hi there,
i’m superhappy to show you my selfmade finboxes!
the box is made from ordinary epoxy resin and some cotton - stoked that it really works 
Good stuff!
Hey duuuuude , Now that is some real nice work !!!! Aluminium block ? What brand of epoxy did you use ? Some epoxies don't work for casting. I have been usesing aerialite which turns out glass clear and also Systems three wich is slightly cloudy. Most stuff I add pigment to ! My most resent castings were for a cement mixer gear ring, each segment (5 segments) was 8 oz of resin for each segment, and was able to cast the whole segment in one pour. I have been useing Oomoo 30 silicone rubber for makeing molds , no need mold release for Oomoo, I cut 4 oz glass cloth into 1/2 inch squers and then run them in a cheep coffee bean grinder to seperate the glass fibers.What kind of pigment did you use (a pouder).?? I am going to use your mold idea right away for a mast track box ! Thanks a lot for shareing ? Great idea!! This is the kind of jem that keeps me reading Swaylock ~!! Thanks,thanks,thanks !!!!
hey wood ogre, thanks a lot for your nice comment.
yea its made from an old aluminium block that was supposed to be thrown away.
the resin i use is made by a german company called “hp-textiles” and the pigment i use is a powder (2nd picture on the left).
haha cool idea with the coffee grinder! now i know what to do with leftovers!
good luck with your mast track box, man.
How waould you install these just drill 4-1" holes?? Like 4 leash plugs.
Most excellent!
Most excellent!
Very Very Cool!
very nice.
That would be labor intense and not really necessary. Just set up your router jig to do a nice channel cut and put them in with some milld fiberor whatever you desire. The mix would lock in around the circle configs and add that much more strength… although these are already inherently strong by their design alone.
This approach is soooo much better than the round plugs I won’t bother to go on.
Absolutely beautiful job on these. I am mightily impressed.
Props and more props to you!!!
Have you installed them in a board yet?
Amazing work! Can you toss in a picture of one of your boxes installed in a board! Killer work, Man. This is why I love Swaylocks!
Erik
NICE!!!
I have been thinking of how to do that!
I make my own fins and mold the tabs.
I made my mold of HDPE. It's a two part mold. I'm REALLY impressed with the three part mold you've made.
I'm now inspired...after I finish the three or four other projects, Ha!
DocWaddel
www.barefoottrainingsandals.com
nice job! looks really clean…
am I the only guy wondering “why”?
is this a “just 'cause I can thing?”
Noelle, my wife, says that I'm cursed. I know of others with the same affliction (most here on Sways?).
I hate buying something that I think I can make myself. The first one or two usually aren't very good and cost me as much or more then if I'd just go out and buy it.... but, from then on it is usually better, cheaper and faster to make my own!
surfboards, ukulele's, my own running sandals! It's GREAT, I love it. I'm addicted to experimenting to make my own ....?
Les
Howzit Wood_Ogre, Is that the silicone rubber that only sticks to it's self when working with it and is it pink. I made a mold to make menehunes and the silicone rubber we used was great but because it not hold it's shape I had to make a second structual mold out of cement so when we poured our menehune mix in the mold it would hold it's shape. Aloha,Kokua
kokua, The first time I tried molding something the crap I used shrank 1/2 inch in a 12 inch section it was terrible . I did see some pink stuff but the shore hardness was to weak. The Omoo is blue and holds its shape real well. It's zinc silicone. There are a whole shit load of different kinds of silcone mold material but some of them are expensive so I try to pick one that is good for what I am trying to cast. If you are pulling less than a dozen parts you don't need a real expensive silcone. I have one big mold that I have had for 35 years,Its black and like hard rubber !
Have ya tried SUP on the lake yet. It's a good think if you cant surf !
hahaha, yah, I hear that Les. =)
thank you guys!
haven’t installed them yet but next week I think i will. each of the four segments has the same diameter as fcs finplugs (maybe a bit smaller) so my plan is to just drill 4 holes per box to be installed.
im currently working on a mold for making leashplugs - should be ready by tomorrow!!
cYa!
With all due respect…
WHY woud you drill FOUR holes when you can make a very simple jig and route a close tolerance rectangle with nice rounded corners then simple drop your part into that?!!
You don’t even need a lot of renforced resin around the part as your design inherently has a load of strength far superior to the FCS X2 plugs. Look at how much material you have allowed from the corner of the slots to the outside wall. Your design also has better lateral resistance. By contrast, the FCS round plugs have aTINY AMOUNT of material from the square slot to the outside wall which I have always maintained is poor oversight in the engineering of their system.
The labor intense factor as well as substandard engineering of the round FCS plugs are some of the primary reasons I haven’t used them in over 3 years and will never do so again. The FCS Fusion is far superior and more along the lines of your designapproach, although yours stands to be heavier. The FCS round X2 plugs based their strengthon the skin to skin connection that we developed doing sailboard boxes throughout the 80’s. Unfortunately the total area of the round plugs and the reinforcing H pattern they think so highly of, is inadequate resulting in cracked slots or the plugs punching through the decks or recessing into the bottom… IOW: failure.
I would compare your part’s depth to an FCS Fusion, and wouldn’t expect yours to be deeper than that. The aspect of routing a rounded channel versus drilling four holes is a no brainer and would actually be stronger anyway.
If you were building surfboards on adaily basis, you would see my point… still a gr8 job you’ve done.