Glass on fins

Can any one give me a clue on how to glass fins on. I shapped my first board and now I’m clueless. I can deal with the lamination and glassing of the board but the fins are a different story how does fin rope come into play?

mark on the blanks where your fins are going.

glass the board.

glue the fins down in position (quick set epoxy, hot glue, whatever)

saturate the fin rope and put about 6 strands on either side of the fin at the base.

have some football-shaped glass patches pre-cut. saturate them, and put them on each fin, progressively increasing in size so that the fin is fully glassed on.

that’s about it. let it cure, trim the edges. voila…fins…glassed on.

then, hotcoat the board, and finish everything else off as you normally would.

in addition to what’s been mentioned

  1. with your extra foam offcuts or a piece of wood or cardboard build a jig to hold your fins at the proper cant angle 0 to 10 degrees from straight up vertical then use the jig to hold the fin inplace till the glue or resin sets some double stick tape works well instead of hand holding it.

  2. make sure you level set the board especially around the fins on your rack before attaching or lamming on the fins

Quote:

mark on the blanks where your fins are going.

glass the board.

glue the fins down in position (quick set epoxy, hot glue, whatever)

saturate the fin rope and put about 6 strands on either side of the fin at the base.

have some football-shaped glass patches pre-cut. saturate them, and put them on each fin, progressively increasing in size so that the fin is fully glassed on.

that’s about it. let it cure, trim the edges. voila…fins…glassed on.

then, hotcoat the board, and finish everything else off as you normally would.

Howzit E-Pacman, After glassing the fins on and trimming the excess glass I do a sweet coat over the fin lamination before hot coating them, helps from hitting the weave when sanding. Tell J.A. Aloha from me next time you see him. Aloha,Kokua

Hey Far out thanks for the tips if all goes well this should be a breeze! This site is awesome the hell with dvds and the like all the information is here alls I have to do is ask the right questions,again thanks alot see you on the water somewhere…

Bilge

what they all said except i put the fins on after the hotcoat.

Howzit enframed, Putting the fins on after the hot coat is an option that is good if you have the tendecy for breaking off fins since the fin breaks off cleaner and doesn’t strees the bottom lam on the board. The down side is the fins aren’t attached as well. My son use to break fins off all the time so I used this technique for putting them back on his boards.Aloha,Kokua

hi kokua.

i was just in hanalei. nice place you got there. surfed the bay twice during the last week of may on one of ambrose’s surfboards (thanks ambrose!).

it was suggested to me that i do the fins after the hotcoat for exactly the reason you state. i just made sure i used a LOT of resin, rope, and cloth to put them on. they are very solid. i’ve only made one board (http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=316620)so i’m by no means an expert, just thought i’d add an option.

cheers.

as an advocate for mayhem

let us ne’r forget these rudders ,skegs,stabilizers

can be fit to a routed hole in hotus coatus

alas how well shall we structurally attatch these ruddaz?

I put a sweet coat of glass on top to sand well into

atop the ‘‘save layers’’

of glass onto the sides of der finnin schteiners.

…ambrose…

floating on a quick mind altering

orange juice and brewers yeast

we are what we have eaten.