Hey Chippy
here’s what has been keeping me busy these past 3 weekends or so…
Hopefully you can see the photos here versus on the message board… Let me know!
Project 1: Fish Fin Projects (to be giveaways to all the fish heads out there)
Project 2: Balsa Rail Project over EPS (Blank courtesy of CMP)
Project 3: Woven bamboo wood lam over regular foam (Blank courtesy of CMP)
Project 4: Walnut hardwood veneer over balsa lam strips for deck and bottom of 2 new boards
Busy, busy busy…b
Oneula- great to finally see your photos 
I’m really looking forward to seeing a finished photo of that bamboo.
I built my balsa rails after applying the bottom & deck balsa…I think its marginally easier because of a little wood-wood gluing at the edges of the first piece, and because the blue tape I use to clamp the rails on sticks better to sanded balsa than it does to EPS. But yours will have the advantage of the deck going over wood so it won’t crush into the foam along the joint edge…I’m hoping 6oz glass above & below the deck balsa solves that problem in advance…
Yeah Benny
sorry about that… I didn’t realize you couldn’t see the pics either on the message board…
I glad you caught’em here… Chipfish was the one who clued me in to the fact that he couldn’t see anything…
funny cause I can in the sent message section…
I finished glueing up the 12" zebrawood veneer to the 48"x1/16"x3" balsa strips… I’ll need help from CMP ripping the 12"x6"x2" zebrawood chunk for the nose and tail blocks on the EPS. I send you all the pics when I’m done.
Maybe Bert can clue us in if this exotic veneer glued over balsa lam attempt is in vain… CMP and my brother loves the purity of the 100% balsa look but I’m a liitle more into the exotic stuff. Adds a bit more flavor in my opinion like Marke’s board show us… But I’m then just a newbie at all this having just started at the beginning of this year.
Sways… what have you done to me…
Right now dust management is my biggest problem…
I bought a 1HP Delta dust extraction unit last night and the garbage can lid inline adaptor with 4"to2.5" hose converters.
Oh yea… and if the great woodworking santa is out there and I know it’s a little early… I promise to be a good boy for the rest of my life if you just drop off a FEIN/FESTOOLS Turbo III Vacuum/Dust Extractor with a 5" FESTOOLS ROTEX combo grinder/finish sander on my doorstep… It’s only the mere pittance of $1000 or so about the same as a Bert Burger board… I guess you can always dream but that’s my next goal in life…
Damn oneula, busy guy! Weren’t you the one asking me how I found the time for my projects? And here you are with all these irons in the fire… Looks like you might even beat me to a completed board with the exotic lams. The balsa/veneer deal looks like it should be plenty strong, actually makes me wonder about the 4oz/veneer/6oz sandwich I am planning. hope mine is strong enough! I’m just waiting for my vac pump, I have everything else ready.
Great work, and nice looking fish fins!!
hey , thanks heaps Bernie !
nice work …busy work …labour intensive work …but… fun fun fun eh ?!
GREAT to SEE those ! The ‘fish fins’…for future or lokbox ? [ I don’t see many here , so I tend to get the ‘tabs’ confused ! ]
Did you mould the bases , or are they all hand layed up ?
The bamboo board looks really nice … keep up the good work !!
Glad to see you’ve finished one project [the fins] . I think it needs to be one at a time for me, too, from now on…so I don’t end up with six half [or, unfinished !] projects on the go at once . [like the 8’er for instance , STILL sitting in poor ol’ Hicksy’s rafters.]
At the moment , I’m on a fin making and finishing bender , and Grant has a mal blank in the shed for another guy, so , when his gun plus that mal are done, THEN I’ll give my 8’er another look! [could be a WHILE!!]
ben
Chip
they’re the extensions from the middle lam of 3 thick layers of glass mat tinted black with 1/8" white wood (maple) on one side and 1/8" chocolate wood on the other (I don’t know). I had to cut them down to fit in future boxes but they need to be built up more. How’s that song go… Ebony, Ivory da da da
I was going to do it by hand with more mat but I got another brainstorm and bought a couple future side boxes and mold release wax. Gonna hacksaw the boxes in half tape or clamp them back togethor with on a table clamp then coat with the box wax all over. Insert the fin tabs into the box and set the cant angle with tape like you would do on a real board. Then fill the box with epoxy and let dry. Crack open the box and layup the outside glass layers over the wood and box tab, although I’m now thinking of doing this before I mold the end base out of epoxy.
