Construction images at:
[/url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/trudes2008/sets/72157605950845798/
I’ve only just applied the hot coat. So it still needs to be sanded and have the gloss coat applied. But I thought it still might be of interest to someone out there. Thanks to all at Swaylocks for all the great information and ideas I have gleaned to help in the building of this board. Here’s hoping it will at least float.
Cheers
Rohan
Great job! I really like the pinline! You should upload the pictures for those of us to lazy to go to Flicker.
Thanks Mahana. I used the pinline to hide the imperfect joint between the deck and rails.
I will upload the pictures when I get the chance. But I can only do this at work (they won’t upload from home using the mac for some reason). And I may not be in at work for a week or so.
Cheers
Rohan
Really like that. Is there any chance of some more pics and an explaination of how you did your rails? I aint quite getting how you’ve done this but looks good.
What wood have you used?
Peace ‘n’ all that!
Really nice - thanks for posting the pics… but you know you have to explain now 
What sort of wood
What was the process for the rails
And Chipper wants to know… what’s the measurements
-Cam
Good stuff mate.
Paul Jensen , and now you , have me thinking after I’ve done a bunch of pupe boards, I’ll probably go the HWS route as well.
Keep talking!
Hello to all.
The boards measurements are 6’8" x 21" x 17"T x 13"N x 3".
The timber is 7 mm exterior ply for the backbone and ribs/spars. 4 mm marine ply for the deck and bottom. The rails are just good quality pine cut into strips approximately 7 mm x 10 mm (it was 10 mm thick skirting moulding I think).
The trickiest part doing the rails was getting the first strip on the apex of the rail glued into place. I tried to clamp it a number of ways and nothing worked very well. So I ended up drilling a small hole at the end of each of the ribs at the place I wanted the strip to be attached. Then I tied some string through the holes and roughly around the rail strip at the end of each rib. I then applied glue to the appropriate spot on each rib, put a nail in through each of the string loops and twisted them around and around until it pulled the strip tight up against the end of the rib. A piece of masking tape then held the nail to stop it all untwisting.
Once the first strip on each side had been glued it was relatively easy to glue and clamp the following strips up against it. It got tricky on a few strips however, and I resorted back to the string, nail and twist method as required (no drilling of the ribs though). The very last strip on the bottom edge of the rail was near impossible with out actually putting a screw or something in. So I just cut my remaining strips into small pieces and stuck them on diagonally in batches. This took a while but gave a nice effect and required no deformation or clamping. Just some masking tape here and there.
From there it was just trim off the excess, do some pretty basic shaping of the rails and add the nose and tail.
Cheers
Rohan
regarding your imperfect joint…
there’s a thread going on at the Tree to Sea board (http://www.grainsurf.com/forum) in the woodworking
forum discussing strategies to set the deck “in” to the rail planshape using profile router bits and whatnot.
that’s the one thing I had a hard time with on mine…getting that deck/rail joint nice and smooth. otherwise
the wobble you get from sanding can really distract from the outline.
Thanks Afoaf.
I did have a bit of a look through the Tree to Sea board for ideas. My deck to rail planshape line was nice and smooth as the deck skin I attached was cut and smoothed completely before it was attached to the frame. All I had to do was bevel the edge with a plane to match angle at the end of the ribs to allow the rail strips to run up over it (if that makes any sense). I just had to trip the rail strip excess which stood up proud of the deck. Hopefully the photos show what I’ve tried to explain here. I only had a few small sections (100mm long or so) where there was a 0.5 to 1 mm gap between the rail and the deck skin. It was basically where I hadn’t got the bevel angle of the edge of the deck skin quite perfectly matched to the rib end angle. I also thought the pinline would add a bit of feature to what otherwise could look fairly bland (an all pine coloured board).
Cheers
Rohan
that’s the one thing I love about the HWS…it’s part science and part art…situational improvisation
is key on land and at sea.
can’t wait to hear how she rides.
Board is now finished and ready to ride.
It’s been a while since I’ve ridden a twin. And I’ve never ridden a HWS before. Fingers crossed that it all works not too badly.
RDM,
thanks for explaining the rails. I had thought of doing something similar but not actually sticking the first layer down permanently so that the rails can be removed and chambered out a bit to reduce a bit of weight. My idea was to make some sort of jig to lie the board on while glueing the rails up so that it could be clamped up to the jig. A sheet of 12mm ply the length and width of the board plus six inches either way, with holes drilled in strategic places around the perimeter of where the board would lie, then insert pegs into the holes and tie string across the pegs to pull some tension across them and pull the rails in (does that make sense???)
The board looks really sweet, hope she goes some too.
Hi Jase,
Because I built a rail “shell” in a sense around the shaped ends of my cross spars, my rails ended up no thicker in section than about 9 mm.
I am considering sort of the method you have desribed for my next board, but from sort of a reverse direction. I was going to build the frame with square ended cross spars. Add the deck and bottom skins. Then glue the first full height rail strip, trim it to deck and bottom and drill it out extensively. Then add the next one, trim it, shape it a little and drill a little less than the first. And so on and so on, until you get the final couple of strips on which of course you don’t drill at all. You would just need to be judicious about how much you drill out as you don’t won’t to break through into any of these cavities during you final shaping of the rails.
Cheers
Rohan
Nice one, whatever you did this time looks totally sweet.
Chipper, come home!
Board has been surfed 3 times now.
It didn’t leak and it didn’t break. So I’m pretty happy.
It also surfed better than I could have hoped for. But it did take a few waves to get used to surfing a twin again - all those lazy “thruster” habits you pick up don’t work very well with twins and singles.
It also feels a lot more “alive” under your feet than a regular foam/fibreglass board.
Thanks to all those who have posted their HWS tips on Swaylocks. This board wouldn’t have even been contemplated without all that information. I already have some sheets of Paulownia and plans for the next one - this time without any fibreglass.
Cheers
Rohan
