Soooo the adventure begins: This will have flat bottom w/ slight chines (about 1/8" deep X 1 1/2") wide from nose to about 18 inches forward of tail. Soft 50/50 rails at widepoint to tucked behind fins. Flat tail rocker and flex tail. (a kneeboard)
Now, imagine if you will “the uncarved block.” Picture 2 slabs of 2# EPS each one 4" X 12" X 6’ (was 8 feet but had to hack some off to fit in car to get it home. Sort of reminiscent to the monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey only white. I am the monkey. Glued in 1/8" PVC slice for stringer but made 2 errors. One was putting in a stringer since I am totally shaping this w/ surform and sand paper and a little rabbit plane. Real shaping from scratch. Like making bread starting w/ grinding the grain. By hand. That PVC is a be-atch to shape and if I do another this way (carving the rocker w/out any hotwire etc.) NO STRINGER!!! The other error was I forgot (DUH!) to counter sink the PVC and since I only put it about 2/3 board length to facilitate tail flex there was a small gap I thought I’d fill w/ RooGlue and microballoons. Took forever to dry and looks crappy. Will probably carefully remove w/ saw and refill w/ foam dust/epoxy putty before glassing. I’m likely to leave some of that part of the blank in place instead of removing and refilling w/ pour foam as the EPS seems pretty sturdy and more important, the amount of foam that will be left, is so insignificant in terms of added strength that I think the glass/resin is the key. I plan to reinforce key areas w/ unidirectional Eglass at the end (down centerline and inside of rails). If it breaks, I’ll make another. Too much fun in the making and I really want to see if I can design the glass job to hold up under flex.
Finally got a digital camera but needs OS X on the MAC and our computer won’t run OS X so new box is on the short list.
Attached is photo of a Pavel I took the template from. Someone posted it on here awhile ago and I liked it. Put it in Photoshop and scaled it to 60" long and took width measures every six inches. Now its on a piece of door-skin for future reference. I have wanted a 6" X 21" since high school. Always has seemed like some sort of Golden Mean of board specs in my mind somehow and that is exactly what this template came out to.
More to come. Oh by the way, Microplane replacement blades for surform are definitely the call. Cut like buttah so smoooooooth and easy. Whoever referenced them on this site, thank you!
