Had a pretty fun weekend, got some nice hurricane surf on Saturday. Rest of the weekend was rainy so decided it was time to build a board. Been wanting a nice 6’ shortboard for a month or two, but spent my wife authorized new surfboard fund money on a 6’9 Downing. Can’t wait to surf it! Well a friend gave me a 6’ offcut machined poly blank in the general shape of what i want.
Only problem is that it is 2 1/4" thick, which even surfing three days a week and paddling a bit is not going to float/fly.
Welp, I also have some blue dow xps. So I decided to make a franken board.
First step got my hotwire out and sliced the blue dow into half inch thick pieces.
Then glued the pieces together.
Cut the outline.
Then vacuum bagged the xps onto poly with a bunch of gg.
Next step, mow foam.
If anyone wants to know why i would bring such an abomination into existence, Why not? and I am having a good time.
YES!!! love the idea and think it’s always best to make builds that the crusty dudes on here will scoff at, especially if you’re having fun, haha. good luck, can’t wait to see the result.
since the poly has a stringer, you didnt have worry about the rocker being tweaked in the bag, right?
Here is how I set up the hotwire to split the blue dow.
The second picture shows what the cut looked like. I botched it towards the edge, but didn’t matter since was cut off. I ran the hotwire pretty cool when I did the cut, might look better if I ran a little hotter.
The bottom picture is the end result. Came out good enough to surf.
I keep breaking wire when I do the wide cuts. I even have really thick wire, but I was using a variac. I gave the variac back to my brother, but I have an assortment of DC power supplies for small electronics and a couple of power supplies for older external drive enclosures.
I have extra parts from when I made mine. If you want, I can rig up a little box to attach to a power supply so you can vary the current at the output. Its pretty simple, it won’t have the digital readout, but I barely use the readout. I just start cranking up the power until it cuts right.
I think the most useful is something >= 12 Volts DC. Also for mine I haven’t gone past 2.2 A.
My store bought set up cutter wire can go through 2 or three billets without breaking. Usually my spring will need replacing before the wire. I think this should have its own category in sways because volts and amps and dc were mentioned. Are you skinning the board with something? If not you should do a vac bag glass job. Green room with west coast fast it will be done in 3 hours max top and bottom.
Bernie’s bow works great too. I don’t think he’s ever changed the wire. I’ve burned out a power supply for the smaller hot wires he has.
Love your sense of humor Charlie. I think the DC power seems to work better maybe because the electrons are moving in one direction. Maybe because my hot wires don’t have any springs. I don’t know the science behind a good hot wire setup. I just pull the bow apart to keep tension.
You break a wire once and say to yourself. “eight it too high”. Then turn it to seven and they last for a long time. Each wire has its specific limits and once you find it you are good to go.
I find when I stick the power supply high enough, the electrons get some speed. Its all about the gravity
On another note, I broke three wires in a row on that hotwire rail cutter I have, and I was running it at the same current. I think I must have put too much tension on it.
Charlie,
Not sure what I am going to do with it, after I finish the rails/deck. I was almost thinking of vacuum bagging the leftover cork you gave me over the rails to cover up the ugliness. Although if you have some of that balsa left over:) I will send you a pm.
I think it’s the tension or lack of attention. My ADD has me pushing the wire through with too much of an accelerated flow. Maybe a simple calculation of the forces that are interacting here will help me to fine tune the process.
What I’ve noticed is that the wire gets red hot at the edges of the wire between the foam and the point where the voltage is being fed into the wire.
Charlie, I didn’t have it at 7, I had it at 40. Think it’s 40 percent. That was for the thick wire. I’ve since bought some thinner wire, and then I also had some too thin wire.
An extra hand is always nice when cutting foam. In my hey day making blanks, after clark closed, i always had 2 extra people to cut and glue the blanks. I do it by myself now and have a system. Having my wife help is always a bonus too.
When I cut with Bernie, we usually don’t have any problems. Maybe it’s the bow, maybe it’s the extra hands.
At my house I’ll never get help making boards. To put it mildly, my wife and kids don’t appreciate my board making at home. Kids say it’s too noisy, wife is mad because I don’t try to sell them and get some money back. I prefer giving them to friend’s kids once I don’t want them anymore.
Let me know next time you need a hand, I am right around the corner.
My wife isn’t a big fan of it either. I tend to walk in the house or leave the door open and get a bunch of dust inside. I think she just realized too, that in no way do I save money by making surfboards for myself. We used to have a 21ft center console, and I tried to convince her that catching 30lbs of fish was worth the cost of boat… I think she is on to me
Love the Franken board, oh & Chuffed it’s not just my wife who’s onto me! Haaa. Hardly ever manage too get an extra pair of hands, the joys of being in the backend of nowhere. Usually work the camcorder on a stool to check the far off line when taking entire deck cuts!! Always found my wire breaking if it got red hot. Ive done 3 boards with the same cutter/wire setup now with no problems. Use old laptop power supply @ 19v 3.9 amp. Think wire is 0.67mm. It’s the A string from my mandolin! Have springs at both ends too.
Thanks for the offer to help. I may take you up on it when I get around to cutting foam. My brother may be interested in slicing some of the blue dow I have into thinner sheets. I made a jig once that I had stretched across a piece of 2’ wide plywood and I was able to cut EPS down to 1/2". Did that at my brother’s house with his wires. I haven’t had much luck repeating that with the blue dow at my house. I moved the foam through a stationary cutter, but looks like you might be moving the wire through the foam. Probably less stress on the wire that way.
I don’t think I want to get more foam right now. I’m going to be losing my storage space once we start rebuilding my mother in law’s house. I have over a dozen boards stashed there, and all the wood and foam I’ve been using for my boards. I can hear my wife complaining about all the crap I’ve been hiding from her once it’s all back at our house. My current work space will probably become storage space then.
I am just about finished with a replacement for the 8’ board I broke a while ago. This one is a true Frankenstein board. I cut rocker slices and glued it to the middle section of the board thinking that I’d be able to use most of the old foam and save the box. The I decided that I didn’t want to use the older EPS. I was going to put a new middle section and have all new foam because the origonal was chambered and I knew I might cut into the chambers, but the glue set really well and I didn’t want to cut it out again. I ended up having to deal with 2 sections where I cut into the chambered foam. I stuffed the holes with more foam and kept on going.
Cool Spey, I like the cutter. Thanks for the tip on the wire too. I ordered some wires from acpcomposites, but would be easier to be able to just grab something from the store when I need it, like a mandolin wire:)
Nice work Sharkcountry, I like it.
For cutting the slices all I did was lay the cutter I posted, down with the wire up, and pushed the foam through it, almost like a planer(not the shaping planer but the one that evens out wood). I think I might get a better cut if I put it on a big piece of plywood and let the cutter move down by gravity instead of pushing it. Saw some video of people doing airplane wings, and the cuts came out pretty smooth when they let the cutter go naturally instead of pushing.
Jrandy,
Shaped it this weekend. Was pretty fun, hadn’t touched my planer in a bit. Last board was all hotwire. Felt good. Shaping that blue foam is pretty easy.
Hopefully going to Charlie’s Laboratory to laminate it this week.
Should have cork deck. Bright orange futures boxes. Any recommendations on what bottom color goes good with orange fin boxes and cork? Black? Blue? Lime Green?
