the first week of October I’m going to Sardinia (Italy) for a surf trip. Sardinia is an italian island, right in the middle of the Mediterranean sea and
italian surfers consider it the Mecca of surfing in the Med Sea.
October is a good month for surfing there: the water is still warm and the first swells are generated.
The good thing about Sardinia is that winds blowing from west (Maestrale and Libeccio winds) have the biggest fetch in the mediterraenan sea to generate waves.
Apart from that I hope not to get a real big swell, I wouldn’t be able to survive I’m not a skilled surfer…
the panlels are 80mm thick, the maximum length available is 2500mm and the max width is 500mm. I can not use a single panel to make a board, I have to glue two of them together to get enough thickness to have the wanted rocker. By your opinion, is a good choice to glue together two panels one over the other (see image part 1)? Or is it beeter to cut the two panels in many stripes and then glue them (see image part 2)?
Hi Tavlas - I think you’ll find that blank #1 (this is the way I make mine) will be more flexable than blank #2.
Neither is ‘the best’ it just depends on how you want your board to ride.
As to you question about wooden stringer? No, you can do a balsacomp with perimeter stringers (still a wood stringer though) or denser foam on the rails or if you need to go with out a stringer do blank #2, that should give you the strength you need.
YOu could even do a number 1 blank and glass it 3x4oz. top and 2x4oz bottom should be strong enough.
thank you for the opinion about the blank. Today I went to check out some panels before sunday work (I’ll make my boss pay me extra for this) but they only had small panels available. I saw the “project frog” thread and I guess it’sa good and relatively easy way for me to proceed. I think to use a central stinger. I have no experience of flexible or non-flexible boards, so I can’t really tell the difference. I’m just concerned about the resistance in breaking under my weight. I have to say that the other board I made (you can check the link is in the first post of this thread) didn’t give me any problems. I surfed it twice (is on my parent’s island Kythira that I visit on summer holidays, and last year there was just one small two-day swell)and it has no relevant dings.
Just a spider crack on the deck because my little sister rode it on flat sea the day after I finished it - the resin had not cured yet.
I glassed with one layer of medium fiberglass both sides, but I used too much epoxy resin, so it turned out pretty heavy. I have not enough experience to say if it’s stronger than a board made with the same amount of glass and less resin.
Depending on what type of glue you use will have a big impact on doing it one way or the other.
Using epoxy to glue the foam together will make it much harder to shape #2 becuase the epoxy will be very hard when it’s dry.
If you use a poly glue like elmers, or gorilla glue, you could do #2 and add several stringers to get a really strong board. It would also look pretty cool with multiple stringers, and you don’t have to worry about shaping the rocker.
i would do method 1 from personal experience. it is a lot easier, and if you do it right you can glue it so that the rocker is set whhile you glue it, eliminating the need to plane the rocker. also, i would use any type of glue to glue the pieces together (when i did this i used craft glue and spray on foam adhesive)
If you want to have a stringer, and you know what the rocker shape is, I think doing it #2 way is better. If you have a board that you can copy, you can do several simple things to bend the foam and make the rocker, but if you want to add the stringer it’s not as easy. You’ll have to cut the blank in half after you create the rocker and then glue the stringer in. It’s easy to get messed up at that point.
For a stringered board, I would draw out the top and bottom curve (board profile) onto the wood you want to use as the stringer. Use a strong but light wood. I usually lay the board on a table and support it so it doesn’t move, then take the stringer board and lay it up against the edge of the board and run a pencil flat against the board to draw the curve. If you have 6" of nose rocker you’ll need wood that is at least 6" wide, but a little wider is better.
Once you draw the profile of the board onto the wood, you can clamp multiple pieces of wood together and cut them out at one time. Then clean them up at the same time to get the exact same shape. You’ll have multiple stringers that are exactly the same rocker and profile.
I usually do 3 stringers at one time.
Then just draw that same curve onto the foam and cut out the sections. You can have a center stringer then 2 pieces of foam, an outer stringer then more foam. Be sure to keep the stringers aligned when you glue it up. Choose 2 or 3 places that are squared up to align them. You can clamp the whole thing together since it will have a square shape. A good carpenters wood glue will be strong and easy to sand through.
One thing that may occur again is the delamination. 1 lb foam is soft and the stringers are hard. You’re bound to get compressions in the foam but not where the stringers are. A thin balsa stringer between each piece of foam may stop that and still keep the board light.
You could also go stringerless using the #1 method and make the glass laps wide, 2 to 4 inches over the edge on to the other side. That should give plenty of strength. That would be the easiest, and you won’t have the hard wood and soft foam problems.
thanks for the inputs! To say the truth I was thinking to use method n.2, but I’m a little bit scared: I don’t know if I’m skilled enough. On the other hand the blank building method you are describing is very intresting, and it’ll come out a really nice board.
You know, the problem for me is to understand how much is the stinger useful for my board. It’s all about flexibility.
But I’m not a good surfer, in my sea there are not oceanic waves (in size and consistency throughout the year), there is no way to go surfing in a regular basis (I mean 90 percent of the days the sea is flat, and when I say flat I mean flat like a swimming pool)
In few words I have not the experience to say what is best for me so I’m reading threads on the forum to understand.
You are talking about delamination problems near the stingers: it’s exactly what happened to my other board.
I’m thinking more about way n.1.
Thank you very much for your help nd may the swell come to you! (I invented it now, hope it’s a good thing to say
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I’m not a skilled surfer…
