how the hackers do it..

General Discussion
1

This is for Chip but I don’t think these pics are going to save surfing most likely probably ruin it for all I know…

Anyway we decided to go on blank building binge oneula style.

Warning do not attempt this at home the people doing this have no idea what they are doing and take no responsibility for their actions… Foam? who needs stinking foam when you have roofing material…

oneula and his brother’s sufboard sushi prep pics.

This is our normal standard 16" horizontal stringer you can see our new route technique we didnt do it before and had delam issues due to gaps of the 1mm…

Here’s my new horizontal stringer probablynot needed since the cheap foam will be shelled in the same material.

here’s the mold, foam, contour mat and mdf board over the top in bag

removed from bag mdf removed exposing contour mat msde from a quart of UV, and 8 sheets of mat between a sheet of 7.5 oz glass bagged to the bottom of the board.

here’s the single concave “pushed into the foam and wood…” Yea! no shaping the bottom anymore “Thanks Bert” one of many things I learned from you and CMP

here’s the blank (if you can call it that) and the mold board. Rocker pretty much the same 6" nose 2.5-3" tail

oh yea you looking into my shaping room.

Here’s another angle on the rocker capture. We’ve found that it won’t go away like some other blanks we’ve done doing it the classic stringer method originally described for cheapo blanks. Also another shot of my roomy shaping room and the single most reason our boards suck and why I hate shaping…

here’s the mandala quad fish rocker capture. for my brother… He’s gonna make a “stretch” nathan fletcher copy from it.

Picture comparing the flyer(top) and Mandala rockers… Nose on right seems like the flyer has more tail rocker although surprisingly the nose rockers are about the same. Which I wouldn’t have believed for a fish… You can see the layers here too. We take very little off the bottom and bring the top down to the bottom as needed… I’ll be hot wiring mine this time using rocker template screwed on to the sides of the block once we square them up. The glue up on the flyer was done with “expanding” Gorilla glue and the glue up with the mandala was done using 2-1 epoxy resin.

Oh yeah nice roomy shaping space isn’t…

Someone say roofing material? Yup cheap lowes 1lb Insulfoam probably less than 1lb in my opinion.You can see the 1" on the bottom and 2" on the top and the cheese grate from 15lb of suction over night.

We obviously we a little over board at Lowes… Also made one hell of a mess in the parking lot cutting the 4x8 EPS sheets in half and even then it was hilarious trying to drive home with all these sheets shoved into the car. That’s the Gemini mold on the top waiting it’s turn to mate some roofing material… 2" is less than $15 and 1" is less than $13

here’s over $200 worth of reinforcement but at $30 a 4x8 sheet what do you expect.

On this mornings second round of glue ups I routed out and inserted balsa blocks to hold future boxes I’ll put in afterwards. Blocks were 6" long and 1" wide and sat a little below the lip of the 1" bottom sheet. Remember this is going to be covered by the 1mm bamboo so I duplicated these marks on the outside bottom of the bamboo and will do the same with the external balsa/hardwood layer…

here’s my new EPS jig saw, router and planer. I’ll do the outlines, and shape the rail bands using MikeJ’s turkey knife slice technique. I actually cut an complex outline today(gemini) and didn’t create one EPS bubble in the process. Used a respirator outside and it was a little slow but silent and clean just like using a cabinet scraper to smooth out your final coat. You saw my shaping room so you know why making a mess is a problem for the neighbors… When I get my bow this week I can start trimming out the deck profiles.

I don’t know if any of this is of any help to anyone.

Most likely not…We’re just hackers but have learned to get off the “grid” so to speak by building our own boards our way…

Be interesting to see if we can build one with out using a single “surfboard building” item like resin, glass and foam. And yeah I know roy and the rest of the HWS are doing it today…

We have learned that boards made this way are super light almost too light when made normally, and somewhat prone to delam and breaking but I believe if shelled with this bamboo weave under the balsa skins they’ll be pretty much indestructable. If you’ve ever used the bamboo you’ll know how light and tough it is. You also can add kevlar and graphite strips in the process as well. But we’ll be experimenting with building springer fulcrums in future blanks using other types of routed in horizontally oriented inserted material.

Anyway much too many words again as usual…

Sorry Chip

2

That’s great work Oneula!!

How are you going to do the rails, same weave?

3

Aloha Hicksy!

I’m basically building a gorilla glued bamboo torsion box around a shaped cheap EPS core with some of the shaping done with contour mats and as much done with hotwire jigs of various types. Final smoothing with a drywall screen that attaches to a vacuum.

Then wood or high density Corecell rails that are slightly overlapped by a balsa(or other hardwood veneer) deck and wood skin for the bottom not lapping the rails…

Pretty mush the same old same old doing something a little different with the core.

getting premier shaped Clark blanks to wood lam is going to be rough if not non-existant for a while…

that’s why…

oh yeah and you saw my shaping room

I’ve pretty much given up on developing that talent…

4

Looks good to me. Maybe one day you and CMP can show me some of those vaccum bag Jedi surfboard techniques.

