Hello everyone, I’ve done the archive search and cannot find the answer to this question. How much does glassing add to the board’s dimensions? If I want a 22" wide x 2.5" thick board how much do I reduce my template dimensions?
I’m almost ready to start board #1. Thanks for all your input to the forum and archives!
Tim
dont worry about it. its irrelevant
Why don’t you strip one?:)) Better measure before and after laminating one. Try to weigh it too. It makes part of the learning process. Good luck!
Not the best advice man…I would caution you as to think a bit about what you are posting before responding. If you have insight then back it up with solid reasoning.
ANYWAY…
It makes a VERY noticeable difference.
A few factors weigh into it, like cloth weight (Heavier the cloth, the more added bulk), glassing technique, gloss coat. All add bulk to the final dimensions. My first few boards I did, I shaped to what I felt was the perfect dimensions. But once glassed they seemed big, bulky and not quite what I had in mind. This was due to not allowing tolerance for the laminating process.
Here’s something to think about. Take a rashguard. When you put it on it fits snug around your waist/stomach and you barely notice any added bulk. Now take it off and roll it vertically. See how much bulk there is? Half inch? Quarter inch? Once distributed around your waist, you barely notice it, but it’s there.
To really see how it affects your final glassed product. Take a 2" roll of masking tape and pick one spot on the board and start wrapping it perpendicular to the stringer completely around the rails. Keep wrapping it like 10 -15 tmes. Now notice the difference in size between the taped section and the rest of the board?
That’s why it DOES matter.
I take off a little under a .25" overall on each dimension.
Drew
A good lam and hotcoat with 6 oz cloth adds 0.01 inches of thickness. Pretty much irrelevant. Note - this depends somewhat on the skill of the glasser. The better the glasser, the thinner the glass (for the same cloth).
If you’re doing the standard pupe bottom-deck-rail-lap-glass-job, then it does need consideration.
With the possible two layers thickness on the deck, one on the bottom, and all three on the rails, I would say the rails are the most susceptible to noticable change.
Three layers 6oz there is about 1/8", both rails making it about 1/4" overall. And that’s over the whole rail volume, not just the width.
Happened to me like drew, early boards had bulky rails. Depends a lot also on how good you glass and how tight you wrap the rails.
Sorry, but I can’t aggree with you in relation to your comparison. A rashguard is an elastic cloth (like a condom), different of glass cloth. In general, a good glasser can apply the cloth to the shape in an almost invisible way. Even glass on fins can be perfectly attached to the board without increase to much the thickness in those areas. The same in relation to hotcoats and gloss coats. The art consists on laminating without interfering in the original board’s dimensions. In the past (20+ years ago), it was common to strip old boards to give birth to new ones. Those tankers costed me some sharp blades and hand wounds to be striped. Today, it’s almost impossible to do this because boards are too thin, but broken boards arrive every day to be repaired. Some glassers appear to use rice papper to dress those lightweight beasts.
Howzit Jeff,
I was refering to the second poster as"bad advice" and not to you.
While I agree that a skilled glasser can produce a tightly wrapped layup with minmal gain in bulk…I definitley know for a fact that it is near imossible for noobs to achive this.
20 or so boards under my belt, and I am definitely seeing better results thatn my first few…but to one who has not yet even glassed a board, it is something that will definitely factor into finished dimension.
Drew
Ok, don’t worry, and let the thread go ahead…
thanks for all the input guys. Not sure if I want to tackle the glassing yet. So, if I glass I’ll take into consideration my blank dimensions that I’m a newbie glasser (as well as shaper)and if I send it out for glassing the dimensions stay the same as planned.
thanks again and I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions!
