Just finished a couple of projects I thought I might share with the crew here.
First on is a cedar compsand fish, 5’11’ x 22.5 x 2.625 with the Griff-style 5-fin setup in ply and carbon fiber. I tried to get with Griff to get a set of his fins, but we were having trouble connecting and I was frothing to get this thing finished. He was generous enough, however, to share the placements with me, and a friend forwarded me some tracings of the fin templates themselves, so I’m hoping I got pretty close to how the master himself would have done it.
Next was a “pet project” of mine. It wound up being way more labor-intensive that I had expected, but the end result was good. Not sure if I’d do it again, though.
I had gotten this board back as a trade-in a few months ago, and I had already reworked it once to fix the rocker. Since it wasn’t cosmetically perfect, and it rode pretty damn good, I figured it was the ideal candidate for a travel-board.
I didn’t take many photos of the build process since my wife had the camera out of town when I was doing much of it, but I’ll narrate best I can with the few cellphone pics I took.
I started by taking .5" ID carbon fiber tubing and glassing them into slots I routed into the board. I placed them close to the bottom skin and close to the rails so they’d have something to “grab” onto. The ends of the tubes were plugged with epoxy and the centers of the tubes were plugged with pencils wrapped with tape so the tube wouldn’t splinter when the saw hit it. the middle tube was placed against the deck, but the alignment didn’t wind up being perfect with the other two, so it looks like I’ll have to get by with two.
After putting the carefully aligned tubes into the board and re-capping the balsa and re-glassing, I made a jig to clamp on the board that would guide it down the sides of my table saw. Then I cut that sucker in half.
I totally borrowed the idea of placing the tubes before sawing from the Pope bisect, so don’t give me any credit for that idea. I’m not an “idea guy”, I’m more of a “planning and execution” guy.
After that I cut up a longboard centerfin box and inlaid that into the foam so it was oriented vertically, and so each half of the board would have two sections of finbox that would face each other when the halves were mated up. should have taken a photo of this part, but when you see how it is bolted together you’ll get it.
I used carbon fiber to tie the finbox sections to the deck skin, so they wouldn’t come out under tension
then I put the half-circle abs plastic caps over the finboxes, and glassed over the exposed cut section, and lapped that over all the other work on the outside of the board. I had to tape down the glass to get it all lay down right in one pull.
then I put a thin sheet of ABS plastic on each half for a flat mating surface. Again, I can’t take credit for this or the idea to use the finbox as a screw anchor, it was Pierre on Sways who did this first, albeit without the CF tubes.
then it was just a simple matter of fairing everything out, locating and opening up the CF tubes and fin boxes, then trial-fitting and praying it would all go back together again.
Here’s the finished work.
The anchoring system, under the plastic caps are chunks of longboard center finbox facing each other so the bolt has something to anchor against. The aluminum bolt has holes through its head so it can be turned with a standard fcs-size allen wrench. Again, not my idea.
Opened up:
Mating surfaces and connecting parts:
You can see where there is tube for a third CF rod, but the alignment was wrong on that one, so it won’t go together. Incidentally, the most challenging part of this whole build was trying to find a source for carbon fiber tubes that would go inside one another with a close fit. I had to get my .5" Inner-diameter tube and .5" Outer-diameter tube from two different sources. That took some looking, but they were a PERFECT slip-fit.
All together now (with glass taped on to patch the tail ding it got while working on it).
Next step: a bonzer pintail to match the nose for the truly ultimate travel board, three small pieces, two complete boards.
