New guy here so, dont hold back.
if you are building a blank from construction foam, can you or do you shape a stringer first and then laminate the foam to the finished stringer and shape the foam around your stringer?
That would seem to make a lot of sense to me…?
Hello Steelynorm, welcome to Sways and homemade blanks!
I prefer stringers to shape first, and then hot wire the EPS foam to either be slightly oversized or match the stringer. If you make extra stringers you have extra guides for the hot wire.
What type of foam are you planning to use?
-J
For certain rockers, that are not able to be obtained with ‘‘off the shelf’’ blanks, my method is to shape the stringer slightly oversized first, then get a larger blank than ‘‘normal’’ and glue the stringer into it. With thin stringer stock, you don’t want the foam under any tension, as it may possibly deform the rocker that you are trying to achieve. More wasted foam, but it assures that you have a stable core. So, what makes sense to you now, made sense to me going back some 45 years. The devil is always in the details, eh?
Bill
I’m pretty new here too, so I can’t offer “expert” advice. But I’m working on my first two boards with blanks that I made myself. I partially shaped my stringers first, leaving about 1/4 inch extra on the outside of my “target” shape. I did this partly to reduce the amount of expensive epoxy I’d need and partly to make planing down less labor intense. (no hotwire for me this time, although I did break down and buy a planer).
I imagine you run better odds of getting everything straight and flush if your stringers match up to the thickness of the foam, but you shouldn’t have trouble as long as you use slow setting glue (good lord, DON’T try to use 5 min epoxy like I did at first!), good clamping and take your time to make sure everything is straight.
not sure what type of foam yet, I am in norcal. Looking at whitecaps, hd and lowes.
This is going to be for a SUP. Any information is great thanks keep it coming.