I got the neighbor’s kid into surfing. He was a natural and got up on the board the first time I took him out at Waikiki. The faces were about 5-6 feet and he held his own. For the sake of this story, I’ll refer to him as Jim.
Jim is a college student and plans to attend Law school after he gets his under graduate degree. He is a naturally gifted athlete and pretty much catches own to any physical activity pretty fast. He watched me glass a few boards but only for a short time each. He would get bored quickly and find something else to do.
Getting hooked on surfing, Jim wanted a long board. I explained to him the basics steps involved with surfboard construction. I even loaned him the Master Glasser DVD. He purchased a blank from Aku Bird Foam (Surf blank Australia) and we got Charlie Wong to shape him a 9’4” performance long board.
The board got shaped and it sat in rafter racks for several months. Jim got distracted and lost interest. I pushed him to get his board glassed and even offered to supply him with the fiberglass cloth. (I had some extra 6 and 4 oz. cloth.) He spent several afternoons designing his graphics to place on the board. His Dad being from Thailand, he designed a logo with Thai elephants.
Being a bright college student and watching the Master Glasser DVD several times, Jim was ready to laminate. We decided to glass his board with UV PE resin. He did a nice job trimming the cloth. When we started to laminate, he started questioning my squeegee technique. He said I was supposed to do cross strokes and later make long strokes along the length of the board and working from the center to the rails. I started laughing and asked him, “Where did you learn that?” He said he learned that from the DVD. I laughed even louder and said that was for brush strokes for hot and finish coats.
We continued and I squeegee one side of the board and he did the other side. As he moved the resin, he was flicking it off of the rails instead of pooling the resin and allowing it to saturate the rails. As he flicked, some of the resin splashed on his shorts. We continued laminating and a few minutes he just stopped moving his squeegee. He had a look of pain on his face. I asked him what is wrong. He said, “My balls are on fire!” Apparently the resin soaked through his shorts and got to his scrotums. “Aren’t you wearing underwear”, I asked? He said no and just wanted to run off to the shower. I told him that he could leave in the middle of a glass job. He didn’t care. He ran to my shower and washed off. He was later calling my daughter to get him a pair of shorts. I managed to fight my laughter and finished the lamination. He later returned with a fresh pair of shorts and I let him inspect the rails, laminate the dry spots and take the board into the sunlight for drying. Despite all that major drama, the lamination came out pretty good.
Moral of the story: (for newbies) listen carefully to your mentors and please wear underwear when glassing.
D
ick.