I have three different fishes I can try these Lis style fish fins out on and give away the rest…
The red Padauk and plywood fins are for glassing on. The Paduak’s a problem with it’s natural oil sure pretty though… What I didn’t show are three more fish fin sets in rough cut from 2lb EPS scraps and 2 more from birch 9 ply. I also have cut my another set of fish fins from a plank of curly koa and am still debating it… Thinking of shaping/foiling the eps, vacuuming on exotic veneer and glassing heavy over then. Should at least be easier to foil…
so much to do
never enough time…
…that’s interesting to me Bernie , because I have three foam core fins I want to resurrect by doing the moulded base thing …one is a foam core SINGLE KEEL !
Just a question …do you HAVE to cut the boxes open ?
IF you use them as is , would it be too difficult to get the release agent into all the little nooks and crannys ? Is THAT why you cut the boxes, then tape 'em ? [ I tried (unsuccessfully!) to cut an F.U. box down the middle so I could pull out the moulded base “easily”…not easy !!]
cheers !
ben
Update:
Sorry only the “before” phase ugly pictures available now… I
'll try and get more next weekend…
It’s tough remembering to document everything as you go along.
Anyway lessons learned along the way this weekend…
On Saturday CMP and I vacuum lammed the bottoms. first the bamboo on the 7’3" regular foam and the balsa with hardwood veneer on the balsa railed 7’ 2lb EPS. I had to clean up the rails on the EPS first. We got worried about the bamboo because the epoxy kept beading up like it wasn’t going to stick. Spent most of the morning building all my other top and bottom lams and probably rushed it a bit too much. The bamboo did stick and boy did it ever…
On sunday my brother came over and finished his top and bottom on his 8’0 EPS double ender project (what a mess even with the screen tent to try and contain the bubbles, foam bubbles everywhere). We then then went over the Surfgear’s to bottom lam the bamboo onto his bottom and the hardwood veneered 1/16" balsa top on my regular foam board. But first I had to cut the 1/4"-1/8" over hand down flush to the bottom edge and boy did we learn something about bamboo…
The epoxy hardened latticed 1mm bamboo was harder than steel to cut with a sander.
Even 40 grit or a block planer would barely cut it down. We really screwed the rail and bamboo trying to take the overlap off. Since we had already bagged my brother’s 8’0" he’s was starting to have nightmares about sanding his down. You’d almost ned a angle grinder with a stone disc to cut it… The Bamboo splinters cut me more than I did the board.
Second lesson learned…
The wood glued (titebond) veneer did not hold up under torque and was coming off as we were bagging so we had to brush epoxy on the top of the lam and tape it down before wrapping the no-stick to hold the veneers on during vacuum. So now sanding the epoxy down will be an issue with that 1/64 thick veneer underneath. Gonna have to have a delicate hand unlike the bamboo which left me physically exhausted trying to cut it back…
So here’s the bright idea that’s popped up regarding the bamboo… Instead of placing it on the outside of the board we’re thinking this.
Take a 1" 2’x8’ sheet of 1lb EPS they go for $8.00 at Lowes for a 4’x8’ sheet and cut your template outline out with a sharp knife (for a smooth cut). Using a tin shears cut the 1mm bamboo about 1 inch smaller than the template. Now lay your 1" sheet on a flat table and hand shape your bottom profile onto it with a sanding block. After the bottom contour has been cut. find a board with a rocker profile you want and cover the bottom tightly with drop plastic taping it to the deck. Next lay the bamboo on the bottom over the plastic and coat with epoxy. Over that lay your 1" or less shaped bottom over the bamboo and wrap the whole thing tight with the office saran wrap plastic roll .
Based on what we’ve seen the epoxy hardened bamboo should lock in the rocker and provide some unreal stiffness to the 1" bottom piece. you now epoxy glue to this piece a 1.5" or 2" template cutout as the top piece. You could even preshape the top on a flat table before glue up and infact can probably lam the bottom balsa layer and the epoxy glue top foam piece to the 1" bamboo set bottom all at the same time in your vacuum bag using weights and blocsk to keep the rocker in place.
Kind of changes the whole concept of using a stringer and cutting or shaping a floppy blank as you are doing things in pieces… You could even use liek a 4" strip of the bamboo between your sheet of EPS as a small horizontal stringer instead of a piece of carbon cloth. The weave in the bamboo should lock it into the foam. We think we’re going to give it a go as Lowes just got a shipment of $13.00 2" 1lb EPS sheets and as soon as we finish our 3 boards. These sme sheets are $40 at Homedepot.
Lastly what kind of glue would you use to glue two pieces of bag material togethor?
CMP got a brilliant idea of using those space bag valves on a vacuum bag to see if you could first of all use it to instantly suck your bag down with a shop vac liek MichaelJ and secondly whether you could use a shop vac to pull all the air out and let the one way valve do it’s thing without having to have the bag connected to a vacuum pump the whole time… Kind of like space bagging your board instead of clothes or food. Anyway I need to cut the valves out of ther bags and glue them onto a regular vacuum tube with some kind of vinyl glue…
Here’s the photos of the half finished 2lb EPS where the rails have been cleaned up and bottom lammed. I just need to cut back the overhand and taper it to accept the top. We could do the sandwhich cause CMP doesn’t have his 2oz cloth in yet.
