I raided the toy box, and grabbed my sons Chick-fil-A kid’s meal mad scientist kit. I promised to take him again.
I recently made a picture frame for my Mom out of some old mahogany that was sitting in my parents garage. I had a small block left over, so I resawed it into thin strips. Several months ago I bought a sheet of 1/16 inch G10. I lightly sanded the sheet with 100 grit sand paper to help the epoxy stick better.
Here it is after laminating one side.
I’m going to make fins for a thruster setup. Hopefully, I will have enough material for six fins in total.
I’ll post more pictures as soon as I complete the next steps.
Wait RR epoxy comes with a Chick-fil-A kids meal?!?! gonna find the nearest location right now
That’ll be a cool look Mohagony over G-10. Is the wood or the G10 going on the inside of the fins? and what are your plans for the center fin… g10 sandwiched in wood?
Ahhh… I get it now! That was funny. I hate it when everyone is laughing at a joke, and I just don’t understand. I thought it might have been a movie quote, but nothing showed up when I Googled “For the love of god…” Thanks for spelling it out for me.
I had some time to work on the fins tonight. Here are some pictures of my progress.
I made a fin template out of plywood. I’m going to use it as a guide for routering out the fin shape. First, I put blue tape on the template, sprayed it with Super 77, and then stuck it to the fin blank.
Next, I had to cut out the excess material with a bandsaw. Notice my big fat resaw blade in the picture above. I was too lazy to change blades, so I made a bunch of relief cuts (see below).
I didn’t want G10 dust all over my garage, so I placed my shop vac hose right next to the blade. It worked great – no dust.
After rough cutting the blank to the shape of the fin, I finished it off with the router (see below). Notice the vaccuum hose above the bit. This setup also worked well. I didn’t have much dust to clean up tonight.
Here it is after routering.
I was able to easily pull off the plywood template with my hands. Here is a side view. You can see the G10 layer on ther right hand side. This is going to be a right side fin.
Next, I glued the template back onto the other side of the fin blank. Here, you can see the progress that I made tonight.
The wife and kids came home before I could finish the blank for the center fins. Hopefullly, I’ll get some more time to work on it over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Fins are small, use a small grinder with a variable speed will make fairing easier. Make a small medium pad about 4 in or so. Using the 5400 sander with a big pad is pretty manly, pretty easy to have an oops.
Given the lack of response; I assume that no one wants to break it to me that the fin doesn’t look too good. There are a few things that I would have done differently.
The most obvious is the rough glue line. My boards were too thin to put through the thickness planer, and I didn’t spend the time to sand the faces down by hand. I knew the epoxy would fill the gaps, but didn’t think about the fact that it would show up so messy looking after foiling.
The other thing I need to improve is my control of the sander. I have gotten a lot better, but I still have a long way to go. For example, instead of a nice airplane wing like foil, I created something more like a wedge.
I still have five more fins to foil, so I would appreciate any constructive criticism that you can offer.
swied If your fins do not turn out the way you want them but you get a good foil. you might think about vacume bagging some exotic wood over them. It's real easy and you can use your wifes seal a meal vacume to do it . The problem I always had with wood fins is those glue lines. Even if they are perfect they are still ugle to me. When you vac on a skin there are no glue lines.
Don’t fish for compliment’s like my last girl friend “Am I fat?” “woman if you were fat would I be sitting here right now listening to you ask me that? NO!!!”
The fins look great. If you are unhappy with the foil, I used a hefty random orbital sander and a dremel when I foil fins.
That is an interesting concept that I hadn’t considered. I don’t think I will do that to this set of fins, but I still have a large section of 1/16" G10 left. I think I might us it to make a single fin, and use your technique. The Ace HW store in Point Loma sells little packets of cut balsa for model airplane builders. I’d cut the wood myself, but I don’t have a thickness sander. I’ll sandwich two 1/8" balsa sheets around the G10, and then shape the fin. Then I’ll vaccum bag some 1/40" veneer on each side, and fair the edges. It will be both light, and attractive. Does anyone else do it this way?
Thanks for the compliment.
I have a five inch disk that I tried. It fit the curves better, but the foam on the pad was too stiff. I actually felt like it was easier to make an oops with that one, than with my softer 6" Power Pad. I’m getting better with each fin that I foil. I heard other people say it before, but now I believe it that you have to shape at least 10 fins before you get anything that looks halfway decent.
Some people post pictures of their projects to teach others how to do it the right way. Others, like me, post their project photos as they make progress. This allows others to point out areas where they can improve, or warn them about challenges that they face in the next steps. My goal was to get some pointers before diving in to the rest of my fin blanks. Maybe I was fishing for compliments too, but who doesn’t do that when they post pictures of their work. I think I did a decent job on building my fins, but they are far from perfect. I wouldn’t pay money for them. I did learn a lot from this project, and have some ideas on what I want to do next time.
Well… I finally finished the project. My goal was to get three decent looking fins that I could glass onto my HWS. That project is listed on Swaylocks as the Speedy Red Board Project. I’ll post the final photos of the fins on the board in that thread.
Here are a couple of pictures of the finished fins.
Overall, I enjoyed this project. I think it was fun making these fins, and will definitely do it again. In my previous attempt at making a fin, I tried to shape from a solid block of G10. My experience was similar to that of Greg’s. It was dusty, and messy. The resulting fin ended up very heavy. The method that I took on this project was much better. I learned how to strategically place my vaccuum hose in order to minimize the dust. There was some dust when I did the foiling, but it was mostly sawdust from the wood pieces. There was very little G10 dust.
