While working at my friends factory a few years ago he showed me how to do almost everything except laminate since i had no interest in messing with the gooey smelly stuff. The other day after i finished a shape i figured i would give it a go. Ive seen it done a million times and figured hey how hard could it be…this would come back to haunt me big time. I think i made every mistake that you could have made. I should have been in the glassing 101 video in the what not to do segment. Wavy laps with lots of frays and stringy thingys. Had a hard time getting the lap to stay down at the nose and tail. Got a few bubbles and hey why not throw in a dry spot. Today i just spent an hour with the dremel tool grinding down all the screwed lumpy parts of the lap. Cant believe that a pro can laminate a board in a few minutes. Took me forever to laminate and screw it up. Now im on a mission to learn how to do a decent glassjob. Anybody got any tips on how to avoid the glassing nightmare?
Cheer up, it coulda been worse,it coulda been me! Actually, it was; a long while ago. Here’s a tip. Fiberglass cloth has a direction, like wood grain. If you just lightly brush it the wrong way; “all hell breaks loose”. So, you gotta respect the glass. What you need to do next time is to be sure to lay your cloth EXACTLY in line with the stringer and when you cut your lap; do a killer job. Make the lap of your deck lam go about an inch past the tucked edge and into the bottom of the board. Have a healthy lap width at the nose and tail so they stay tacked. NOW, the tip: after your lap is cut and hanging look for what we call the “center point”. I hope I can explain this… The threads of cloth run both lengthwise (warp direction) and crosswise (fill direction). As you look at the hanging lap, you will see the Fill threads that you cut; they will appear the full length of the lap. BUT, the Warp threads do not show this behavior; look carefully. The Warp threads at the edge of your lap cut should be pointing either toward the nose or toward the tail AND somewhere around the center or wide point of your board there will be NO Warp thread ends. This is your “Center Point”. This point will vary on each rail and on each board (depending on the skill of the person). So you can imagine if the lap was wetted perfectly and you just barely touch, say the nose lap, with a motion TOWARD the Center Point (away from the nose) with a sticky glove or tool, then you will get all kinds of strings, unravelling, and other sadness/stress. ALWAYS MAKE ALL TOUCHES/MOTIONS STARTING AT THE CENTER POINT AND GO TOWARD THE NOSE OF TAIL. In other words, always work going away from the CP. In fact, tack your lap starting at the CP and work outwards. Try to use your tool in ONE MOTION from the CP to the nose and from the CP to the tail. Work the rails in a row-by-row style CP to nose, etc. Until you get the laps wrapped. Our best guys do this in 2 passes! Expect to do a bunch of passes (1/4" wide) to wrap the rails. Also, use your spreader like a violinist draws a bow across a string. That is, try to pull your lamination and laps tighter with each pass like tightening a drum head. This is especially true as you get toward the nose and tail. That’s doing three things at once: going CP to the end in one motion, doing a pass with just the right pressure, and doing a subtle “sawing” action to tighten the glassjob. I should have told you that this same “CP-outwards” approach applies to wetting out the flats of the board. Granted you can do a LIGHT pass from the nose to the middle just to move resin back into the middle of the board, but only exert pressure when working AWAY from the center. There’s more stuff, but let’s see if any of this is useful first; then ask away. Caveat: there are SO many different ways to do this so don’t take this as an absolute. Layups take about 8 minutes or so (including sticking the logos) so study the economy of your motion. Good Luck
Ditto, + one! Great job! Good for the archive! Thanks for putting in the time!
Thanks Plus One, One of the problems i had was as you say going from center to nose or tail. As I would squeegee the lap under the going from center to the end I would sometimes get a wrinkle. At that point i figured hey pull it off and tuck it again…WRONG MOVE and stringy thingy hell begins. Perhaps my lap was too long or my technique sucks or both. Another problem is while tucking the lap its not tight so theres air bubbles under the cloth wrapping the rail. I figured use the squeegee to push the lap in towards the stringer to create more tension and no more air bubbles right…well got rid of the air bubbles but got stringy thingy hell. Im still thinking about what i said earlier. Ive seen it done a million times and these guys pull it off in a few minutes…how hard could it be? Answer: its pretty tough if you dont know what your doing.
I was taught to leave the last 6 or 8 inches of the nose and tail lap hanging on the initial tuck working center to both ends, then work that last wrap back towards the center. It allows a nicer overlap with less chance of a bubble or the lap falling back down. Then once the rails are sqeegeed out, you can squeeze some resin off the sqeegee with your fingers to dab on the nose tip and tail where the notches were cut for the overlap.
another thing, as per plus one’s “economy of motion,” i was taught to lightly spread the resin out to the opposite rail without it spilling off the board before working the resin in on the side i’m standing on. after you finish the first rail, you go to the other side and the resin has pretty well soaked in and you can just squeeze it in (from center of course)and squeegee off the excess. this should help you to get your glassing in under 8 min.
Do’nt let any long dangly threads faze you.Just let 'em hang till your nearly finished then pull of the disposable gloves grab the scissors trim them off then finish or put some new gloves on and continue.
That’s what I do… take all metal scissors and trim the hangers before lapping under. Let the scissors soak in acetone with the squeegee when you’re finished. After years of sweating out gel time and rushing with the squeegee, I’m sold on UV resin. Trying to finish off a longboard double deck in “X” minutes is just too nerve wracking!
