I held out for a few months , my only lapse being laying up a fin panel.
Eleven mtrs of 6 oz and 3 litres of resin gave me a good size sheet at probox thickness ( 22 layers 23 by mistake actually ).
I managed to resist the siren’s song of all that noise and dust for a few weeks but then I found this tool.
No need to shell out megabucks for a roofer’s vice grip with the wide jaws, and then spot weld it to metal bar . Twenty dollars at Supercheap Auto.
Works a treat.I’m in the grip of a vice for sure.
They’re not finished yet still need fine sanding and notches cut in the bases -
I did some keels for my next build , another quad set for my quad fish and my roundtail
and some new trailers for my speeddialler set. I personally found the diallers made my fish feel too 'twitchy ’ and ‘flicky’ ( and I lost one anyway , like a fool I had them screwed in the wrong boxes and it fell out ) so I drew up a template larger with more rake inspired by the Pat Taylor quad set, with 80 20 foil instead of 50 50 like my others were.
Good times.
Some may notice a similarity to some commercially made templates -I hope it’s seen as a tribute , like someone singing one of your songs around a campfire.I certainly won’t be doing any for other people it’s too much like work , and if I need pocketmoney I just do more hours in my trade.
ps I don’t really want go to the trouble of glossing them - will Futures or similar work to seal them ?
You’ve helped me in the past, I can only suggest the direction I’d go in when building fins…
Forget the crazy 20 t0 30 layers of glass and resin, and try light-weight bamboo or core-cell fins, glassed in far fewer layers of resin soaked cloth,
They’re way lighter and the flex can be tuned (carbon, s-glass etc)…
They’re also less toxic, … sand down the wood core, core-cell core, honey-comb core,. and apply way fewer layers of glass needed to suit you “stiffness” requirements… You save money on expensive resins too…
I haven’t tried this myself but ,dye mixed with 99% alcohol “rubbed” into the sanded fins might absorb nicely…
The set on the lower right looks like a G.T. quad pro-box copy… Shit ! I like those fins!!
Dye mixed into the epoxy resin looks awesome, try it next time,
As Huie says: Sharkskin ,looks great… even better after soaking the fins in colored dye overnight,
Option 1. Just surf them. Benefits: no additional effort
Option 2. Hotcoat them and fine sand them.
Option 3. Gloss them with standard gloss.
Option 4. Two part clearcoat spray them with polyurethane.
Each option is more trouble and a better finish than the one before it.The fin companies spray them. Really professional guys who make fins with their boards sometimes gloss instead. The first two options are pretty much hobbyist, as is the option to use a one-part clearcoat spray from an art store. The two-part spray requires professional spraying/breathing/exhaust.