Tim
For short boards, I wouldn’t worry about any dimension except the rails. My experience is you gain about 1/32" on the board except the nose and tail overlap- there it’s about 1/16". But the place that Shows the greatest volume gain is the rails with the overlaps. I use rail templates to make sure I get the rail vol. I want. I had to learn it the hard way by hit and miss. But you could shorten the trial and error process by taking a rail vol. you like, make a template of it and then add enough duct tape to simulate the thickness of the rail glass job you’ll use and you’re hopefully getting close.
what the hell !?..are you measuring with a micrometer, do you know what that is?.. well you dont need one in this case just a ruler. damn just relax a 1000th of an inch wont matter… if your glassing adds like say 1/8- 1/4 then maybe its time to recalculate, and zero out that micrometer try to keep things with in 1/ 1,000…just kidding, but seriously.zero that thing out.
Aloha Surf4fins
As the ultimate geek in board measuring… I can authoritively tell you after thousands of them, that standard glassing schedules and techniques only add about 1/8" to the board, rarely more, sometimes less. So a 2 1/2" thick board will become about 2 5/8". Same for the widths.
This 1/8" is hugely significant in how a board functions relative to the same rider and what he has been accustomed to. But since you are just a beginner, I wouldn’t worry about it much. You will have plenty of other struggles to get through that are way more consequential to the board coming out “ok”.
Later this level of thickness detail will be important to you but until you have the skills to actually arrive at a particular measureable point in the foam and do so while keeping all the other design perameters in tact, you can’t afford to go there without driving yourself crazy or ruining some other important feature like rocker profile as you try to get the board precisely thinner at some spot.
When duplicating “magic” boards details under 1/16" matter and matter a lot. But so does everything at that point. Getting the whole package balanced properly is the trick. Very few have the ability to do this. Yet it is this skill that will keep the customers coming back for more, regardless of price.
Bill,
That’s the most rational thing I’ve read on the subject. Put your energy into getting the rocker right and not stress about 1/16th or an eighth on the rails.
Yes, Glassing can makes a big difference in thickness. Here are some things to consider.
Recorded dimensions are for the blank, not the glassed board.
Think of glassing thickness in relation to different parts of the board in percentages.
For instance, for sake of discussion, say you are adding 1\8 inch of glass. 2 inches back fom the nose the shaped blank is around 3\8 inch thick. You are adding about
30 percent thickness with glass. At the thickest part of a bigger board with 3" of thickness at the middle you would only be adding only about 4 percent .
So you can see that as board parts get thinner, glassing thickness becomes much more of a consideration.
This is why the untrained eye would walk into a glass shop and see a bunch of hy per 6-0’s standing in the racks and say"Wow! why are thos noses so thin!!" Upon seeing the same boards glassed he’s say"Yeah, those noses look just right!"
C
I’ve been thinking about this subject as well because of the switch to sandwhich construction. The volume added to the blank will be much more significant. More like 3/8" total to total width/thickness.
I think it is most obvious that glass adds thickness to a board on a thin tail (particularly pintails). If you want a thin pintail, you have to foil the foam & stringer out quite a bit…
Thanks for adding the bit about percentages it is a very important aspect of board design and construction and is often overlooked. Your examples of thickness were great.
Astute designers should also consider the percentage impact of things like tail designs. On an 8’6" gun for big waves the tip of the tails shape is fairly inconsequential as it represents so small of a percentage of the overall board. While on a 6’0" board the tail shape is hugely consequential both since it is much wider and also because those last 6 inches are a large percentage of the overall board.
In general, tail shapes are overly empathized in board design mainly because that is the most visible part of the board that can be shaped many different ways. But fact is, that other aspects of a boards design are way more important than the tail.
Still, surfer will focus on the tail design and be dead sure that they only like round pins, for example, because their best board ever was a round pin. Usually never realizing that the rocker and other important features really governed why they actually liked the board with the Round Pin.
Still, surfer will focus on the tail design and be dead sure that they only like round pins, for example, because their best board ever was a round pin. Usually never realizing that the rocker and other important features really governed why they actually liked the board with the Round Pin.
YEP
c
Good points everyone. If you are just looking for a no BS guideline for the average guy, I’ve been there. For your average short board:
Subtract 1/16" - 1/8" in thickness, and 1/8" - 1/4" for width. That should get you going, then you should be able to go from there.
Hope that helps.