Here’s a good hint passed on to me by a glass pro: wear two pairs of thin disposable gloves. when the outer ones get dirty/scummy/pigmented/whatever, peel them off and continue working with no interruption…
keith you stole my trick. also if you have long strings and you cant cut them at the time for some reason you can just fold them down the length of the rail on the lap line and grind it. Austin S. http://members.cox.net/austinsurfboards
hey Jason, if you are doing the “saw action” and incremental row-by-row approach to your laps, then there should be no wrinkles. The wrinkles tell me that you might be “taking too big of a bite” in tucking the rails. The cloth doesn’t have enough time/room to shift to the compound curve of the rail. Try to see the cloth that wraps the rail as only being able to handle just a little shift at a time, like the line-by-line action of a typewriter. (You will develop a feel to do this in big bites later, but you may want to take it easy at this point). Now, I know this will sound crazy but change your focus away from seeing “strings” as something departing your wet lap. Rather, try to stick them back up in place like Barge suggests, then remember that place and tread lightly until it is safely wrapped. Are you getting strings when you are wetting the laps? All the Post Responders can tell you that wetting the laps is also an art. A good beginner technique is to use lots of resin, and work the bead (the bead is another topic just as Allen indicated) like a road graded waterfall catching as much as you can in your bucket and NEVER touching the laps in the process, (or at least not touching the portion of the lap that you CUT with your shears. With that said, you can set yourself up for wetting a section of a lap, say CP to nose, by pulling all the wrinkles out of it when it is still dry. Do this VERY CAREFULLY by using your sticky tool to brush the hanging lap from the CP to the nose; pulling it tight and hanging cleanly vertical, but NEVER contacting the cut edge of the lap. There are some more advanced techniques of “sawing” with the spreader on the laps while working a bead ACROSS THE HANGING LAP, but this will take time to feel out; just don’t touch the edge of the laps and the frays will start to disappear. (Note: I have found recovery trays to be a huge change in the amount of resin ending up wasted; I highly recommend them rather than using a lot of resin to make wet-out easier). An advanced technique for finishing the ends of your laps is exactly as Kent explained, where you will actually pull the lap tight by going the opposite way, toward the middle of the underside while STILL working the lap CP to the end, and using the spreader like a bow on a violin string. (That’s TWO motions: Center to end-of-lap with the spreader and starting this with one corner of your spreader and finishing at the other corner, so as to pull the lap tight). If you are still getting strings and experiencing “lap hell” then it means you are still over-handling the laps, back it off and respect the glass. Hope this is not TMI and your head explodes… Good Luck, and as always there are more techniques.
Thanks for the good info PlusOne. Laminating the deck came out better much better than the bottom. But i can see why laminators use those Giant 80 dollar scissors. Its very sharp and covers alot of ground in one cut not to mention its easier to get a straighter cleaner cut. My cheapo scissors just dont cut it (pun intended). My lap was still a little lumpy where i didnt squegee out the excess resin enough and spent more time with the dremel tool on that one. On the bright side the hot coat came out good other than the lumpy spots i missed with my dremel tool. So by the time im done i should be pretty good at grinding and sanding. Well now i just gotta figure out some creative artwork to spray on the glassjob now and finish another shape and try try try laminating again.
$80?!! Ouch… You may want to check out www.Dritz.com for their composite cutting shears. They work insane. Perfect, even laps every time. They were $60 a while back. Congrats on your improvement!
hmm any chance you can describe or post a picture of your resin recovery tray? sounds like a very good thing. PS thanks for the detailed explanations, very nice…
80$??? I payed my scissors 1euro and works good (I havent try with carbonfiber but it cut Aramat250… Kevlar and mat) Maybe Im just Lucky [smile] http://www.theglasser.com/
A recovery tray is a sheet of cardboard (I saw pictures of them in TSL taken around the early 60’s). It is about 24in wide and 8ft long, sits a little higher that waist level. The tray is centered underneath the lam rack, has slits for the lam rack posts, and we cut and bend a lip about 1in high on the long sides. The ends of the tray stay ‘open’. The substructure is minimal, we use the cheapy 1x2’s from the local home improvement center. First time in use the tray has to get ‘primed’ which is to get a coat of lam resin. So along with glassing the board you also squeegee a thin coat over the sheet of cardboard. From this point onward it’s important to maintain the tray by periodically sanding any highs, blobs or any junk that might scratch your spreader. Our trays look shiny and smooth after a few boards. Visitors always comment how the trays could end up as killer tables or something but after about 75 boards be chuck the cardboard and re-skin. The tray mainly allows you to use way less resin and keeps the floors/shoes CLEAN. You can set the bucket and other tools down, and dab up some needed resin from the tray anytime. After you learn to trust that the tray, it will allow you use much less resin. Here is a typical scenario: when wetting the laps, DON’T use the bucket to catch resin, and wet out only one-quarter of the lap (you don’t have enough resin to wet the whole thing), ie. CP to nose. Then scoop the fallen resin down to the end of the tray and put it back into the bucket, and use this to wet the other laps, CP to tail, other side etc. Clearly the trays have to be smooth and very clean. Like I said, ours are shiny and we wipe them down with scrap cloth before a session. Sometimes we are forced to hotcoat on the trays but this has turned out to be an advantage. After mopping your hotcoats, go back and smooth out the drippings with a spreader. When kicked the tray has some floated wax and you can really sand them if needed. Epoxy work is great because you can dump out what you aren’t using onto the tray and retard the reaction (heat build up in the bucket is bad) which is good for multiple board batches. I lam three epoxies off of one batch. Hope this helps. Good Luck.
Howzit Plus1, I agree $80 for scissors is too much, I got mine from Fiberglass Hi. for about $45. What’s a bummer is they have a little knick in the blade that tends to tear the glass sometimes. I have 2 pairs of Fiskars that I use for cleaning up my laps and started using them and they are working just fine. Aloha, Kokua