I also had a complete brain freeze in my rush to build my lams Saturday morning and forgot about the koa turtle inlays I was planning to lam on the deck inset into the balsa strips, you can see the mahogany surfer inlays and koa turtle pieces that still need to be cut as well as the inset balsa piece I now have ready for my next project.
You can also see the matched Mahogany veneer 48"x1/64"x6.5" for the next project as well and this time I’m going to epoxy it to the top of the balsa instead of using wood glue so it doesn’t peel off.
Also for the rails bands I’m going to preconstruct 1/16"balsa+1/8"cork"+1/16" balsa sandwichs to wrap and build the rails with. Learning so much struggling along here on my second project…
Inlays
Ready 6" balsa board and Mahogany
Tomorrow they sweep Oneula Beach Park clean of the many homeless…
Say a prayer for them to find safe shelter elsewhere.
We often forget there’s so much more to life than our little decadent wave game we are so self focused on. Tomorrows a reminder that there are more important things happening out there we should be concerned about than surfing.
Aloha from Hawaii
And , regarding the question of putting mould release into a complete [ie …uncut] fin box , and being able to pull the fin out …possible ??
ben
p.s. - what’s the deal with the homeless being 'swept clean ’ ? … does the local council send police down to arrest them , or something ??
Chip
On the fins probably not because the resin would seep into areas that would make it area to pull out.
Where I live and surf is one of the most dangerous, polluted, drug infested, criminal laden home on the south shore…
Hey but it’s home (since 1959) and after years of going down to the beach you get to know the “beach residents” and say hello with a classic nod… Locals know the locals and they watch out for your stuff eventhough life has been treating the rough and they have been treating life as rough… The cops sweep to keep the scared tourists and non-residents happy. It’s funny what the rest of the honolulu central oahu think of the west/southwest side ghettos…
Here’s yesterday’s story about my namesake…
[indent] Church Leaders Ask For Moratorium On Homeless Evictions Police Plan Sweep Of Oneula Park
POSTED: 4:47 pm HST February 28, 2005 UPDATED: 10:42 am HST March 1, 2005
HONOLULU – Police said they plan to evict about 100 homeless people from Oneula Park in Ewa Beach on Wednesday. It is part of a series of homeless sweeps across Oahu.
The move is meeting resistance by a coalition of church groups. They asked for a moratorium on the sweeps until they come up with better solutions.
<span style="font-weight:bold">Video</span> <img src="http://127.0.0.1:1026/bug.cgi" alt="" class="bb-image" /> <img src="http://127.0.0.1:1026/bug.cgi" alt="" class="bb-image" /> <a href="http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/news/4240743/detail.html#" class="bb-url"> <img src="http://images.ibsys.com/2005/0202/4157801_120X90.jpg" alt="" class="bb-image" /></a><a href="http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/news/4240743/detail.html#" class="bb-url"><img src="http://images.ibsys.com/sh/images/ibs_icon/video.gif" alt="" class="bb-image" />WATCH REPORT</a> <img src="http://127.0.0.1:1026/bug.cgi" alt="" class="bb-image" /> <img src="http://127.0.0.1:1026/bug.cgi" alt="" class="bb-image" /> Homeless encampments can be found behind the bushes rimming Oneula Park.
Jackie Tomisa is the leader of one homeless compound of 10 people scheduled to be evicted Wednesday
“We don’t have any place to go, nobody does,” Tomisa said.
Last week, police with the Department of Transportation evicted homeless people from Mokuleia and an encampment under a Wahiawa bridge.
“The issue of homelessness has made cowards of us all. Almost all of us have tried to turn our faces away,”
Nakata and other religious leaders called for a halt to the evictions to give church leaders time to come up with short-term solutions.
Tomisa stood with the ministers. She admitted that she likes the lifestyle she calls “houselessness.”
“When I was little, my parents took us camping and I love camping. It was like twice a year, so it kind of grew on me. For me, I think this is a mission,” Tomisa said.
Tomisa said her mission is to look after her disabled son, Zane, and the other people in the encampment.
The homeless at Oneula Park said when they are evicted this week they will leave most of their structures behind and move right next door into the public beach park. That worries some beach users and fishermen like James Jackson.
“I like bring my grandchildren and my wife and stay over here in the evening, but I just don’t feel safe over here,” Jackson said.
Kapolei police said they are evicting the Oneula homeless because of complaints from Ewa residents. [/indent]