But this is the latest batch most aren’t 100% done yet
This is so embarrassing but Chippy’s been waiting for this I’m sure…
AkuBird Foam and APS3000 Shape with balsa rails and epoxy skinned with Bamboo Sycamore 4oz bottom and 2oz under/2oz over deck
This is a donation project for my alumni in an effort to raise $20,000 in three years for the Ke ali’i Pauahi Scholarship Foundation. I just need to come up with $500-$1000 or more a year for my class.
6’10" Handmade Lowes EPS 1/16" Balsa skinned Sharkcountry “hull” made just for me by my bro.Balsa rails 4oz under and over both sides.
Concaved bottom beveled and piched rails to be paired with a 9.5" True Ames Frye flex fin
6’ Lowes EPS bamboo skinned with 2" of blue down on each rail covered by wood
gonna have to paint this over to clean it up
The family Gemini
A special handmade Lowes EPS bamboo/balsa skinned blue dow railed experiment
Board on the left is for me 180lb-200lbs 6’6"x19.5"x3" the one on the right is for someone 250+lbs 6’6"x23.5"x4.5"
Beveled the bottom to cut back on the 23.5" width
This guys is a beast 4.5" of EPS thickness I believe it should float most of the brudda’s under 300lbs
You can see the bloat but the rails have been SK8’d (beveled down) way down from about 3" in from the rail
Sorry for all the ugliness don’t feel bad if you have to puke or need an aspirin after this…
I would LOVE to have a go on the single fin one , especially !
good stuff Bernie , thanks HEAPS for sharing those with us !
ben
p.s. - I went to schol with a “Gustafson” [nils] was his first name …he was a wack Danish guy , who had the VERY impressive party trick of being able to roll his eyes inside his head [ie: he would have no puil and iris showing , just two white eggs looking at you …man , that was some spacy shit […a bit like your boards , really ? hehee]
plus1 it’s an honor we don’t make you sick as your stuff and website is unreal.
we’ve been mostly dissapointed with our efforts when compared to what DP or Griff can provide us with our input.
our backyard lessons have been to never underestimate the value of a sage and to support them as best you can. Play around if you want but get the really good stuff from the guys that have been doing this stuff for decades…
One thing I immediately noticed once I got my hands on this 6’2" hightech Firewire is that our boards built with the .75lb Lowes EPS are as light if not lighter. The 6’10" hull probably weighs as light if not lighter than the Firewire 6’2" which is very eye opening for me but then again Bert’s always been a proponent of using a 1lb core with a strong shell.
Also those weights we get are when we spray seal the sand coat with acrylic spray versus doing a full gloss coat whixh makes the boards heavier. I’m trying to get some spray on 2Pac to see if it makes a difference on the finish but we use gloss waterbased acrylic and lacquer spray cans. If we had RR and AddF I’d try that. For future donations it’ll be UV over the wood skin(epoxy under) and a Poly gloss with Kokua’s formula to get the deep gloss you just can’t get with epoxy
Since I got a new scale to do the epoxy thing right I get the real numbers fro you this weekend
I really like those first two boards. Will be especially interested in hearing how the single fin rides. Have you thought of making any convex hulls in the near future?
Just need to make a “contour map” off my Nugget and use it to “press in” the profile into the soft EPS while we are bagging on the bottom skin… at 10-15 psi it pretty easy to make .75lb EPS do what you want.
The use of bottom “contour maps” to create bottom shapes was one of the greatest things shown to me by Bert and Hein that no one really caught on to other than to tweak a nose or tail rocker. If you look at how woodworkers use female and male foam molds to form wood under vacuum which I also learned from the roarockit web site you can see how gloriously simple this technique can be used with a close tolerant hotwire cut softfoam blank.
Hot wiring and cold form molding under vacuum using rocker tables and contour maps are the ultimate tools of an EPS composite sandwich builder. very efficient and very low waste (mess too)
In all honesty though this is the last of the compsand projects for awhile other than maybe more fund raising donation boards.
I have two HWS boards to finish and a 16’ 1lb Lowes EPS outrigger canoe to figure out how and what to bag it with…
We also have to glueup and prebuild out our 2’x8’ balsa and hardwood veneer skins and 1/8"-1/4" rail band sheets for future projects and friends… I have several huge boxes in the house of Veneer from Joewoodworker I need to glue up into sheet panels for donation board compsand skins. Really pretty stuff like koa, ebony, aromatic cedar, tigerwood, maple, sapele mahogany, walnut, sycamore and more.
Those single fins designs are fast but a little bitey with the full pinched hard edge my brother likes to use. On a trim they zoom along pretty quickly especially with the concave bottom between the bevels and low rocker. Basically like a flat rock skipping across the smooth surface of the water… Straight up and down moves or breezy conditions aren’t their forte…
Hey man, this is kinda weird, but how is the concave set on those experiment boards, they look like ‘cat’s’. so is the concave the same? I’ve been holdin’ out on getting some foam, to experiment with some boards. I look towards boat manufacturers for designs. My only problem is that I’ve only made hollow wooden surfboards, and foam seems hard to me. it’s to ‘touchy’ and sensitive. So I was basically just wondering if you raised the concave on those boards like a ‘cat’.
the top tab on the vac switch goes to the power line
middle tab on the vac switch goes to the power on the pump
everything else is grounded and the bottom tab on the vac switch isn’t used.
