Any idea what dye to use on wood that you intend to resin, I need the grain to show through
Cheers again.
MMM
I’ve never built a wooden surfboard, but I have built lots of furniture. You might want to look into fuming with ammonia. Lots of woods, especially white oak (which comes in a very nice 1/4" marine-grade ply for cabinet use) but also others with high tannin / lignin contents, pick up the fumes from ammonia and do lovely things. It tends to darken & warm up the softer parts of the rings and leave alone the heartwood, winter rings, and flakes & rays across the grain. In terms of resin penetration, there would be no change whatsoever from raw wood.
You get high-test ammonia from a blueprint shop, an ammonia-specific respirator, swim goggles for your eyes. Build a simple fuming tent out of 1x1 sticks and clear plastic. Put the ammonia in glass pie pans.
Google things like ammonia fuming, Stickley furniture, Taunton Press, etc. Might turn out absolutely beautiful…
Ah ha, now I know what you’re doing…sounds interesting, I like the idea of putting a leaf in. I’m from Perth Western Australia. Mostly the surf here is knee to chest high but like all places we have our moments when conditions are favourable. The board will be glassed when my accountant (wife) says I can. At the moment it’s standing up inside the loungeroom to remind her that it needs to be done. Might be in the water within the month. I’ll get a TV crew to film the event because it’s taken me 8 months to complete, definately a news worthy item…he he he.
I keep forgetting to look at the label on the resin bottles to give you the spec, will do that tonight as well as take a few happy snaps of the fish.
Your savouring the moment mate!! ha ha and I dont blame you. Dont tell us it will be another 8 months till you finish glassing?? When you start you will only have approx 30mins to work with the epoxy so that will give you a hurry on and it will be finished before you know it. You’ll be up for about $100 for glassing once you’ve bought the glass, resin, acetone, brushes, squeeges ra ra ra, time to raid your daughters piggy bank!
I will look out for the channel 7 chopper hovering over the nothern beaches and expect to see the launch on the 6 o’clock news.
I can’t wait to see your piccies, what suburb do you live in. Might be worth a visit before I glass. Did you get all your stuff from the same place or all over.
Got all the gear from that one shop, swipe your card and the highway man takes the money. Never thought I’d be getting excited in a resin shop but then I found myself getting excited at bunnings looking for plywood!
I’d love to see the board.
Maybe the reason I use wood is because I live amongst the trees in the hills, up in Darlington. Not many surfers up our way 40mins to the beach, but given I work in Nedlands and make my own hours with a boss who is a mad sailor, I surf in the morning pre work and during the days when theres swell and lano trips at the weekends. Speaking of which this weekend is looking the goods!
Nice thinking with the gentle reminder to the missus, I’ll try that one. Our lounge is tiny, she’ll be glad to pay for the glass just to get rid.
Got the rest of the wood for the deck and bottom today, gonna start cutting now the wife’s gone to work. It aint as dark as I would have liked but I figure it should look OK, and if not I’ll just have to build another one. Such hardship!
Aint this just the most satisfying piece of work you ever undertook, beats the **** out of my day job and I can’t wait to start the board I’ve promised my son.
Can anyone give me any pointers on how to surf? Maybe I should’ve done this in a different order, oh well.
Cheers for that, sounds like a bit of a specialist thing but I might try experimenting with that before my next board, the results you spoke of sound interesting. Do you think you could succesfully mask areas to create specific patterns? or would the fumes penetrate the masking and do their thang all over the place?
I think you could mask. You might get some bleed, though. You could also seal areas with polyurethane or similar before fuming. Here’s a (very academic - read: no photos) link to fuming with not only ammonia but lots of other natural stuff sure to be safer than ethyl-methyl-badsh!t and also sure to produce interesting results on unfinished wood…
Couldn’t wait to share this. Only cut the deck and clamped it to the rails but I think it’s starting to look like a surfboard. I am going to do the same with the bottom but in negative I think ie darker sides pale centre strip. I absolutely love this project and can’t wait for the next stage. BUZZIN
thats a nice looking board in progress. Am I right in thinking you surf in Conrnwall, UK?
