Hi All,
Anybody make a mini-simmons type board from a broken longboard?
If so, could you post details of how the rebuild went... pics... how it rode?
Cheers
Dee
I am sure you can, I have been looking around myself for a snapped board, even looking for a foamy, possibly for a minisims or finless fun board....
if you get one, please post and it'd be good to watch it take shape....I'd do the same, I know a little spot that I have found some old boards and even sailboards that I'll be sussing out on Friday....
Yes, I am finishing one right now. It’s about 4’ 10" x 2.5" . Sorry, no step by step pics, but I’ll explain my process.
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Aquire old, nasty, brown long board.
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Use Dremmel to cut into fiberglass from nose to tail all across the board. I cut down the middle of the rails, too.
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Observe ghastly brown foam and begin mowing with planer.
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Measure, cut blank, and shape as usual.
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Spend hours repairing the rail where the foam ripped out with the fiberglass.
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Since the blank was free, I wanted to get as cheap as possible so I also made keel fins out of cedar fencing.
*At this stage I have laminated the bottom with 6oz cloth, and will add fins and finish glassing when time and weather permit.
Pros:
-free blank
-after shaving brown foam away-pure white foam underneath
-not worried too much about messing up
-good practice after shaping my first board
Cons:
-repairing the rail
-some not-to-bad spongy areas from water damage
-loss of height due to removal of unusable nose and tail sections
-cleaning up huge mess[img_assist|nid=1054923|title=Recycled Long Board/ Mini-Simmons Project|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=374|height=558]
[img_assist|nid=1054927|title=Cedar fence board keel fins|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=427]
Here is a before and after of a snapped tufflite long board I found in the dump and turned it into a 4'3" disk with skegs. Having a ball!
[img_assist|nid=1054924|title=Mini Simmons Start|desc=Start|link=none|align=|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1053718|title=Recycle Simmons|desc=Glued and shaped balsa|link=none|align=|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1054925|title=Mini Simmons Finished|desc=Nice silver finish...|link=none|align=|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1054926|title=Mini Simmons Stoke|desc=Stoke!|link=none|align=|width=0|height=0]
Go ride it!
Martijn
I made a 5’5" mini quad fin out of an 80’s 7’2" Hull board. The tail was twisted and I cut it just above the fin box and started from there. I spent most of the time thinning out the tail to try and give the board some balance. The only drawback I found was that I stuck with the outline of the board I striped instead of drawing out my own outline and re-shaping it. The result was a tail that looks a little wide. I have not yet been able to ride this board due to injury but I’m sure it will work.
**One thing I found that made stripping the fiberglass off the old board much simpler was to take my sander with some 60 grit and go all around the board on the widest (middle) part of the rail and sand until I was almost through and then make a quick shallow cut with a knife to make sure I WAS all the way through. Because getting the old glass off the rails is the hardest part of stripping a board the sanding through the rails allows you to peal the glass off and it wont pull chunks of foam off the rail!‘’
Also-Dremel tools and razor blades can sometimes leave cuts in your blank that go deeper than your re-shape. If you paint or do any resin colors the color will sometimes soak into these cuts and ruin your pain job…or at least make dark lines everywhere you’ve cut… so if you do cut try not to go to deep. I have found that after sanding through the rails I have been able…with a slow, careful, steady, even attack, to get one whole side pealed off in just a few large pieces.
I did. Had an old 9’0. Cut off the last 3 feet. reshaped the tail to 17". Put in FCS plugs in a twin fin setup. I LOVE this board. it’s ugly as hell because i re-glassed the tail and didn’t match any colors up. The tail is extremely thick (about 2.5 inches). And as ugly as it is, the floaty tail pushes the board into waves when trying to catch them. I kept the original nose glass and shape which had a single concave in the nose. I can actually hang 5 on it too. The fins I put in were some small G4’s. I get enough grip and drive from them along with a bit of sideslip on super steep waves. I have so much fun on this board but I can’t duck dive it. It’s 6’x23", way too thick for me so I’m going to skin it down and reshape it to almost the same specifications but 5 foot. I wish I had more broken longboards so I could make more. Go for it.
Great use for a Surtech and and saving the planet at the same time.
Makes me want to find one (Surftech) and snap it on purpose.