The type of rails can affect the profile or distribution of thickness. Having the thickness in the right places is also very important. The bottom shape will make a difference for how the board’s rails and thickness are setup.

I was told to plan out these variables and draw a lot of lines on the blank. Make guidelines every inch or so along the top, sides and bottom. Then go slowly and make your cuts to match the lines. Bill Barnfield says he sees the blanks as a wireframe. You can just draw the wireframe (sort of) on the blank.

I take a piece of foam and cut out an L shape. Then on one side I make a bunch of holes to hold a pencil at 1 inch, 2 inches, 3 inches, 4 inches. I do it at 1/2" intervals. Try to get the board close to the maximum thickness you want when you cut the rocker. Then use the guidelines for your cuts. Once you have the rocker set, re-draw the outline and after that is set, you can draw the guidelines along the rail for thickness. After the top is thinned approximately to the way you want it, draw lines on the top to cut your rail and profile. Make sure you leave a decent amount of flat area along the rail like an inch, or you’ll start cutting into the outline before you’re done.

I’d set the planer to very shallow cuts to start until you get the feel for it. You’ll need to get to 1/8" cuts, but start shallow. If you move forward slowly, the planer will make nice clean cuts. You just need to learn how to make the cuts even as you move from rail to center. You don’t have to hold the planer straight when you use it, you can hold it at an angle. Play with it and see how that helps with certain cuts. The top nose is the hardest part to cut with a planer because of the rocker. Don’t have any great answers for how not to ruin your blank, so be careful there.

If you mess up a little stop. Walk away and think about it, then come back. Don’t try to power through or you may make things worse. It’s easy to cut foam, a real problem to add.

Check out some of the youtube videos and see how those guys use the planer. Also, make sure you have a place to work where you can see the board properly. Light coming from the right angles allow you to see better. That’s really important to a clean shape.

15

Thank you for the advice everyone, a little update i took the sides all down by hand to the line with my surform worked great there nice and flat and pretty square, so after i was done that i picked up my planer set it to 1/16th and for about 5 mins just looked at thinking of how i would do it, i finally got the balls to start the thing up. so i skim a 16th off of the right side of the board no problem looks PERFECT, now it comes to setting the shoe o nthe uncut and the base plate on the cut foam, i do that then turn it on with the blade lifted from the foam, set at 45 degree angle to make sure the shoe and baseplate are where they should be give it a nice slow even pass anddd it cuts to shallow, so i thought cut another pass so i did that, eventually go the other side and do the other side pretty good but theres ridges in alot of places. so far iv taken 2 1/16th passes off the top but i measured both sides and they are not even. tommorow im going to make a 22 inch long board at word to stick some 60 grit on and even everthing out befor i continue. i just kind of evened out roughly with the surform for now :confused: i messed up abit but hey it should only take me like an hour of sanding to even out again lol, or can i just keep going with the powere plane and it will even itself out? :S

i have no photos at this time but i will tommorow :slight_smile:

16

After i get my blank true again i may scrap the power planer and go to a big block plane, i really dont want to mess my blank up to badly and the powerplaner doesnt seems to be doing to well for me, i dont know il probably try one more time just usually power planes arnt used for this type of thing in wood there used for on site work for skimming solid wood doors so they fit in the jams and such not actually thickness planing, but hey im sure if i keep trying i might get the hang of it. but i really think hand tools may be the way to go :slight_smile:

17

    Howzit Noob, Keep the planer, you will use it in the future . Just because you felt better doing it by hand doesn't mean you won't want to give it a try after a couple boards,remember there is only one  number 1. Aloha,Kokua

18

only one number one… and sanding blocks were number one for a long time. Oh, I meant the block plane, ooops the electric planer. CNC? :slight_smile: si.

19

 

yeah i didnt mean throw it out we need it at work :stuck_out_tongue: i just ment maybe put it down and take out a big block plane and a 22 inch sanding block, should be fun ^^ i may try another whole passover the board to try and get the hang of it maybe at like 1/64 or something so i cant mess to much up but i got a picture of my outline i think the shadows show it weirdly idk lol

20

Here is a 7’3" fish…take your time …look at the outline. See any differences?

You still have lots of material in your blank. Good luck Noob. You can do it actually.

7'3" fish

notice the smooth flow of curve from nose to tail. If your blank is on the line with your template, do you want to reconsider your template?