Hey sway members! long time reader first time poster
Going to start a flex tail hull bottomed board similar to greg liddles boards, has anyone on here glassed one themselves? i was thinking around 6 to 8 layer progressively on the bottom lam of the board, and then how men layers on the top to have a decent strength glass panel?
The board will be volant with cut laps so will i glass the bottom as sisal and then cut away and grind the laps until the foam is gone and i hit the glass panel on the bottom
Go to Liddle surfboards original home page scroll down to kp at Instagram. Click on that then scroll through the pics some flex tail pics in there the first one about 6 rows down. There are more that show how the glass is layered… good luck
Made a few flex tails. Use to do 4 stagged layers of 6 oz…then shape foam off …glass the board as normal …then add layers if needed after sanding…best one i made i added carbon fibre with epoxy resin. Different sort of flex …straight fibre glass seemed to have a limit of wave size and power …good when small …
The flex tail that worked the best for me is in the Liddle photo index Matt talks about either under Dave Lloyd or my name. Only the corners of the tail flexed. I think that has 8 layers sanded down to 4. The problem with the flex is that they would hing at the foam/glass interface and break. Best bet is to figure on lamming the flex tail as part of the bottom lam and then grind off the foam. Be sure to leave 4-5 inches of the “flex tail lam” beneath the foam adjacent to the flex portion to absorb the hing effect. Once the board is done, you sand the flex tail glass down until it bends the way you like. Dave’s board had boogie board foam glued on the flex portion for some additional float. The foam flexed easily so it didn’t stiffen the tail too much.
If you go to the original liddle surfboards site scroll down to Kp at Instagram he posted a 6’6" flex tail today it’s a video clip so it shows some good angles which should help
In that video, the glass/foam transition line is a concave curve.
A convex curve could be used also.
Concave vs. convex transition lines should create different flex patterns.
In my “opinion,” a convex transition line is least likely to have hinging problems (middle image).
[A straight line through the FG panel connects the ends of the concave curves – hinge line.]