My brother hauled the canoe home last Saturday and shaped it under his house until he filled up his underhouse shaping hut with so much EPS bubbles he had to stop because they were blowing all over the neighborhood. I guess he knows the value of his shop vac boy now… I feel like those ball boys at a tennis match coming in to grab them balls in between his shaping passes.
He’s gonna pick up my Vac set up and a large 20’x60" bag I bought for the canoe. He bought a ton of mat to glass on over the 1lb foam once he does that we can haul it back here and put some wood on it.
I saw someone hauling butt on the viaduct this morning around 5:30AM heading towards town with a SUP in the truck bed stucking out about 4 feet. Looked like one of Blane’s maybe it was Blane trying to dawn patrol town but again since they have the Duke festival going on all week so it could have been anyone. Sam Paea paddles over from Barbers on the weekends to check out all the breaks on our side even the outside reefs and paddles back to Barbers. About a couple miles round trip I figure must be a freaking work out…
Like Cheyne and Y have said before when you can free your mind about how what you ride looks and take it for what it is and what it does, you’ll discover there’s so much potential out there to increase your enjoyment level of what you’re doing…
Surfing is about what you do while you’re riding the wave and how you do it no matter what your tastes are. You never know if something not for you unless you try it…
Just gotta deal with the rest of the pack laughing at you that’s all…
Design breakdown from a rider not the designer.
concave at the nose hulls are 1" deep tapering to 1/2" at 18"-24" from the nose all the way through the tail. Concave flattens on the belly and deepens in the tail as the tail is pulled and much narrower than the nose… You’re sucking big air up the nose channel letting it expand int he wide belly area and compressing in the tail right through the quads fins you can imagine what that’s doing to water flow as the air removes or lessens the friction of the boundry layer between board and water contact. Kind of like cerating and riding on a giant air bubble under your board evertine you pump another blast through there.
Not sure if it’s cutting edge but it’s different for sure…
And people just hate’em cause the way they look just like the Paul’s FP and Petersen’s Jet bottoms.
“The 6’10” hull probably weighs as light if not lighter than the Firewire 6’2" which is very eye opening for me but then again Bert’s always been a proponent of using a 1lb core with a strong shell…"
What?!! That is either phenomenal or the 6’2" has some weight on it. REALLY interested how that 6’10" is gonna go, it just looks right. I am pretty sure the 6’2" is made right near my shop, by a shaper named Dan Mann. If it is the lay-ups have changed around but involve quite a bit more glass than before they got rid of the balsa skins. Twist was the problem with the new ones so there is special cloth to prevent it. The cores are about 1.4 to 2.0, and are not near what the top pros get.
I really like the use of .75 with skins. I made a sailboard with sandwich skins in the mid 80’s that was 9’6" and weighed 9-3/4 lbs! I used .70 but can’t get it anymore. 0.75 might be great if it gets skinned with 2.5 or 3.0 eps, have you tried something like that?
Since your boards are running so thick (4") the core density can afford to be reduced, plus the lower densities do so well to resist shear (distribute shear), which is the cause of boards losing their “pop”…
I don’t know if I’m giving away any trade secrets here but based on what I could see in the short time I had to perform some tests on the board before snapping all those photos is that it looked like there’s a layer of corecell on the deck covered by aeromat or some nidacore fabric maybe nidacore/fc because I can see the honeycomb structure under the top glass layer and there’s that classic gold look of corecell near the wood rail line that the Aeromat or Nidacore doesn’t overlap it could be maybe it’s just a different nida-core material that’s producing the yellowish round honeycomb cell look on the deck.
And I swear I can see foam under the glass on the bottom but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some type of matting under the glass. There’s a discussion in the archives related to certain fabrics from Nidacore that these guys liked because it was opaque. If you look at the new firewire look they all have that white or dark opaque coloration, which personally I like cause it’s clean looking.
I think they muist use a heavier core (1lb or more?) than the cheap Lowes stuff we use and there may even be an insert in the foam as an added springer down the middle (tap tests). I know the 1lb Insulfoam stuff feels heavier than the Lowes panel foam we buy.
Bottomline they are well built, light and look way stronger than a poly and don’t sound as “tinny” as a surftech when tapped.
I haven’t found the “flex” yet and at my weight and the cost of this thing don’t feel comfortable jumping up and down on it.
I’m not an engineer so these are all edumacated guesses at best.
…is that a very convex deck , or just my eyes playing tricks on me again ?
IF it’s a very convexed deck , HOW does that feel underfoot , when you are bottom and top turning ? Do you have any photos of Harry or you surfing that board , please ?
And , any chance of a side-on rocker/ foil shot of that board , please ?
fins are …???
What are the dimensions , also , please ? [ask a lot of questions , don’t I ? …hehe …you should know that by now !]
