hi
anybody knows how to increase the skin or laminate thickness
Balancing the weight out of course…
Thanks
Wouter
buy thicker laminate
Also please clarify laminate. Are you sure you’re not talk about veneer. I don’t think it’s a compsand if veneer is used. Are you talking about fiberglass cloth laminate? If so, use additional layers to make it thicker.
High density foam, like dyvinicell, or low density woods, sandwiched between layers of reinforcing cloth.
Quote:
buy thicker laminate
Also please clarify laminate. Are you sure you’re not talk about veneer. I don’t think it’s a compsand if veneer is used. Are you talking about fiberglass cloth laminate? If so, use additional layers to make it thicker.
yeah not veneer,
just the outer shell i called it laminate.
i was hoping for some composite material
i know that balsa and foams are used, i was just hoping for some more info on a new material…
Use s glass and epoxy instead of e glass and polyester.
I see, Just one stop shop at surftech.com and look on the tech page. Feel free to
use any of those layers to build your laminate up.
So how does one put a thin layer of high density foam over the first glass layer. I am wondering how it is attached (spray adhesive? epoxy?) and how does one get it lie flat going around the rails, nose, and tail. Also what type of foam is used, and what is a good source.
Rh-
You try to simultaneously do it in one step with a vacuum bag if you are a home builder. The rails are tricky and may need to be pieced in. Where do you live? If you are in America you can find it at any decent surfboard/boat building manufacturing supply shop. On line from many sources. Mr burger has the mother of all step by step builds for this on swaylocks. go find it, you can do it.
Here is the thread OTAY is referring to:
read this thread once. Think about it for a few days. Read it again. One of the best threads on sways.
this i where balsa kills it man
you can use this stuff that maybe 60kg density or less and you could have say 4mm thick laminate
that wont absorb any resin like the pvc or sans foam
you can glass a side with 120 grams with a 100 fill coat and 60 grams of 2pac
total laminate weight is about 6 or 700 grams a side
it has good compression strength and excellent strength longitudnaly
this is where you get your 4 pound and under boards that are incredibly strong with good bright flex
thats why ive been saying dont try and waterproof it and use thicker skins
its good as it is for what it does
if you want waterproof and dont mind the weight use cedar or paulownia with a thinner laminate
the thinner laminates like bamboo are great for resisting denting but for overall board strength you want a greater thickness of a sandwhich laminate
this is composites 101
so glass it 2 oz under and 3 or 4 oz over and you really have the ferrari of compsands
berts been saying it all along
but they need to be cared for
i find most of the water damage happens at the rail and where heavy foots break the glass on the deck
so you patch the spots that get damaged and substitute pvc on the rail
you get your superlight ferrari without the water problems
they are by far the lightest and overall strongest boards i have built tho at this stage i dont believe they are marketable to the average punter
for someone thats in the know ,they cant be beat
Hi Paul -
I know you guys have been experimenting with various builds and wonder if you are adding an “inside” (under the edge of the skins) perimeter rail? Benny1 said at one point that he was using end grain balsa as an inner rail material to support the edges of his skins. I suppose foam or whatever could be used as the actual rail building material but I was interested more in how you detail under the edges of the skins.
I think Bert originally did a flush bottom skin edge (no overlap) but an overlapping deck skin. I don’t know how he’s doing it now but several people described sand throughs while trying to fair the overlap.
I noticed on Greg Loehr’s recent post that he is overlapping the skins on the parabolic stringers.
Would this help avoid the heavy foot damage at the rail or is that something else?
john i add the 15mm wide pvc foam rails first
shape them down and fully overlap both skins
the key, is rail edge is left square until the skins go on
and then rounded off at the end ( this leaves a full 3mm of skin covering the rail material deckside)
so even if i do a full balsa skined board i prefer to use pvc as the rail material under the skins
the difference after 6 months surfing (rivermouths and reef) is amazing
all the bruising and small dings you get turns the balsa rails pretty mucky
pvc foam is waterproof so the little dings and bruisng are sweet as
There are core materials being used by boat and aerospace companies. Some are honeycombed hexagonal shapes that can be thick. I think these would require a bit more work since you’d need to make the skins first to keep the resin/glass ratio just right. These materials are also very expensive. A search of composites would find you a variety of materials being used.
We’ve used balsa up to 1/4" for flat sections (mostly the bottoms or flat top boards) and 1/8" on the profiled sections. 1/8" balsa will wrap around almost any board. 1/16" with a layer of 2oz glass under is also quite strong, but it’s not the way to go if you want thickness.
We vacuum the skins onto 1lb eps with a layer of glass under the wood, then do a hand lamination glass job over that. I think a 1/8" balsa composite with 2oz glass on each side made in a vac bag with the resin glass ratio optimized would be the strongest/lightest. I’ve also done 2 layers of 1/16" balsa and run them in different directions for more strength, and a nicer finished product.
I haven’t seen anything light, strong and cheaper than the modelers balsa you can get online (at least for us in Hawaii). The cheapest we’ve done is to mill our wood from Wiliwili, but that isn’t so cheap if you factor in the time and cost of the electricity to run the machines.
Infusion!