had a nice day putting the finishing touches on 4 new balsa/eps boards… i got photos of two of them before they were picked up by their new owners, i’ll get some photos of the other two in the next day or so… anyhow, these last 4 were by far the nicest boards i have made yet, in any construction style…
5’7"x 19 1/4" x 2 1/4" @ 5lbs5oz w/fins. flat bottom and concave deck, sprayed on semi-gloss finish…
this one was painted with a green dye on the wood… i was kinda bumed when the glue lines show up (i should have seen it coming) but everyone who has checked it out points out how they like the effect…
6’2" x18 1/2" x2 3/8" @ 5lb 11oz w/fins, sprayed on semi-gloss finish…
enjoy…
yeah i agree those boards are super nice…love the green one…its got lots of character and a rippable shape.
Btw, soft flexy plastic fins may not work all that good. You may want to suggest stiffer fins…I think Futures are plenty stiff tho…better than std fcs…
good stuff J!
anyhow, these last 4 were by far the nicest boards i have made yet, in any construction style…
I’ve always been impressed by your boards so these ones must be amazing! I like the green one (the glue lines add character). What are you using for your vent plugs?
hey dan. i believe the vents are made by chinook… i had three bad leaks on the different homemade ones that i tired so i went back to the premades… i was using the chinooks that you sanded flush but last time i went to fiberglass hawaii this is what they had… they stick up about 3/16 off the deck but it is no big deal, they seem to seal real nice and that is what is really important…
jjp, nice boards! I really like the 5’7"swallow. what do you spray on for your semigloss?
I am now using two part urethane for glosscoats but hate the VOC’s. of course I am using a respirator but it’s still in the air after a few hours. I have used system three’s waterbased urethane
before and am thinking of switching back, low odor but not that really glossy finish.
Jimmy yoshio shibata.
Killer work there jjp!
I am now using two part urethane for glosscoats but
Here’s what I’m giving a try . At least its isocyanide free. I’ll let you know how it works out.
Hey John
how thick you go with the rails?
And if it’s 1/4" or more what do you you use to bend them?
Cold press bending or heat and steam?
I saw CMP yesterday and he said you use a lip from one of the lams but he didn’t understand any of the other stuff… He said it sounded like carpenter secret code language…
We’ve been using a heat gun to bend the nose and tail pieces before gluing them on but you end up with blackened wood if you don’t wet it which we don’t want to do cause we’re putting them on right away with glue… Seems stupisd but we do the first layer with 5min epoxy and then everything else with super glue probably asking for trouble.
We tried to do two bands of 1/2" corecell on the each with a bag and that whole process sucked. The rails are the worst part of these sando’s.
Seems like if you keep the pieces small enough and use some type of super glue or 1min epoxy you can lay these up pretty quick.
I was almost going to give up on would and switch to just bending one single band of high density corecell and dow blue foam for the rails. But the wood could be manageable if you do it a certain way…
Nice work as well but you got skills and the tools if your in your line of work…
Oh yea last Q…
do you really need to overlap the skins over the rail band for strength?
at this point we’re opting not to, just cut it square after doing the top and bottom and slapping on the rails.
This way we can lam the deck and bottom at the same time saving one day of vacuum pulls.
Also blending the overlap into the rail if you aren’t wrapping isn’t worth the effort you might as well overlap the rail without the solid rails at that point…
Thanks…
Again very nice stuff
You and CMP are the OBECALP sando kings of Oahu…
Gary Young is the master I guess…
i have been around power tools and building projects my whole life. i can remember when i was around 12 years old and my dad was away on a business trip. i went out into the shop and was going to build him a papertowel holder. at this point i was allowed to use the drill press and scrap wood but i wanted to put a cool edge on the base so i got out a router… i remember turing the router on and then being on the floor. the wood shot out of the router and hit me in the chest. i just turned 30 and that has been the worst working accident i have had. i am very saftey concerned and take all the precautions i can. i just had a hearing test and the guy couldn’t believe i still had perfect hearing, i told him i always wear the ear things… one thing i hear over and over again from people is “don’t spary urethane.” just a few weeks ago bill barnfiled was telling me a story of a guy who got screwed up because the air going into his sanding room was carrying urathane overspray. so that is where i draw the line. these boards are soooo labor intensive compared to the ol pick up blank, shape, drop off at glasser, i am a shaper thing that i decided if i am going to sell them i can’t do it all… so no leash loops, no glass on fins, and no high gloss shine on everyday type boards, sanded finish and a coat of satin or semigloss waterbased hardwood floor polyurathnae from the local hardware store… big fan of the system three stuff but for one board at a time it is not worth cleaning my spray rig between steps. with a 1 part waterbased i can just pick up the gun spray, wipe the tip and do something else while it is drying for the next coat.
