It looks fine. Think about where your stance is, no point havng a tail that is smaller than your back foot.? So if you move your backfoot forward where there is more foam it would generate speed and move it back slightly when you put your weight in for the carve… Offsetting the fin position more towards the nose might make it work in balance with your stance. ?
Stingray, that looks awesome… I’m definitely not there yet. With mine, when I was doing the black fades, I ended up with a small line where the color underneath was still exposed next to the black. It happened because I didn’t move the tape, I just sprayed the green and orange and then did the black from behind the tape line, so it overshot the hard edge. Should I retape before doing the shading next time?
I hope that makes sense, sorry.
Atomized and Speedneedle are the air brush kings.
I have developed a simple system of tape and fade. I try to never put tape onto painted foam. Most of my surfboards get gloss resin so I do pin lines to go with my fades. I collect scrap foam and broken surfboards so I can do testing.....Try this on scrap foam.....one or two light coats of yellow over large area. Now spray 1/2 of that area with Kelly green.Darker on one side and lighter on the other.... come back and spray yellow over the lighter side and make a fade. Now do the exact oppisite on another piece of foam....learn the colors...learn the fade. Cardboard boxes are good for practice painting too...Light coats are always better
Glass the board!
Ray
Idea ???
This is just an idea...it may or may not help. Look at the fade closest to the nose and the one closest to the tail. Maybe spray out a few inches more towards the nose or tail. Tape off the clean foam next to the black. Do not spray black,bring out the orange or green about 6 inches fading into the white foam blank. Just thinking out loud.....Ray
I was actually going to ask in an earlier post if I should extend those colors. I didn’t realize it needed it until the board was off the racks and propped up on the wall.
The airbrush is a central pneumonic or something like that… it seems to be sufficient for my purposes, but it’s the only one I’ve ever used so its hard to say.
I thought id stop back in here as I finally got to surf this thing (longest flat spell I can remember). Thanks for telling me to stick with it, it ended up being really fun. I think the outline makes me surf more like a grown up, the stubby boards let you hit the lip without doing a good bottom turn because they just hold so much speed no matter what.I’m gonna do a 5’10 or 5’11 version of this with a 14" tail and the wide point moved back 2" for medium sized days.
Stingray, I have a question for you. I’m going to do one of my next boards lime green (the whole thing). I have two questions about it. First, should I paint it or just do a thin layer of hotcoat with green pigment before the lam coat? Second, will that much paint add a noticeable amount of weight? I can’t decide if I should do this on the 5’10 or 5’11 I’m about to start because I’m glassing it thin to save weight, I don’t want to negate that with a bunch of heavy paint.
I might field this one, just cos.
I think your best bet would be to try adding a lime tint (or pigment if you want it more opaque) to the lam resin, rather than doing a hotcoat underneath the lam. That way you avoid the extra weight and the time it would take to paint the board. It’s just a matter of making sure you’ve finished the blank nice and cleanly, so there are no imperfections that would stand out like dog’s balls under a tint.
True, I had thought about it. But if I do that, how would I put logos on it? Wouldnt the tint cover up any logos under the cloth? Also the stringer would be covered, which might look sort of weird.
To avoid tinting the logo, apply it after the coloured lam using a patch of glass, then hotcoat over the whole lot. If you think it would look weird with no stringer, either go down the tint road, or reduce the amount of pigment you’re using so the lam coat is semi-transparent. Test it out on a piece of scrap foam before you do the lam, so you can make any adjustments you need without compromising the quality finish of the board.
True that would probably work. Honestly I’ll probably just do a regular spray on this next one and do the one after all green. I’m doing a 5’7 swallowtail with some vee, and weight isnt really going to be that big of an issue on it because it won’t really be performance oriented. I’ll probably just spray it, but I think it might be hard to get even color over an entire board. thats why I was thinking a thin layer of tinted hotcoat under the lam.
Also, I noticed that on this board I accidentally left the stringer a little high right in front of where the concace starts. Its basically a light double concave for 2 or 3 inches a foot down from the nose. I can’t really tell how it affects the performance yet, I havnt surfed a board with this much rocker in a long time. I just thought I should mention this, I was pretty mad about it when I noticed it but so far it doesnt seem to be having a negative impact.
Air brushing a foam blank with water based paint will not add weight. Light coats warm weather...Looking good
Do all your color with paint on the foam or tint / pigment in the lam. This will not add weight. Hot coat needs to be clear resin. Hot coats get sanded...sanding color is not good.
I have a painting background...I like to paint...I like the challenge of a fade. You have the general idea for painting....
A perfect resin tint is very hard to pull off...but that's no reason not to try! I'm still working on that!
Stingray
Ok true. I didnt mean hotcoat actually, I meant a thin layer of tinted sanding resin underneath the lam coat, I have seen that done before on some larger designs. But if water based paint wont add weight, I’ll just spray the thing. That will definitely make my life easier.