Swaybrus…
It has been awhile since I did a real build thread. I’ve made a few boards, but with no publishable data. Since Mike Daniel and the burrito bros have got me all hot and heavy over stringerless eps and high fiber content, I figured the boys should quit ‘mind building’ and just give it a go. I’m gonna do some stuff and then take pictures. I’ll be back in a little bit.
hunter
That’s the stuff!
But could ya naught have spared us a thought before you went runnin’ off?
Ah yeah… sorry. Well, I’m not completely new to stringerless EPS. The nerdiest swaydorks may remember Sans. That board was laminated with Greenroom epoxy and double 6 S top and bottom. She was a stiff one!
This board will be a bit more high performance oriented in template. I’m also gonna take a crack at the staged foil concept.
Here’s my soul-less kinko’s template:
I then rocked a new school ‘trace right to blank’ without the intervening doorskin step.
Template dims are 6’2’’ by 18 7/8’'.
I’m planning on thinning the tail quite a bit. To that end I will need some glass on fins. I’m going to tes the limits of ‘ludicrous light’ in my lams and what not, so I figured I should make up some light weight balsa fins. I accordingly laid up some 'balsa-ply; fin blanks with rotating grain. I used a glue stick like a pre-schooler. Very arts and crafts. I find that stuff glues balsa quite well and is very light. Contrary to common sway-lore, not all adhesion scenarios require gorilla glue.
In order to maximize glue stick physicals, adequate clamping pressure is necessary.
Family law treatise and my old lady’s big honking dumbells. If that Marlin dude from 101 tries to bite my trade secrets, I’ll kick him in the taco!
Here’s a complete blank ready for foiling. It is 3/8’’ thick:
I’m not sure what sort of progress I’ll have over the next few days. I’ve gotta order some more resin, of course. Next week I’m taking a wee surf trip to PR… so we’ll see. Maybe I can get those fins foiled out, eh?
Depends on…
… the surf check. “It’s chest high for me Dad!”
I’m right there with you… I have my own such concoction in development right now… I wanted to use bamboo cloth for some, maybe all of the lamination, but now that I actually have the fabric, I’m not so sure it will be good for my vac(maybe a variation of infusion) lamination. Might use the cloth on another board. I have a thread going on mine, so I won’t hijack your thread.
Do you have a lam schedule in mind? How much fiber are we talking here? What density foam are you using?
I’ll be watching this thread, we seem to be building similar boards, or at least, we are starting out with similar goals…
Josh
LOL!!
This thread just got a major bump!
Josh…
I saw your thread. It popped up just as this was marinating in my mind. I was stoked to see we were thinking along the same lines. Hijack all you want.
Foam is 2.5 PCF by WNC. I am hestitant to disclose my lam schedule for fear of chastisement from craftee, hehe. Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained goes the phrase.
Plan is to vac single 4 bottom; single 4 top with 3/4 deck 4 oz deck patch; additional 4 oz patch in front foot area.
Then I’m going to hand lam 2oz top and bottom to battle the inevitable pinhole problems.
Doom and gloom to follow…
As for natural fiber lam… I’ve only done a hemp vac lam. It was heavy as all get out. I hear similar things about the boo. [enter counterpoint by greenlight here].
I’m really curious to see what advantages vacuum bagging brings over hand laminating in this. If I didn’t know better I would have to say that stringerless is catching on and it’s not hard to see why when you see the price of the blank.
hunter, sad to say I agree with above; I think at the density you’re talking about, the only real advantage will be that less resin will mean weight savings, and even that’s pretty easy to cock up.
now, if you were to say go with triple four bottom and quadruple four deck with a patch over 1.5# foam, wetting out the glass at a very controlled ratio on a sheet of mylar before applying it to the finished blank, then vac bagging, I think you’d be on to something big…less resin would bring the weight down to something like double 4 bottom, triple four deck, which over 1.5# is light man…real light.
don’t forget; it’s all about the basics; keeping your glass ratios high, using the bag to assist in getting the lam as tight and thin as possible means that you’re making a skin akin to a sandwich, without using a sandwich to get the panel stiffness and strength. Then it’s all about insuring you’ve got a core that’s weak in shear, but can be elastic; exact same ideas that are talked about re: compsands; you’re just using an in situ method to put your skins together…with glass…
then again, it’s sounding alot like the sans instead of the fact that you’ll bag the glass…and that board is proven for you…so…charge it!