onto the rails…
i think the deck skin over the rail is important if you want to keep the board light. with this style you have say 12+oz of glass supporting the deck skin at the rail joint. if you do it the other way you only have whatever your outter glass is supporting it, so say 4oz or 8oz if your bottom lap comes up that far… but that is just my 2cents no data to back it up…
don’t know what to say about the rails as i have never had a problem getting the wood to bend. i just did a 5’10" fish with three 1/4" strips, rr epoxy and vac baged in place… the problem i had was getting the bottom of the rail to all be flush with the bottom of the board… i just make sure that all the wood is past the bottom then after it is dry i sand it all flush… one thing i did notice is that the less wide a piece of wood is the easier it will bend. so a 1/4" x 2" will bend a lot easier then a 1/4" x 4" piece…
oh yah oneula, the 5min epoxy dosn’t sound stupid at all… infact i was just talking with Lousi at FGH and he said they are about to release a 2min epoxy that is super easy to work with… after trying a bunch a differnt ways i am thinking that some quick epoxy is the way to go… i keep thinking back to berts post were he said his rail monkey could do three boards in an hr… to me that means no pre anything, just quick epoxy and slap it on, maybe hold with some tape while you work on the next one (but bert is also only doing 3/8" wide rails)…
oh yah… i got a post cure system going. so bottom skin and rails in one day no problem…
i think the deck skin over the rail is important if you want to keep the board light. with this style you have say 12+oz of glass supporting the deck skin at the rail joint. if you do it the other way you only have whatever your outter glass is supporting it, so say 4oz or 8oz if your bottom lap comes up that far… but that is just my 2cents no data to back it up…
Well if we wrap a bottom 4 and a top 6 that gives us 10 if I was real hard core I’d do the Benny1/DanB dance and run a tape strip over the rail. Someone mentioned this when they saw Berts small rolls of glass in a pic.
oh yah oneula, the 5min epoxy dosn’t sound stupid at all… infact i was just talking with Lousi at FGH and he said they are about to release a 2min epoxy that is super easy to work with… after trying a bunch a differnt ways i am thinking that some quick epoxy is the way to go… i keep thinking back to berts post were he said his rail monkey could do three boards in an hr… to me that means no pre anything, just quick epoxy and slap it on, maybe hold with some tape while you work on the next one (but bert is also only doing 3/8" wide rails)…
Yah I’ve been imagining something similar based on what Bert said about slapping on rails and what DanB said about looking at the rails… His whole Dcell routine throws you off when you compare it to doing wood rails… DanB said it looked like Bert was using a bunch of small pieces to build out his rails probably has something to do with his flex science. But I’ve been thinking if you break the rail line down into small enough sections and have some type of template or calculation to follow. you could just jigsaw puzzled a faily thick rail band in no time if the pieces were cut small enough to reduce or eliminate the amount of bending required. It would be a scarf jointer’s hell or paradise to plan and cut these but with some 2/5 minute epoxy you could do these in a rapid fashion… So maybe that’s why he uses small pieces…
Secondly if you use a real thin layer let’s say 1/16 or 1/32 balsa up against the foam just to seal it. you could use long strips that would bend easily and hold inplace with tape till the epoxy dried. Then you could fasten the rest of the short pieces of thick stock on the outside using some time of super fast drying adhesive or epoxy and wack out a rail band in no time. Kind of like how Roy builds out his panels with 2" long by 3" wide pieces in between his crossmembers so he can make the curves with ease on his dragon boards.
I think we may have been getting lost with this whole wood bending technique and suffering through the issues of springback when we maybe should have been thinking of scarfing in straight pieces of wood…
I don’t know… We just have been learning alot about bending rails lately none of it good.
You should teach a class to the pros…
Your stuffs that good…
hi JJP !
I like 'em BOTH !
Do you have a shot showing the concave deck [from the tail looking to the nose] , by any chance ?
cheers !
ben
[I made a concave decked 5’5 x 19 1/2 fish a few years back]
sorry i deleated the rest of the photos, so no deck shot…
the guy tested it out today, the waves were junky buy he said he had a blast. i don’t know how he can even surf it as he is about 190lbs, said he sinks to his neck when i sits on it. funny think about really good surfers they can surf anything… not me at all.
" sorry i deleted the rest of the photos "…
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…”
“naughty …NAUGHTY …DON’T DO IT AGAIN !!!”
I don’t know… We just have been learning alot about bending rails lately none of it good.
I don’t know… We just have been learning alot about bending rails lately none of it good.
I don’t know… We just have been learning alot about bending rails lately none of it good.
Tell me about it!
Nice Boards JJP
I note that you have over laid the deck skin but not the bottom
Also reading some of the other posts here on rails
Here’s my take on it
Both my skins top and bottom overlap the rail bands
Both of these skins are pre laminated on the outside prior to baging
My rail bands are made up from what ever is left over scraps etc and butt joined
They are cut using a template
Then five min epoxied to the blank prior to the deck roll being shaped
They are real easy to do and take 20mins or less
I tend to think of the rail bands as another sandwich with the bands being the core
Once again nice wrk jjp I saw a couple of Berts while I was in Perth yours look just as good
Mike
Both my skins top and bottom overlap the rail bands
Both of these skins are pre laminated on the outside prior to baging
I also prelam my skins. I was going to try it differently this time, but at the last minute went back to the prelammed skins (they look so nice). I was wondering, do you hotcoat your skins? Mine look like they don’t need it but I’m a little nervous to try it without the hotcoat. How come you overlap both the top and bottom of the board? It sure looks a lot nicer when its done this way.
Hi Dan
No I dont hot coat,once the whole board is finished i coat it with a two pac clear gloss
You just need to make sure that you have a good extraction system and good H&S proceedures
It also helps because i am in the country side so the nearest house is a km away
I use about 50gms of clear for a short board and try to minimize how much i use
I dont really like spraying it into the atmosphere
Mainly i overlap top and bottom because its quick,I only do one bag operation per board ,but also as i said in the other post I look at the rail bands as a sandwich so the inner glass on the skins goes over the top of the rail band thereby creating another sandwich, looking at it this way means that the bands are just sandwich cores so full on scarfs are not needed.
Mike
I think that I’m going to give it a try without hotcoating it. When I look at the glass its unbelievably clean and it looks like a hotcoat would only get in the way. I’m going to try using one of Upol’s 1k sprays. It seems a LITTLE less toxic.
They both look sweet - I was going to say they seemed a bit thick but then you wrote that the owner is 190 lbs. Look foreward to hearing more rider feedback.
