i looked in the archives and couldnt find anything. theres a whole hell of a lot about lighter but nothing on heavier.
so i am going to make an early 60’s longboard sometime in the near future and i want to make it kind of heavy. my problem is i have tons of 6 oz glass and resin research epoxy. i know if i used volan glass or a heavier glass it would add weight. but i want to use what i all ready have.
i heard that some guys who make tow boards add bb’s along both sides of the stringer to add weight. is this true and is it a good option. or are there better ones. i guess i could just do a 3 layers of on the top and two on the bottom.
Aloha! Maybe try using heavier foam. The really only way to make a retro tanker is to use ‘classic’ weight Clark foam. That’s about the same weight as old-style light, or maybe superlight foam. Adding hardware might be more trouble than it’s worth. Also, remember that there was no vee in tankers before 1967, so roll the bottom. Aloha…RH
Don’t bother with oddball stuff. If you want heavy, Lee’s glassing schedule will help. Also hotcoat with RR & then gloss with a true poly gloss coat. Triple stringers, nose & tail blocks, classic wt foam…you can hit 25-26 lb for that Nuuheiwa glide pretty easily.
Speaking of heavier boards. Does anyone glass their shortboards heavier? most stock boards are glassed fairly light…6/6+6. I’ve been wondering what some of these fishes or perhaps bonzers would feel like with more weight to them. It seems it may smooth things out. A fish glassed with volan…hmm?
hope I didn’t jump the tracks too much on your thread, turbohog.
A lot of the older (late50s/early 60s) boards were glassed double 10 oz cloth both sides… thick gel coats, pigment panels and gloss coats to boot. Many of them had big stringers, all adding up to considerable heft.
When doing multiple layers with epoxy, keep in mind it isn’t poly laminating resin where you have lots of time between layers and can still get a good bond.
take the $$$'s you’re gonna save by using the epoxy you have on hand and spend it on a clark classic weight blank with three 1" redwood stringers. then, as previously advised, finish up with a poly gloss coat. should come out around mid 20 lbs or so.
yeah thats what i was thinking about doing going with a classic weight and a thicker stringer. and maybe a tail block.
i am going to glass on an old wooden skeg fin. dont know where i am going to get one yet, i might build one buy one or try to get one from an old beater. i was looking on the net at someones site and they had a new one for like 60 or 70 bucks. a little step but it has some real nice wood work.
i need some good dimensions if anyone has any for some thing in the 9’3 to 10’3 range would be nice.
Look into a Clark blank called regular. This is what the old boards were made out of. It is going to cost a little more but you can glass it lighter and save on that cost.I would go with 6+6 on the deck and 6 on the bottom. What are you looking for in this board? At 10’2" and looking towards a good nose rider I would look at 23.5 wide point, 18.5 nose and 16.5 tail, put the skig right on the tail, infact glass it on so the end of it is right on the tip of the tail. Keep the stringer at about 1/2 inch redwood. Good luck and show pics.
yeah those dimensions sound about right, the plan was always to put the skeg right on the tip. thanks for the help, i will defiently post some pics once i get started i still have to finish one board before i get there. i just want to get all my ducks in a line
Not sure why you’d want to add weight to a board that’s gonna be fairly heavy already, but my first board in the early 60s was 9’6" x 22" and maybe 3-1/2" thick. It had a they-typical 3/4" redwood stringer down the center and a large skeg with the trailing edge maybe an inch from the tail. No nose or tail blocks.
I didn’t do the glassing but it was probably something like double 9 or 10 ounce cut lap volan cloth on the deck. Maybe the bottom was single layer, I don’t know. The only time I weighed it, the thing was about 35 pounds. As a 12-y.o. I could hardly lift it onto Mom’s station wagon after some days.
These boards weren’t guns at all, just standard-issue early longboards.
Volan cloth isn’t inherently heavier, it’s only that the glass yarns have a different finish on them for protection and wetting out. Volan is a chrome-based material and results in a greenish tint Volan cloth is generally sold in heavier weights but could probably be found in 4 or 6 ounce per yard weights.
We had quite a discussion about volan and silane a while back, some interesting chemistry and optical stuff came to light, thanks to the more technical people here.
Given that this thread is about wanting a heavier board, then I don’t see why weight can’t be added via the fin. . . . in fact yesterday I attached a 10 inch deep ten inch based 7/8ths of an inch thick solid glass fin to my super heavy 9’3" redwood, it’s one heavy fin, weighing about 3 pounds.
If the board is going to be a nose rider? You do not want a heavy fin. Go to the Wangner web page he feels that a Skig made from balsa is the way to go. It lightens up the tail. If I were you I would make myself a skig from balsa or even a foam core. Keep the tail light, no tail block eather.
There are a lot of newbes out there that don’t understand that the major weight is in the foam that the blank is made from. Volan cloth comes in 2 oz.,4 oz, 7.5 oz, 10 oz. One of the reasons Volan adds weight is you need to add hotcoat, and a bast to keep from sanding into the cloth. If you hit Volan with a sander you end up with a white spot. If you hit salian with a sander you will never see it after the gloss coat. Do some reading on foam in the Clark catalog. I feel that one of the biggest advance in surfboards was done by Clark. When he came out with different weight foam, and blanks that were close to shaped. He alowed us to take a major leap forward. Now epoxy, and EPS foam and others, are alowing us the make the next move. I’m not a lighter is better kinda guy. But that is just me. I’m also not a high proformance kinda guy so heavy is ok with me just as long as I can get it to the beach.
