It all started with a 9’5" SURFOAM (French foam, blown in Hossegor) 3 stringers blank:
Then a yellow tinted 6 oz bottom and rails:
Then a cutlap:
A first 6 oz top layer cut at mid-rail:
A second top 6 oz layer overlapping:
Rolling back the top layer and placing the logo laminate between layers:
Laminated top:
Hotcoat:
Sanded board:
Putting in a fin-box:
Sanding it flush:
looking good… but, why don’t you tape off your rails for the hotcoat and avoid all those nasty drips? Just curious…
Freehand posca pinlining, gloss, through-the-deck/finbox leash-plug pour:
Sorry, no shots of wet-sanding/polishing, just the end product (the photo doesn’t do it justice, it’s actually mirror-like…)
I hope I didn’t annoy you or something. Ben/Chipfish should be blamed for it, HE told me to post that…
Keith, don’t laugh: not a single roll of tape left in the shop when I started to hotcoat. I had spent one hour heating the shop because it was rather cold, and when I realised that I had no tape left, I wasn’t going to stop for that… Some more sanding, that’s all.
Howzit balsa,Looks like you used a lot of tape installing the fin box. You can make what is called a tape boat which saves a lot of tape. Aloha,Kokua
thanks for posting that , Billy !
…people now know where the “yellow board” / electric banana quote comes from . Keep up the good work you tripperman you !
cheers !
ben trippy chippy
Hi Balsa, clean job, except or those dripping hotcoats.
I found a good way to do it, without tape.
This technique probably wouldn’t work too well for epoxy due to the slow cure. But it’s really good with poly, particularly if you have your timing down, and too easy with solar cure.
Hotcoat the bottom first as usual, and when finished with the flat areas, wring the excess from the brush and do just the underside rails, getting rid of any thick resin spots which are cause of drips, and then brushing the resin tapering onto the deck. Sort of like feathering the brushed out edge. With practice the timing will gel before any drips form, and you will have a thin layer on the rails.
Because the rail hotcoat is now thin and sort of overbrushed, it seems to cure slower leaving the rail sticky for when you flip to do the deck. The extra brushing upsets the wax rising I guess.
Then when you flip it and hotcoat the deck, you end up with a slightly thicker coat on the rails giving a little extra to sand.
To take care of the drips when doing the deck it’s a different technique. After spreading and brushing out the deck, obviously there will be excess on the rails. Leaving the brush wet this time, only do rail strokes with the brush on the vertical and underside of the rail, making sure there is resin down to the edge, or on softer rails to the flat of the bottom. If you are careful and accurate with the brush you will not put much resin past the rail onto the bottom. Try not to.
Once you are happy with the resin distribution and are sure of an even coat, use a flat stirring stick or the like, and run the stick level horizontally from nose to tail using the bottom flat surface as a guide. You should find most of the excess drips straight off the stick, leaving a very clean resin edge. The flat stick is horizontal lengthways, but vertical edgways.
As I said, if you have your timing down or use solar cure resin, it can enhance the rail filler coats thickness and smoothness, giving just that little bit extra resin on the rails. This can lead to no sand-throughs on the rails if you are a neat glasser and proficient sander.
The weight is a non issue, particularly when the integrity of the unsanded rail cloth is uncompromised.
Maybe someone else does it like this and can explain a bit better than me, but I did many with excellent results.
Also leaves a good resin bead for sanding sharp edges if you want them.
Another thing that i saw Mark of Mark Surf designs, AKA the man with the VW THING. After he hot coats, he just keeps walking around the bottom drip edge with a brush. Eventually it kicks , hopefully you put in enough cat, or you might walk 20 miles before is goes off. But the end result is a fairly clean drip edge, and not too much sanding. No tape needed.
-Jay
Kokua, Wildy, Resinhead, thanks for the tips! (I’m still learning a lot as far as glassing goes: I had my boards glassed in glass-shops for years, only recently did I start doing it myself and guess what? The more I do it, the more I like it. It feels good doing everything from start to finish, much more “control” over the finished board.)
I should be able to post some feed-back about this board later in the day since the new owner rode it yesterday for the first time… Here are two happy customers, with myself on the left:
mate , if not here [no thread hijacks ?] , maybe on another thread …
can you please tell me about the board you are holding ?
cheers !
ben
p.s. - wasn’t that good “no-drip” advice ??
…I could have done with that a few days ago , when I glossed the "mal-adjustment. Like your friend , Jay , I walked around the board with a brush . Only problem …it was 100 degrees in hicksy’s shed , and it was epoxy resin . [Head spins , after the first ten laps !]
So … I jumped in his pool , did a few more laps with the brush [resin still not ‘curing’] …got changed , hopped on a bus and train , dropped off 2 rolls of film , and floated in the ocean for a few hours [all the time hoping / praying that the resin had cured “quickly” in the heat , with no flies dive-bombing into it kamikaze style [and no kiddies going in there using it as a ping pong table]
Quote:
mate , if not here [no thread hijacks ?] , maybe on another thread …
can you please tell me about the board you are holding ?
Since we are here, let’s stay here. OK, so, it’s a board I made for Etienne, a very good friend of mine. Designing it was kind of weird 'cause he wanted “something that would paddle like a longboard, but without that much nose area” and also “something not quite like a gun but that I can take into some big stuff” while “being very loose and manoeuverable”.
No problem, Etienne, I do that every day.
So I designed this wild thing… It’s obviously not a typical longboard but it was shaped from my last Clark 9’8"S (which is (was) a typical longboard blank…), it’s not a gun either since it has a HP longboard rocker at best but it is 9’7" and the nose is rather “gunny”… Add to that a pulled back wide point, a longboard fin-box and side fins plugs and a (very) domed deck… And let’s not forget some chinese-looking cloth inlay on deck. Here we go, real weirdo…
I must admit that I was not overly satisfied with the outline, although I felt it should work. Well, Etienne picked up the board yesterday and he seemed to like it. But then, he hadn’t ridden it yet.
Yesterday in the evening, I found this message in my mail-box: (freely translated)
"Bravvvooooo, you are the best!
Just a quick note after my first wave: the board works unreal, it turns super-well and taking off is a joke. Much more manoeuverable and “incisive” (radical?) than a longboard, of course you have to get used to that instability, but it’s pure joy overall.
As I was leaving the water, your two other “babies” were entering, both going out for the first time too. (These are the orange and yellow longboards in the above photo)
Thanks again, a happy surfer."
Well, what can I say? I’m happy, too…
Some great work here.Keep the faith.
Many, many thanks, Herb. Very kind of you.
thanks for the info , Balsa !
you make quite a variety of longer boards , eh ?!
cheers !
ben