I've been lurking here for a little while. I've been interested in something to productively fill my time while waves, and work for me, are minimal this fall here in so cal. I do video/graphic creative work and have really had the desire to start making and tinkering with physical objects that actually exist and can be touched to get away from all this digital BS.
I thought it would be a good idea to get a grasp on the materials and methods of using them by doing some repairs on a few of my broken boards before diving into shaping one of my own. So my first project (adventure) was to do something with this:
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A 5'10 JS Blak Box, before the nose snapped off. The break seemed to be a little far back to just straighten it off, and I lost the nose so I decided to strip back some of the glass and re shape a snub-ish type nose. Giving me some practice with templates, and shaping some foam. I measured from the nose, drew lines and used a razor blade, starting on the stringer pushing the blade threw the fiberglass and cutting towards the rail. i figured this would be the best way to pierce as little as possible into the foam below.
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The trickiest were the rails, going slow as to cut into the foam beneath as little as possible. I then fashioned a template out of some foam board and put in WAY to little time into this step. My sloppy template left me basically on my own after I realized I was far from symmetrical. Not having a good single color background to view the shape against was extremely tricky, I gave it little merit, I'm glad I learnt that lesson on this simple nose re-shape.
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As you can see, its off as well as the small bumps as the new shape joins the existing rail line. I decided to cut back another 3 inches into the glass to give myself more rail line to work with to get rid of the bumps as well as fix the un symmetrical nose. So here I am more on track with the re-shape, kinda looks like a fat diamond tail, I worked at adding more nose rocker to it as well as blending the new rails into that nose rocker, all with a small block and 80grit sandpaper. Once I started to get a feel for the foam and sandpaper it came easier. I used a spokeshave to cut the rail down as I worked, which I'm still not super comfortable with, I couldn't get it to really cut smoothly, I feel its just going to be more time and technique, The last cut with it did feel better than the first.
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I then prepped it to glass. Masking tape to hold it from the wind until the first pour I pulled the tape off. Here is the 4oz for the bottom, cut and ready. My first experience glassing went decent, I know that watching countless videos of people defiantly helped. The biggest problem for me was that my board was propped up by two cheap Ikea chairs with a 24 pack of vitamin water holding as a weight which at some point moved entirely to the back chair so I was having to constantly re-balance the chair and the board as i squeegee'd around it. Wont make that mistake again.
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Here is a shot of my first attempt at glassing, Doing only 1/4 of a board was nice to get a feel for the materials, you still had to be quick, but it was good to get a feel for it on this smaller area.
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Next I glassed the deck with 2 layers of 4oz, one cut to the size of the deck and the other with overhanging laps. I underestimated the amount of extra resin that the second layer of cloth would soak up and barley had enough to thoroughly saturate all of the laps. I chalk the top glass job up to luck. So here is where I was at at the end of day 1.
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