I thought I retired from building boards. (But not surfing). But somehow I let my favorite LB get away. I made a deal with a friend and good shaper in Charleston. He shaped a board for me (after 20 plus years of building, it is my first PU blank) and I agreed to glass his in epoxy.
I sold or gave away most of my materials and tools but had some glass, some carbon bits and pieces and a few of the things needed. So the goal was to use what I could scrounge and supplement anything missing.
Since I am using some unusual materials, I thought some here might have an interest. One thing to note here; I found I would be in the middle of a task only to remember how it should be properly done, as opposed to how I was currently doing. I had moments of superior execution and moments of utter “FU”. But as many have said here on this forum, good builders find a way to recover and hide their mistakes. I’ve had to pull rabbits out of my resin buckets a couple of times.
First I found a roll of carbon vector net. Don’t ask how it might support the strength of the board. I have no info on that. But it does look very cool.
I used FCS fusion boxes in a quad arrangement. I stumble on my templates for those for use in putting a little spray mount on the boxes to stick the glass down to avoid air bubbles around the protruding parts.
Why leave well enough alone when you can potentially screw the whole thing up? So, rummaging around in an orphan box, I found an unused roll of carbon fusion tape. I sprayed a whiff of spray mount on the tail, rolled it out and pulled it tight to straighten. Turned out nice. At this point, I was pleased with the look. Again, don’t ask if the carbon fusion adds any benefit. I really don’t know. But it looks cool.
Here’s where things got a little sketchy. I had a fair amount of an expensive and rare carbon cloth from Graphite Master they called Max Axis. It is a multi axis carbon fiber used in the aircraft industry. I had used it in full lengths to build SUP’s. It doesn’t wrap well at all and has to be vacuum bagged. Which requires a wet out table and lots of room. I decided to use just a short length as a deck patch. Things got messy.
I assembled a short wet out table and doctored up some resin with white pigment. I rolled it up on a PVC tube and rolled it out on the deck. So far so good. I got it into place mostly correct. But as carbon will do, the edges began to fray and I realized I’d have to use a pin line.
I had some automotive pinline tape (a little wider than I wanted) and put that on. I had to clean up the edges a bit beforehand. A good trick is to fold some 100 grit sandpaper over a razor blade and do some light sanding.
Here is where I lost the plot. I remembered that I used to use a 2.5 oz layer of disposable cloth as a sacrificial layer to get the carbon layer smooth. I had some 2.5 so yeah. Do that. And one of the boxes of material had some blue tint. So heck yeah, I’ll just put a hint, (just a hint) on blue. Yeah, well, too much blue.
Not terrible, but I should have restrained myself and gone only black and white. Which was my original intent.
Here are a couple of miscellaneous photos. When putting a fresh layer of glass over a cured layer, I like to put some weights on the glass to keep it from sliding around. Learned that the hard way. Cut one side perfect only to find the glass slid and the other side was way too short. Also, fortunately I kept my good scissors. You can’t cut carbon without special scissors. are Genghers with serrated edges. Also, when using disposable chip brushes, use some masking tape and paint across the sticky part to remove as many hairs as possible. You won’t get them all , but you will get most of them.
One more random photo. I long ago stopped chasing strings during the lamination. They are a huge pain particularly on the bottom lam where you would stretch them out on the bare foam. Then you had to very carefully sand them flat without touching the foam. So I started letting them hang and after curing I would just break them off. Another one of those things I remembered half way through.
Nice cut on the Vector Net. I like to put a fairly opaque tint over my Net. It obscures the squiggles. I know you are using what you got handy, but that new bonded carbon tape goes on straight easily. Handy trick to tack it down at one end. Yeah never get rid of your scissors.
Very nice! I grew up & still live in Charleston too. I just started building boards two years ago, have done 20 so far. I still have a lot to learn, but learn something new with each one. I feel like I’ve become a master at covering up mistakes, seeing how I make them on almost every board!
Grids are a way to add flexural stiffness to a skin (ie dent and buckling stiffness) without too much weight but with corrugated surface.
If you want flat you have to full with resin wich increase weight, less with epoxy micro slurry.
Grid are well known as thin skin composit stiffner, here in bio composits:
Balsa, the grid carbon I have lays flat. No grid to fill. It lays flat under one layer of 6 oz. I believe I sourced from Graphite Master. It’s been a while and I’m not sure they are still around.
