I’ve already posted some of these photos in the old “what are you working on thread”. But for completness and chronology’s sake ill repost them here as well.
So…
Core: 1.5 EPS.
Dims: 6’5’’ x 20" x 2 5/8"
Tail rocker: 0.5"
Nose rocker: 2"
Weight: don’t own scales fine enough to weigh the core alone…not really bothered anyway.
Stringer: Just the gorilla glue…so basically none.
Concave: slight…approx. deepest at about 24 to 30" from the tail.
And here we go:
[img_assist|nid=1053785|title=6'5'' outline|desc=The outline. I was going for a flat rockered board, so I was thinking that a curvy outline should compensate somewhat.|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=213]
[img_assist|nid=1053786|title=EPS Blank 1|desc=Gluing up the blank. Used Gorilla glue, some roof rack straps and masking tape to hold it together! Oh and bits of bamboo dinning mats to stop the straps cutting into the blank.|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480][img_assist|nid=1053787|title=EPS Blank glued and outlined|desc=Glued up blank. The new and old outlines can be seen.|link=none|align=left|width=480|height=640]
[img_assist|nid=1053788|title=Hotwire the outline|desc=I really wanted to minimize the amount of dust on this one so I thought i’ll hotwire the outline. I used small 5mm nails to hold down the template.|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]
Forgot about this one. Unfortunately i ended up with 1" missing of the
tail. This happened because i started laying up the tail section from
the middle>>tail rather than tail>>>middle.
I’ve made the exact same tool as Haavard, but mine (at first) was set to 45 deg cut. By controling the distance on the deckside you could control the depth of the cut on the rail!
I used a number of templates to mark the railbands. I used greenlight.com guide and railband measuremnets…as a rough guide.
The first cut turned out quite nice, and best of all…fook all dust.
Next step was to modify the hotwire again for the secondary bands.
Hotwiring the bands worked ok, but in the end i had to go back with a sanding block to tidy up and fix the nose end 1/3 of the board. Because i didnt get the markings quite right, the rails closer to the nose ended up nearly as thick as the middle, so some elbow grease was required to thin them out.
Here is the shaped deck, ive yet to smooth out the rails. Its lookign fine so far.
Here it is…all smooth and reliably not perfect. I had to use P400 glued to a very soft dish washing sponge (new obviously) to finish it of. I just kept gouging huge chunks out of it with P240.
The lowest rocker i’ve ever seen!!!
Im not too worried about it nose diving, waves around here are not too steep. It’ll be an advantage if anything.
Since there is no stringer, I though to try and add some stiffnes with CF tape on the rails. So I ordered 5 yards of 3" tape.
.
Then i’ve layed up the tape as i would like it on the board. I wanted to see if it was possible to smoothly bring the CF tape from the rail and onto the deck in the tail section.
The idea behind this is to try and have a relativly stiff mid-section and a more flexibe tail. I figured that the CF that is curved around the rail will flex a lot less (since it has a semi-circular profile) than the CF that is lying flat on the tail section.
Im not really sure if this will work as intended but willing to have a go at it.
You can add some rocker when you glass. If you have a rocker bed it is pretty easy or you can just put some saranwrap on the nose when the lam is curing and leave a weight on the nose.
I was contemplating on doing something like that…there seens to be a a flat spot in the middle of the board, I think the rocker in the blank was intended for a longer board…
What i was thinking to lam the bottom, wrap saran around the nose and tail areas, flip the board and put some weight on the deck. Maybe tune it by moving the weight closer or further from the nose.
What do you think?
A good ol surfer steve…I actually own a hard copy of that book…had to get it because at the time the internets was hard to come by…
Ok, I had some time this week, so I went ahead and glassed on the CF tape to the rails.
The laying out of CF tape was tricky enough, it will strech and bend to a degree arount the rails and the outline, but since I decided to wrap the CF tape from the rail onto the deck of the tail section it introduced additional curves and creases.
Rather than using a brush or a foam roller to glass the tape, I just used some nitrile gloves and my hands. I find that this way there is a lot less waste of epoxy. I think the brush would absorb at least 5-10ml (obviously depending on the size of the brush). In total, I mixed up 50ml epoxy 25ml hardener per side. After i was done, a minimum amount of epoxy remained in the cup.
I glassed one side at the time as recomended by numerous posts on Sways…(Yorky…swied??)
Once the cured, it was time to get rid of the jagged edges.
I did not seal the blank prior to glassin on the CF tape, and bhoy am I happy. Once i went at the tape with the metal file, all the exposed white EPS became gray and mucky looking. So my plan is to seal the exposed areas, hopefully the addition of cabosil and some white pigment should hide all the hideous finger prints etc… If not…well there is always acrylic paint.
After filing down all the jaggedness, i glassed on the last small bit of CF tape onto the tip of the tail (purely for aesthetics though).
Sealing the EPS proved slightly troublesome. I only noticed the little voids in the sealed EPS after I painted it with acrylic. The white paint showed up all trouble spots immediately, so I had to go back and seal up individual areas with cabosil and white pigment epoxy mix. Lucky that pigment matched up in shade to acrylic.
Wonder if these will change color at different rates with time. Maybe I should go over with acrylic one last time. Dunno...
Also initially I made the cabosil mix too viscous....penut butter consistency so it didnt lay down quite as well as it would have it it was a bit more....ahem..."gooee".
After painting I removed the masking tape to find that it bled through the entire lengths of the board. Oh well ill pin line it after hotcoat.
i like the board, very interesting to watch as the build goes on. one question: is the acrylic colour causing any troubles concerning delamination? is there something to do befor glassing like a bit of sanding or something?
Hotwiring the bands worked ok, but in the end i had to go back with a sanding block to tidy up and fix the nose end 1/3 of the board. Because i didnt get the markings quite right, the rails closer to the nose ended up nearly as thick as the middle, so some elbow grease was required to thin them out.