Hicksy,
the expoxy resdin is FR251.
I’ve attached some pics of the fish, pretty poor lighting sorry. I scraped the wax off to make it look a bit better. It has only been hotcoated, no sanding or glossing as yet, as I needed it in a hurry to take it on my trip. Now that I’m back I dont think I will bother.
Hey Fat_ass, your shed’s as crappy as mine…hehe. Your board is looking great so far. One idea for your scrolling around the rails could be branding with a hot iron, putting an imprint on it…just a thought. Keep up the good work.
Cheers mate, I’m dead chuffed with it so far. I had no idea that my first board would go so according to plan. Though I did have a “minor” disaster today, when I went into work on the board this morning I saw that the stringer had split and snapped by one of the ribs, presumably because of the wood swelling with the humidity… all clamped up and nowhere to go! Still, fixed now with a sandwich of 1/4" ply glued around it.
More north Devon than Cornwall, around Croyde usually when I can get down that way. I live about as far away from the water as you can get in this country. I’m not sure that I would describe what I do as surfing, a lot of falling off is involved usually but I will learn.
Shed, crappy, mine, come on man, I’d just tidied it. It is crappy innit? The wife aint keen on the saw dust in the lounge, or the bedroom, or the kitchen, FUUUUSSY! So the crappy shed it is then. (It’s actually a garage, that’s how small a garage is in U.K. hardly room for a motorbike and a surfboard let alone a car.)
The branding sounds an excellent idea, I could even try charring through a steel stencil with a blow torch…very carefully. Cheers for that bit of inspiration.
Sorry I couldn’t find that diagram that you forgot to attach. ho ho.
GrayMurdoch,
Nice pics, so is that just one coat of resin then? Is that enough? I could do with losing some weight, and the board could do without the extra aswell, she’s getting a bit lardy.
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful board, the wood looks verrrrry nice, you have lots of clamps, it helps to keep things nice and clean. you are on your way man. Jack. are you gonna use cork to build the rails?
Cheers Jack! A man can never have too many clamps, that’s what I always say.
Have you taken your board out yet? If so haw was it?
Deffinately going to use cork as rail material laminated with different types of whatever else I can find cheap. For the cork I’m going to use laminate flooring expansion strips, they’re a bit thicker than the recommended 1/8" but they still bend nicely, and they’re cheap. I thought also about using cork floor tiles but all the ones I’ve come across are pre-sealed and I’m not sure whether this would affect the bonding of the resin. I’ve cut the bottom now and stuck the three pieces which make up the deck together ready for a coat of glass on the inside. So far the board weighs under 14 pound, is that good? I’m figuring on another 2 pounds for rails and 8 pounds for glass and resin.
Where are you from Jack?
How many boards have you built so far? How does wooden board building compare to foam, easier? harder?
My board performs great in small (3’ - 4’) waves, great floatation, has excellent stability, paddles easy and due to its weight (almost 20 pounds) has lots of inertia, which keeps speed all along the wave. I live in Mexico, in the gulf coast, and have built 2 wooden boards (the 7’2’’ and a 5’6’’ lis fish) and I’m currently building the third, an 8 footer. haven’t worked with foam yet, I decided to start with wood because I’ve been working with that material for more than 10 years and that experience helped me a lot. Jack.
Hey Jack, have you got some pics of the fish? I’d be really interested to have a look. Like you I’ve started making boards from wood and pretty much happy to keep going that way. I’m trying to find new ways to reduce the weight, getting there slowly On the fish. The pics of my fish in the thread above was my 3rd board, I’m still getting used to surfing something that short and skatey.
Have you refined your technique over your 3 boards? I’ve modified the internal rail construction so I dont need bending forms and reduces the weight sightly, I’m currently trying to get the weight down on the rails.