5

Hi Bernie -

When I saw your fin box layout it reminded me of something I need to do…

I have some clear acrylic panels and I plan to duplicate something like your reference lines only on the acrylic sheet. I’ll cut some reference lines in the acrylic so I can use it as a guide when marking the spots on the blank for the balsa blocks and later, when marking the same spots on the wood laminate for the actual box positions. If it works out, I should know exactly where the balsa blocks are under the wood laminate.

6

mate , I find these threads FASCINATING .

I hope the vacuum bagging video / cd / dvd whatever on your drive works , because I know Lavz is FROTHING to see it , being that HE may have the facilities at University ['college"] this year to be able to do this stuff , as part of his engineering degree .

FASCINATING , I tells ya !

Please keep threads like this coming …

I may NEVER even do something like this myself , but I’m always stoked to see different materials and stuff other people are doing ! [I could imagine “Hicksy” doing something like this though , for sure ! …as long as it was a good functional rideable board , I’d be stoked to give it a go , Grant …how about shelf [?delete?] the idea

for your ‘next project’ , and try a lighter board like this which you’ll be able to surf WELL on ? [just a thought]

cheers Bernie for posting that mate !

ben

p.s. so…is ‘CMP’ your brother , Bernie ?

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WOW>>>!!!

…ambrose…

go oneula<

8

great hacking oneula

to be honest

its your relentless enthusiasm and stylish approach

that got me into this whole trip

9

Oneula-

One word… no, two words: “Killer!” and “Thanks!”

Tom

10

Thanks for the kind words everyone…

But no chip…

CMP is not my brother (a brother to alot of us in spirit though) he’s more like our zen master teacher cause he’s been doing it so long. He’s our real inspiration in many ways…

He showed us that you can easily build stronger, better looking boards in a wide variety of ways. especially without going all sways psycho like we’ve been doing using this roofing material.

Mostly it’s adapting to our environment… Cause if we had the ability to pickup and store a big block like everyone else we’d be doing that. But when you can barely haul a bunch of these 2x8 sheets of this stuff home big blocks are out the question. In fact if I don’t glue up and get rid of that stack of insulfoam soon I’ll come home from work to find them gone to the trashman because they are in the way, The sooner I can glue them bend them cut them wrap them and stack them in the back store shed the more chance they have for survival…

My brother being way more crazier than me got inspired somehow to build a 4 man canoe out of this stuff. Basically he built a slice template and is cutting them out of 2" insulfoam one slice at a time to all be glued up into an outrigger canoe with inserted aluminum bracing for support. I’m sure I’ll be helping him out completing this project until it’s done.

One thing we’ve learned last year is that vacuum bagging with skins opens so many more options that it’s somewhat beyond surfboard building. Creating forms and shapes can be done in many ways, even by adding shaped pieces on the bottom of a flat bottom or deck to get very complex shaoes like 6 channels, bonzers, concaves, step decks etc etc. If you take the concepts of "sculpting shapes and then bagging skins over it that opens the door to unlimited creativity.

The other things I’m finding like the old timers here is by freeing your mind outside of what typically is called surfboard building and studing what people are doing in other industries hotwiring foam, wood bending and veneering via vacuum bagging or molding things you can do alot more with your hotwire. bag, foam, epoxy resin, wood and glass…

So due to the quality of our shaping facilities we’ve developed two tracks…

The first, is to shape and add on pieces of material to create various bottom contours out of a wide variety of densities for different effects. CMP showed us how… In fact this weekend I was studing this 16" wide roll of 1/8" blue polypropelene foam. The kind Niera showed us in his HD bodyboard thread and was wondering what that would do if bagged under my bottom wood skin to act as a shock absorber and allowing the bottom skin to flex even more. Talk about opening your mind to all the possibilities…

The second is to hot wire shape cheap foam, glass it or seal coat it to make it rock hard and them use these to press in various bottom contours into cheap foam blanks under vacuum.

If you don’t get stuck thinking about being a “shaper” and making pretty little things to show off to the world you can get really creative.

Since we’re hobbiest and making them for our own use we can get away with it…

Once you start making boards for other people for money… Your in it for a whole 'nother reason in my personal opinion… And there’s alot of restrictions that come with that…

11

Cripes, you stay busy! I work on one at a time and think I have a lot to do :slight_smile:

I love seeing the rocker “capture”… that’s good fun.

Thanks for all the photos.

One thing for sure - your shaping room is warmer than mine is right now. I could use a little of that natural heating. I’m not a cold weather guy, winters even here in NorCal make me unhappy. Well, except for the waves, I guess :slight_smile: Sorry, I ramble.

12

actually standing out there in the hot ewa sun wrapped head to toe or in a white plastic nomex suit to not get any fiberglass or foam dust on me I often get heat stroke even when drinking lots of water or other sports dehydration drinks…

The other nightmare is cord/vacuum hose management with no roof to attach the overhead bungee to. So you hang the cord and hose over your shoulder as you walk back and forth trying not to catch with the rail with the serated edge of the vacuum hose or the electric cord with your planer or belt sander. Which happened to me once already…

But the absolute worse is that the lighting to properly shape in there is the worse possible thing you can do to see what you are doing even with polarized goggles.

