foam gap

General Discussion
1

i’m a novice at most of this so bear with me. i’m in the process of making my first blank. being that i’m in the northeast, i took a chance and decided to experiment with xps since my boards don’t see the temperatures of cali or florida. anyways, i glued up two sheets. i don’t have access to a band saw, so i crudely attempted to cut down the center with a hand saw. it of course came out uneven, i sanded it as close as i could without losing my mind and tried to glue up the two pieces (no stringer, just the glue). clamped as tight as i could, and it still has some gaps in it towards the end of the slab. any ideas on how to remedy this? i thought of buying some spray foam and spraying it in…the cans say the foam hardens and shapes away easily. any thoughts?

my last resort is to shape a smaller board than the 7’4 range i was going for but it may be hard since i already hotwired out the rocker.

2

Fill, use lightweight construction spackle.

If you use poly blow foam, it like to keep expanding long after you glass, so gives you separation in the foam to stringer and foam to glass…

3

Hey Erudo,

Now that it’s stuck together, why not cut it either side of the join (use a straight edge) and reglue, taking out the messy bit.

You could put a stringer in as well while you’re there…

4

i’d like do a recut, as long as i could still keep from taking too much foam out of the width. what do you mean by using a straight edged. it wasn’t so much that i went off my line, but that it’s hard to keep the hand saw completely straight up and down as you saw through. any tips?

5

A straight edge is anything long and straight that won’t bend or deviate from being straight, like a strip of aluminium.

There are a couple of ways you can stop your cutting from skewing off. Try holding a set square against the saw as you cut, then you’ll get a 90 deg cut = or = attach a jigsaw to a bench and pass the blank over/through it.

I’m sure others have heaps of other ways…

6

Just hit a hardware store and buy with $12 a L bend 12’ long strip of aluminum.

7

hicksy, i caught myself stairing at your avatar for like a minute in a half. Then i tried to get up but i fell over. Ha…anyway, i like the idea of using the jigsaw upside down. Never really though of that. Definitely seems you could be more accurate that way, more in control.

8

Glad to see it works, finally made someone fall over…

I clamp my jigsaw upside down in a workbench, one of those fold up ones with the top having 2 wind up handles.

As long as the blade is true 90deg to the base and you don’t push the blade to the side while cutting you can get a really good straight line cut. I’ve got a 4" blade in mine at the moment…