Here is a pic of the first hardwood fins blanks I have ever made (maple and cherry), they are for a friend, now how to foil them, I have a set of rfc fins from which to copy the foil, I have a belt sander ( big and heavy ) several finish sanders and a couple of hand files, I don’t have a high speed grinder, although I might be able to borrow one. Any suggestions, opinions and constuctive criticism would be most welcome.
Thanks
nice !!!
…would you mind ‘talking’ us through how you do that , please ?
Paul Jensen or John Cherry may be the ones to ask re: wood fin foiling .
But I guess the principles may still be the same as with this …
…I hope this helps !!
ben
Ben,
You mean you want to know how I put the blank together?
WM
Woodmaven,
I use a small angle grinder to foil my wood fins, sometimes fine tune with rasps (depending on wood density), and followed by angle grinder type random orbit sander. Start by drawing a dark center line all the way around the perimeter of the fin for reference, then use the grinder to run continuous repeated passes along each edge just as laying on rail bands on a board blank with very smooth light but deliberate strokes. I clamp my fins at about elbow height (similar to shaping rack height) for best control. If you care to take a look for reference you can view a few of my skegs in the “wave rider collection” section of my website: www.mccormickfinewoodworking.com Good luck and hope that helps a bit.
Richard
Ben,
You mean you want to know how I put the blank together?
WM
yes please mate !
thanks !
ben
WoodMaven,
I haven’t done this with fins, but I have done it with other fine woodworking items.
Get your belt sander and mounth it upside down. Make sure it’s secure and wear gloves. Switch it on and you have a lot of fine control over the work you are doing (esp. if it’s variable speed and you have a number of diff grit belts). I also jury rig up some “clamps” out of a couple long slats bound at the ends to give me long “handles” for the item.
Of ocurse -use at the own risk. But I have found it useful.
-doug
Quote:Ben,
You mean you want to know how I put the blank together?
WM
yes please mate !
thanks !
ben
This is the way I go about it:
First I unwrap a bar of the finest dark chocolate I can lay my hands on and eat it ( seriously!), I do this before every woodworking project, now with the important stuff out the way, my first move was to plane some lumber down to within 1/8" of the final thickness, I figure the extra 1/16" on either side will give me something to sand as I scrape and sand off the excess polyurethane glue I used, the stuff has a way of expanding out of the joint as it cures. Rip your planed lumber into strips 2" wide, It’s a bit wider than you will need but you will see why later.
Cross cut the 2" strips into 6" or 7" pieces, take one of these pieces and draw a pencil line from one of the corners angled at 12 degrees, I then cut along this line with a band saw and true up the edge with a long sanding block using the edge of my bench as a guide, I now have my master wedge. Take the master wedge and lay it alongside the fence of a table saw, take one of the remaining pieces lay it beside the master wedge and adjust the fence so that when you run the piece thru the saw you end up with an exact copy of the wedge, you have to keep both pieces beside each other as you go thru the blade, your fingers will get quite close to the blade so be careful, this is why I make the strips 2" wide. You need 15 wedges to form a half circle
(12 degrees X 15 =180 degrees.), it helps to have a few extras in case of mistakes. Clean up the edges with the long sanding block, again using the edge of the bench as a guide and to try and keep a 90 deg. angle with the face of the wedge. Now, wasn’t that fun?
Glue up time, tape a strip of regular wax paper to your bench top, this is where you will do your glueing, unless of course you want your piece to become a permanent addition to your bench. I found that it’s a lot easier to glue two 90 degree sections together and then glue them to each other to get your final 180 degree half circle.