May sound funny but the typical shaping scenerio for me is you take a couple of swipes with the block or planer, stop put it down then turn on the shop vac to suck up the mess before the wind picks it up and spreads it around the neighborhood. and repeat thie over and over again.

The other scenerio is me standing there with a shop vac hose sucking in all the “extra” dust not captured by the hose on the planer while my brother shapes away to his hearts content. Which is why his boards come out a way better than when I have to shape solo… Nice having your own clean up man in the back ground tidying everything up for you as you work…

Definitely prehistoric style board making.

Yup a total shaping comedy of errors… But that’s why we consider ourselves hackers and not board makers…

You do this for a while in the hot Ewa sun and pretty soon those $350 chinese made Sams/Costco boards start looking like a real good option.

We must be crazy…

At least everyone at home tells us so.

13

Oneula,

Can you post a post glue-up comparison of the rocker of the blank and the master either visual or measured. It seems like, geometrically, that the radius of curvature of any curves would be made bigger (smoothed) by the thickness of the foam. Does this get addressed by then only shaping the deck to match the thickness of the master and leaving the bottom profile intact?

I have thought about doing this, but came to the conclusion that I might need to use 2 very thin (say 0.5") layers of foam to get an accurate copy and then add an additional layer of foam on the deck side of the curve to get thickness. CAD could answer this for me, but I don’t have a working license right now.

Probably inconsequential for a 1st generation copy with gradual curves, but I can imagine that if repeated (copies of copies), it would lead to washed out continuous rockers.

Matt

14

Oneula,

You’ve just ruined my marriage! This weekend I promised my wife no more boards for awhile as I finished up HER latest noserider. Yesterday we were in Lowes looking at tile and paint when I found myself perusing the EPS insulation, then the adhesive isle and wiring depts. I kept thinking “What if?”. The materials are cheap and I could take my time. Hmmmmmm??? Well, now you’ve just sealed it for me. You’ve unknowingly motivated me to start a new project. One that I’m sure my wife will love.

But honestly, great post! Thanks for sharing with us. I have to go to Ebay now and check out vacuum pumps.

15

Tigermeat:

I’ll try and take a pic this weekend of the measurements.

But I was wondering the same thing so I did the old lay the batten across the bottom and measure the tail and nose rocker to the batten. To my surprise they were almost the same. The difference being attributed to the extra length of the foam versus the board so the rocker carries to the end of the blank as a natural extension.

The only bad part about this is now your deck has the same look as your bottom…

But we’re gonna shave most of that off on the nose and tail anyway especially if we use two rocker templates bolted into the sides and hot wire the top off. That’s why we’re gluing these up as planks instead of cutting the outline first like we did before and why I used Gorilla Glue instead of epoxy… According to Benny1 you can hot wire thru Gorilla Glue but we’ll see.

Sr. Pato:

Sorry about that…

Hey but cheap is cheap… Just be aware that it’s cheap and you get what you pay for.

I’m putting on double wood layers so I know it’s gonna be strong and still pretty light.

That Lowes stuff is just about the lightest you can get your hands on.

I swear a bonzer 7’4" we made from it and balsa skins was like about 5-6 pounds max with a gloss coat…

A little too light for me when I rode it… But then it had wrapped rails so it was “surftechie” stiff too.

Oh yea I made the same commitment at the end of 2005… These blanks are just gonna go in the store room for later use…

I still have to prebuild out all my wood skins after I’m done building these blanks and store the skins for later use…

I can then take my time building my boards when I feel like it with all the various parts premade… Basically a backyard surftech cobra factory for the DIY guys…

16

hey Chip

saw your other post about a sando travel board…

Maybe we can get one done with all the secret sauce bells and whistles liek poly pro and corcell inserts etc etc and give it to Keith in April to take back for the boys…

Just and idea but we’ll see…

Won’t be a “burger” but what they hell it’ll be available

17

top

Since I figured I documented alot of this already way back when…

This’ll give you guys an idea of what it’s like to create a surfboard( if that’s what you can call them) the way we do.

On the new post I’ll include allot more pics of the glue up process, vacuuming part (since everyone seems scared of that part), the profiling or the deck and rail build out. It’s so much simpler with a block cause you can hot wire the rocker and profile at the same time… You just need a rocker table to do the skins. With sheets we do half the skins and set the rocker at the same time. That way when you skin the deck after you profile and shape it it won’t lose rocker during vacuum especially if you have some of the rails on when you vacuum on the deck.

Normally we’d epoxy the exterior bamboo sheets with epoxy and 2oz or 4oz glass. But since I’m doing a layer of veneer exotic wood over the bamboo, I’ll be using the GG to smooth out the bamboo lam prior to doing a glass layer then veneer then glass layer over that to seal. Gonna go 2oz all the way but it should be pretty strong with the 1mm bamboo weave underneath on top of the foam… Since we’re not wrapping the veneer.I might also try and apply the veneer with it’s top and bottom glass in a bag with perf release…

We can do a CMP balsa wrap if you all want to see that technique but I think Benny1 has shown alot of that already though… If we do a 100% balsa rail wrap we’ll do glass under and over…

but that makes a stiffer board although it’s much easier to finish out the balsa skin…