Plan is to vac single 4 bottom; single 4 top with 3/4 deck 4 oz deck patch; additional 4 oz patch in front foot area.
Then I’m going to hand lam 2oz top and bottom to battle the inevitable pinhole problems.
That sounds good for 2.5PCF. The 2oz hotcoats thinner too. Altho your fiber/foam weight ratio is different than what many others eps dudes are doing. Another thing you can do is to put a bit more glass on top/side of the rails or do rail channels.
Sounds to me like your addiction is still troubling you 
May peace be with you…
Sounds to me like your addiction is still troubling you
May peace be with you…
hehe, so it seems…
I have about 5 stringerless eps blanks out on the back porch of my office. One is 2.5. and the others are 2.0. I figured I’d try some weird stuff with 'em. I don’t really need a performer or go-to board, as I have the griff. I just thought I’d implement some ideas.
what of yours? enjoying any peace at present?
extra rail glass… yes… I was thinking that might be necessary/desireable.
Hunter,
After much deliberation (I had to finish my coffee), the inner circle of the most secretive branch of the underground resin lab has decreed that this project may be worthy of one of the highly sought after micro-brew epoxy formulas currently awaiting testing. Of course, should you receive such a gift, you will be sworn to secrecy, only shown a portion of the secret hand shake ritual and given only the most cryptic form of instruction in its use.
Rob
Also, I’d like to hear some thoughts on the following:
How thin to go in the tail? I was planning max thickness in the 2 1/4 realm for perspective. The sans had a fairly thinned out tail… still hell stiff (I think it was all that S cloth) . That board probably weighed 6 lbs… 2.5pcf core with double 6 top and bottom.
How thin to step the nose area?
Hell yeah!!! The boys are microbrewing up some sweet sidechains, eh?
I’m changing the title out of a desire not to step on any toes. Sorry if I have. This is not a prompted move, but using branding in my title just struck me as uncool. I’m sure this will be quite unlike any professionally built board.
hunter
What does POS stand for by the way.
POS = piece of shit
like the car I drive,
not theboys’s boards.
they are modest magicians.
How about some 12oz stitched biax on the deck?
At ±45 it shouldn’t lock out and buck you off
but still give a nice structure with all those
straight running fibers. Then a 4 and a 2 over
that to smooth and level it a bit. To get more
flex and transfer energy to the rails, hog out
the deck and make it concave.
keep it coming. -Hein
Would laying some warp enhanced e cloth on the bias be feasible with vacuum bagging?
Hi deanbo… hein is on it…pos… but he is too kind and hasn’t seen one of my boards in person.
Hein–where would be a good plce to source that material?
Progress… wet, cold and flat means I foiled some fins…
I rough it out with hand plan and bastard file… no power tools need like with ply. I blended it with 60 grit. When I get some resin I’m gonna vac bag 'em. This was fun… making fins is like shaping a little board…hehe.
Boyos…
Back from PR… and I shaped up the board. I will post some pics under the lights this evening. I took Hein’s advice and hogged out the deck with some serious concavity.
I’m really undecided right now about laminate schedule… I want the board to be quite light… but I want it to last long enough to learn something…
little help?
By way of information… the tail thins out to a flat .25 inches at the tip. At 12’’ up it is 5/8’’ thick. It then steps up in thickness dramatically. Max thickness is 2.5’’ in the vicinity of the front foot position. However… the centerline max thickness is only 2’’ by virtue of the deck concave.
The forward foil is fairly standard procedure for a ‘chip’ type board… I thinned the nose out considerably… however, I did extend the concave pretty far forward with a mind toward creating some rigidity.
Rails are my best effort at reproducing what I see on my griffin… low with a hard tucked edge.
How do I glass this thing to keep it from breaking? Particularly the super thin stringerless tail…?
Fiberglass supply has 12 oz stitched biax. It won’t wrap around the rail so I used it as a full deck patch. You’ll have to work to saturate it so slow hardener and thin (heated) resin would be best. I imagine the core is pretty flimsy so some type of rocker fixture would help. Or you could stick some type of external stringer to the deck, glass the bottom normal, knock off the stringer and then bag on the deck. -Hein
