my friend bought this and wants me to glass it so i can put it on a longboard; however, i have never glassed a wood cut out and then worked from there… i’ve only made a fiberglass fin and sanded it down from there…
here are some pics of the fin
should i glass one side at a time?
how many sheets of cloth should i use?
do i need to lay all my cloth down (fully soaked in resin) and place something flat on top and keep it pressed down?
after i get my questions answered, i’ll start taking pics of my progress and post em up… it’ll be good times
Maybe someone has a better way of doing it but this is how I do it. Just like you were building up a fiberglass fin panel. Lay down 4 layers of cloth, roll or squeegee resin, lay down more cloth, repeat. Once you have about 24 layers of cloth, lay down the wood inlay. Repeat the process of laying up the cloth and resin over the wood inlay. The end result will leave you with a wood inlay sandwiched between the fiberglass. Once it cures, cut it out, foil it and add fin rope around the edge.
i believe he took the easy way out on the inlay and purchaced it…
i am thinking about going out and finding someone with a band saw and taking four different types of wood of the same thickness and cutting them all the same pattern then the same picture and making four different fins or tow sets of twin fins…
You will want a halo of clear glass to run around the edge of the fin this should be about a 1/2 inch wide, and made up of rope or glass fibers and sanding resin. I don’t really know the right way to do this but I have used clay and waxpaper. Make a mold out of the clay that extends the fin outer edges out about 1/2 lay down the wax paper and place the fin on the mold, mix up some sanding resin and add the fibers, now just lay the soaked fibers along the edge of the fin in the mold, make sure to get all of the air bubbles out. Remove the fin from the waxpaper mold and sand down the halo on both sides. On wooden fins it is always a good idea to wipe it down with acetone and then put a coat of resin on the fin before any glass hits it use lam resin for this. Reason, the red wood some times has some oils in it and the acetone will remove those that are right on the surfice, the resin coat will seal it to keep any of the oils from getting into the fresh resin that you apply when you do the glass lay up, also the resin coat will alow any trapped air in the wood to get out easaly, since it will not get trapped under the glass. Now just tack the fin on the board, and glass it on like you would a glass fin with one exception, you want to add 2 or 3 extra layers of 6 oz glass to the fin and run it down on to the board, over the top of your rope and then add one big football shape piece up the fin and over the board. Good luck.
Here is what i have learned about glassing fins, take a peice of wax paper, set the fin on it, then proceed to brush on a light coat of resin onto each side, then let dry, This keeps little air bubbles from coming out into your glass job. Then take two layers of 6 oz. cloth and laminate one side, while the resin begins to gel, take a sharp razor blade and trim around the edge, flip and repeat. Then just go ahead and hot coat the fin by applying the sanding resin to one side, let gel, flip and repeat. *try not to let the resin drip onto the other side of the fin when you are applying the hot coat, this will produce little lines in the resin when you coat the other side. sand down the fin with 100, 220 to finish, glass onto the board with fin rope, running down each side about 3/4 of an inch past each end of the fin, let set, then sand down the glass job until smooth with 100,220. Last step is gloss coat, sand, polish and enjoy.
