My budddy wants me to shape him a blank with a red/white/blue stringer cominations. My advice was to to a T Band and paint the colors on in after the hotcoat, but he has his mind made up that he wants colored foam stringers to accomplish this. I know that you can get colored foam bands in red and blue, and you can certainly sandwhich them together to create any combination of red/white/blue that you want. However I would thinkg that you would still need a stringer in there somewhere right??? What about sandwhiching the foam stringers with two 1"8 basswood stringers? The blank he wants to use is the 10’7H. He’s a big guy, 6’4" 230ish. I’ve no experience with foam stringers, and or strange stringer combinations, so any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Drew
I wonder if you could get Clark to make you up a blank with red glue on one side of some bass, and blue on the other? … I know that bass isn’t the whitest of woods but…
another option with clark is glue lines. just get them to put glue in where stringers would go, insert stringers as you normally would. makes a nice through the board pin stripe effect. no charge either (i think). i did a board recently with a t-band stringer with black glue for the glue-up and glue lines offsetting the center stringer by about 5 inches. had a nice, classic longboard look.
do the glue lines look smooth?? bitch to shape??
they come out smooth. just have to be careful at the rails, treat it like an offset stringer. that is, plan ahead, shape the glue line close to finish shape and smooth the rails into it. probably not the best explanation, but you probably get the picture.
Drew where are you at? Because I use like 99% clark but for any weird shit like that i Use Walker Foam, They do alot of custom work like that and they have the foams colored as well, price is comparable and they have comparable blanks, Id recommend that, get it set up nice why not the colored foams offset like 1/2 inch from the stringer then paint the stringer white? Now that I read that its gonna look like a surf tech oh well. If ya need more info on walker email me http://www.paradoxdistribution.com
Clark made me some blanks last year with colored foam wedges that tapered the length of the board. They also made a 2" wide black foam insert on an egg blank. Do they still have color foam as an option?
Just sent you an email about Walker blanks!!
glue lines are a hassle to shape, though I’ve done very few. The glue tends to tear out in little chunks, which put gouge marks in the blank surface. Now this is no big thing on a clear glass job, but my last was a blue tint and I had to do very careful fine sande to eliminate most of those gouge marks. I’d not have had a problem if I’d glassed clear.
Wouldn’t glue lines be expensive since it costs about $15 per cut on a blank, no?
Clark does still make colored foam stringers. As for glue lines he now charges the same price as a stringer. $15 I think. I had a Clark blank with a yellow foam wedge. Looked good, at least I thought so. I think the longest you can get a wedge is 10’6". I know for most of you that is more then enough, but for me it wasn’t. I did a foam wedge tban, with red wood, and ended it at 10’6" and had 2 red wood stringers come together. Work out nice.
Drew: You may want to think about more meat than two 1/8" stringers on a 10’+ board. That sounds a little light to me. I can’t remember but I think Clark recommends a minimum of 3/8" of total stringer(s) width on these longer blanks. I imagine that a board is structurally similar to an I-beam and the stringer is the web of the beam.
Excellent advice Lance. i had a Yater that had the diamond wedge stringer with two 1/4" stringers. Snapped that sucker right down the middle