Modern Laminating tips

[Mat_E]

Hi,

I am new to posting, having read many threads on swaylocks and have made a few boards this year, all learnt from the internet. I am on my 4th now; 1st one (stringered PU) machine cut, shaped the rest by hand and from now on, now I’ve got the shaping bug! I have used extruded styrofoam “floormate 300” on my 2nd, 3rd and now 4th. I can’t source eps very cheaply in the UK, but I have had success with xps so far, even taking one of them to Soup Bowl, Barbados (summer), no blowing and still in one piece. They feel solid enough, I have only used s glass on the xps, but it is expensive and I am now looking at getting my costs down to less than £100, the last board costing £180 in materials, although I think my skill at laminating is on a massive learning curve still, because of the ammount of resin I have gone through compared to what I have read that is acceptible 50:50, resin to glass. My layup so far is, 4+4 s cloth bottom, 4+4 + patch s cloth top, 2" laps top and bottom. Resin, I have used RR qwik kick on my first hand shape and RR 2000 on my second, I will be using RR 2000 from now on as I’ve heard it offers more flex and I prefer working slower, as I am still a noobie.

I’ve heard stories of xps shearing easy and causing delamination, because of it’s small and therefore weak cell structure, so I’ve been careful to prime the board well. The last one I ran some tests on how 5 razor blades arranged in parralel inbetween 5mm slips of wood and protruding by 2mm could improve the “grip” on the foam, across the whole of the board apart from the rails, it worked very well, working best running perpendicular (across the width of the board) to the shear direction (across the length of the board), chunks of foam came away in this orientation as opposed to lengthways scoring, which was an improvement on no scoring, but because the orientation was the same as the shear force the resin against the glass gave way before the foam. I realise that scoring across the surfboard could weaken the board and promote buckling and snapping, so my last board I arranged the scoring at both 45 degrees to the length, to have the best of both worlds.

I am thinking on my 4th board I am going to use a 300g (9oz) biaxial cloth on the bottom and top, plus a 4oz s cloth on top after the biaxial, plenty of lap on each layer, so I will have 22oz on the rail. I want to try a different technique on laminating to get down to 50:50 resin to glass, to keep costs and weight to a minimum. I’ve heard about resin first then roll out the cloth on top to soak the resin up and then when the resin is setting pour a resin hot fill. Can anyone tell me how hot is a hot fill? I guess this is to make the resin spread very thin and soak into the glass thoroughly. How is this best applied, with a squeegee or brush? Any other tips on laminating this way and with 9oz biaxial would be much appreciated?

Thanks for any advice!

[keithmelville]

hmm… trying to keep your board weight down, and switching to 9 ounce cloth on the bottom, are going in opposite directions.  How about a single layer of six ounce instead of double 4, or single 9??  And 9 plus 4 on deck ain’t light, either.

Practice and more practice (both lamming and sanding) will get you to the goal of lighter boards.  but if you keep switching materials and methods at the same time, you probably won’t progress as fast, in my opinion. 

 

[everysurfer]

http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/wet-out-table

The only way to get a 50/50 ratio is either a wet out table/ vacuum bag, or resin infusion/ vacuum.

Otherwise, without bagging pressure, there just isn’t enough resin/ epoxy to glue the cloth down.

[oldphart_shaper]

The twin brought back days long ago, ah the Rogue.

Aloha

[sharkcountry]

My last XPS board has a single 9 oz bottom, one 9 oz and one 4 oz layer on top. Pulled off as much resin as I could then added a thick seal filler coat over that. The resin is not a hot mix, just normal epoxy. The same stuff you use to laminate. I only used 9oz because I had bought a short roll for a good price a while ago. I ran out so the second layer was 4 oz. I won’t be using the heavier glass anymore. 4 oz or 6 oz surfboard glass wets out much faster/better than the 9 oz I had. On this last board I filled in the deck with a mix of epoxy, microballons and pigment because I didn’t want to do an inlay. Once the resin hardened up, I cleaned up the cut lap and sanded the deck and laminated with clear resin.

I sanded the bottom nice and flat, but I barely sanded the deck, just cleaned off the rails. Then I sprayed the bottom and rails with a gloss from a rattle can. Takes a whole can. My 6-5 x 20 x 2.5 (inches) is pretty light. The XPS foam is a fairly light foam.  

Someone here wets out his glass on a table then lays that onto the board, then cuts off the excess. I think is one way you could control the amount of resin you use. I find that XPS sucks resin more than EPS or Poly foam. I’m going to seal the next XPS board with the epoxy pigment mix before laminating to see how that ends up compared to not sealing it and glassing with colors.