I screw two pieces of scrap to the bench at 90 deg. to each other leaving a 1/2" gap at the ends to allow for the points of the wedges to come thru, this is your glu up jig. Apply glue to the mating edges, work quickly if you decide to use poly glue ( once cured it is waterproof.), try to more or less align the points of the wedges as they come thru the gap in your jig, gently tap all the wedges in so that they all are tight against each other, drive a screw part way in to the bench top behind each wedge to keep them in place. I also take one or two 1 1/4" strips of scrap, wrap them in wax paper and screw them down over the assembly to keep it flat. Once the glue has cured take out your pieces, scrape and sand the excess glue off and glue them together, this time you will only need one long piece screwed to your bench, don’t forget the wax paper. Glue cured? Take your 180 deg. piece, scrape and sand.
Take a compass and draw a half circle using the meeting point of all the wedges as your radius, or a point perpendicular to it on the bench if you don’t want a 180 deg. arc. Carefully cut out the arc on a scroll saw, trace the inside of the cut on a piece of wood of the same thickness and again cut on the scroll saw, clean up the saw marks with some sand paper, make sure it all fits tight together and glue up, let the glue cure, scrape and sand and you now have your basic sunburst. Tru up the bottom of the sunburst using a router and straight edge, at this point the sunburst will be quite flexible, don’t flex it too much or it might break apart, glue a strip to of the same thickness to the bottom of the sunburst, this will stiffen everything up. Lay the fin template on the top, position it more or less with the sun close to the middle, trace it with a pencil, cut it on a scroll saw and voila’ you now have a fin blank, foil it and once you glass the whole thing it should be plenty strong to ride.
Time for some rum now, I hope this helped, let me know if you need more help.
WM
thanks Rolly, that was very in depth, I will be making a sunrise fin for my hollow wooden i’m building right now, I had an idea in my head how it would go but your info was of great help also, Thankyou.
sweet looking fins by the way!
whoah! just made journeyman! woohoo
oops… did i say that out loud! hehehe…
Fantastic stuff.
Did you construct the pair of fins seperately or make the blank thick enough to slice two fins out of. The batch of keels that I did recently were done in a similar way (nowhere near as intricate as yours, just three or four wedges) each blank thick enough to split into two matching pieces.
Nice work!
Jase (MMM)
P.S. I’ll try the “big bar of chocolate first method” on my next lot. Thanks for the tip.
Fantastic stuff.
Did you construct the pair of fins seperately or make the blank thick enough to slice two fins out of. The batch of keels that I did recently were done in a similar way (nowhere near as intricate as yours, just three or four wedges) each blank thick enough to split into two matching pieces.
Nice work!
Jase (MMM)
P.S. I’ll try the “big bar of chocolate first method” on my next lot. Thanks for the tip.
The chocolate part is the most important part! If I don’t do that it doesn’t work!!
Do each blank separately. Don’t do one thick piece to split unless 1: you have a band saw that can take a blade wide enough to do some resawing and 2 you have a thickness drum sander to take out the saw marks.
I have never fed a piece of lumber thru a planer with the grain going crosswise, that’s what would happen if you did do it that way, some of the grain would be oriented crosswise and I don’t know what would happen if you did, it might get kicked back at you, to try and clean up the saw marks after splitting one big piece by just sanding with a belt sander you would never end up with uniform thickness, I assume that the foiling would be a hell of a lot easier if the blank were of uniform thickness.
I am sorry if my explanation was a bit longwinded, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything out.
Rolly
yeah fatbas, I saw those fins of yours somewhere else they looked way sweet also, specially the pic of like 10 of them all together being glassed! it almost gave me a… woody?
Cheers man,
they gave me the horn too, that wasn’t resin on them y’know. The set that I stuck on the bottom of my “hollow oak” have been wrecked by some rocks a couple of weeks back, I think I should have used a couple more layers of glass on them and more fin rope around the edges (live and learn eh?)
I’ve got a stack of timber left to do some more, I’ll send you some blanks when I get round to them if you want (don’t hold your breath though, they take me ages as everything does). I quite fancy trying some full rising sun type a’la this thread. I’ll post pics as and when I get to them, unless they go way wrong.
Jase (MMM)