(Not another) First Board

tim_b · February 26, 2009, 2:27pm

I’ll be back in action tonight!

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions, I think I understand them all and they’re most helpful. Marking - high and low spots, and guide points/lines - makes sense to me, as does using a long sanding block to get an even curve. Next pic installment will be late tonight (we’re GMT -2hours in South Africa) or tomorrow evening.

Also, this time I’ll take both my car and my wife’s out the garage - last time I just took my car out to make space. My wife is being very encouraging about my current obsession, but she still didn’t buy the idea that the “my car got caught in a blizzard”-look was cool!

Tim

tim_b · February 28, 2009, 10:27am

I spent a little time last night cleaning up the outline. A long sanding block works wonders, and feeling the board with your hands really helps you “see” the high and low spots. Thanks for the tips gents!

After doing that, I cut my primary rail bands. I have pics of the bottom:

I made guidelines parallel to the rail edge on the deck and the bottom, and along the rail side parallel to the deck and the bottom edge. Along the top edge, I planed all the way along, except for the tip of the nose and the end of the tail. Along the bottom edge, I used a sanding block, and stopped about 2/3 from the nose.

Earlier this evening, I cleaned up the top rail band with a sander and, at the nose and tail used a surform. I then did my best to blend the curve from my underside band through to the tail edge. It was a little difficult, because I was taking a curve that was parallel to the rail at 2/3 from the tail out to the edge of the rail at the tail. That’s why the pro’s rail bands aren’t parallel to the rails. Anyway, I don’t think I did too badly.

The I did a secondary band on the deck. I was a bit too cautious, and didn’t take enough meat off the top side of the rails. I bisected the angles, and worked the rails closer to a curve. I then looked at it and decided that the rails were way too thick, and did another moderately deep band with the surform, this time just eyeballing it and using my hands to feel the thickness on each side. I sanded it down, and this is the result:

jesus · February 28, 2009, 2:43pm

Very cool!My first was a 9’6 singlefin fish Poly,Im finishing up my second right now,it is 1# eps with Poly rails and bamboo deck skins/epoxy and balsa glass on fins,a little complicated for a second but very fun to build.I’m thinking of building a few rooms in my garage,one for shaping and 1 for glassing and vacuum bagging.

tim_b · March 3, 2009, 5:04pm

Thanks for the help everyone, it’s much appreciated.

Next step is glassing. To be honest, I was planning on getting it glassed at a shop, but I’ve been emboldened by what I’ve seen here on Swaylocks. (Also, I’m hoping that my shaping gets better with practice, and its less risky to do my first glassing job on my first shaping job! However, I’m going to have to investigate where to get glassing supplies around here.

Sine, where do you get your supplies?

Questions before I get on to glassing though: How smooth must the blank be before glassing? Will small surface imperfections be smoothed over in glassing, or will they be exaggerated?

I’m also going to have to get fins. Sine, I’ve been following your thread on quad ideas in this connection. I was thinking about trying 4-Way fins, seeing as they’re made by a local, Cape Town-based company, and also because the adjustability will allow me to experiment a bit.

Any thoughts?

Tim

nj_surfer · March 3, 2009, 7:09pm

If you’re doing clear lam, no worries with scratches, etc. Low spots or bigger gouges in the foam should be filled (spackle). Bumps, of course, you want to sand down. They just get bigger.

brianororke · April 8, 2009, 12:58pm

I’m also currently shaping my first board, it’s a single fin
shortboard. I also had difficulty power planing the nose on the deck
side due to the concave shape. I overcame this by planing diagonally from rail to rail, it worked but wasn’t pretty and so needed lots of elbow gease the smoothem out. Is there a better way to do this for by next board? Lots of other good tips here that’ll come in useful for #2.

Thanks,

Brian

afoaf · April 8, 2009, 2:47pm

always do your own glassing…it will keep your cost down, keep your pride up and as you get better shaping your glassing also necessarily will improve.

also, if you have 4-Way locally, GO FOR IT!

you’ve got technical support nearby and you’re supporting local surf businesses…plus it’s a wicked looking product.

regarding smoothness…in my experience, everything telescopes through the laminate (to a degree) so try to clean it up as much as possible without creating low spots, wobbles or general funkiness.

the board is looking awesome!

Bckyle · April 10, 2009, 5:43am

I’m with afoaf on this one, if they’re local that’s a huge benefit because you may be able to get direct support with the installation and with questions. Also, with an adjustable system if you get the placement slightly wrong or something it won’t necessarily totally bugger up your board! …at least that’s how I see it. But I’ve only shaped one board and I made EVERY possible mistake during the glassing process. I’d say give’r and glass it too though; there were several times during the process that I thought I’d written the board off completely with the most recent mistake, but in the end it is useable and the flaws in it are from the shape, not the glass job. And it was a good experience and brought me that much closer to the whole thing. Have fun!

StAugustide · April 10, 2009, 7:59pm

Tim_B,

Lookin’ good. I love the shape. Looks fun.

Keep it up. Before long you will have about 10 boards in your head you want to shape and no time to do any of them. (my current predicament)

T

tim_b · April 23, 2009, 6:20pm

Thanks for the comments and advice, everyone.

Since I last posted, I’ve had the board glassed and ridden it. I have photo’s, but my wife has the camera and is only coming back from visiting a friend in Swaziland on Sunday.

I ended up getting the board glassed by a shop. I really wanted to do it myself, but it just wasn’t practical to do it at home. Maybe I’ll try an epoxy board sometime - which seems more domestically friendly (from what I’ve read around here).

Anyway, I went to Jeffreys Bay for a week for the South African longboard champs. I didn’t have time to get to 4wfs to get fins before I left, so had to get fins in Port Elizabeth. They only had basic plastic 4wfs fins, so that’s what I got. The fin placement is one of the speed dialer measurements I got from Oldy’s quad template thread.

I’ve now surfed the board 3 times - all at J-Bay. (Yes, I know, life is hard.)

First time: Overhead, onshore at the Point. The new board felt very fast, but it felt like it was drifting a bit in the turns and was going to spin out if I pushed it. I thought maybe the fins needed adjustment.

Second time: Small (waist-shoulder high), very fast, super clean waves running along the ledge at Tubes. After surfing a longboard all week, I couldn’t believe how fast the board was - it felt like the world was in slow motion. I could make any section with ease. The board felt great doing long, swooping turns under the lip in fast sections. I even got a little cover up, and felt I could control nicely how deep I got.

Third session: Clean, head high waves at the Point. I was getting comfortable, and starting to surf under, on, and over the lip like I haven’t done in years. I hadn’t adjusted the fins from the first surf, and it felt just right - so maybe it was just a matter of getting used to it.

Overall, I think it’s a great “longboarder’s shortboard”. It’s got a fair bit of volume up front, and it feels steady and fast when leaning on my front foot - great for long, driving turns. Shifting weight onto the back foot got it doing very tight turns. Paddling, it’s a bit strange - with the volume forward, I paddled it lying far forward; when taking off it was almost like bodysurfing, with nothing in front of me.

So… I’m totally stoked. My first board flies, and it’s got me excited about surfing a shortboard again - I’m reliving my own little shortboard revolution! (Not entirely, actually - I’ve now made myself 2 longboards - but I’ll post on those shortly!)

Tim

Bckyle · April 24, 2009, 5:48am

I am stoked for you!!! Sounds like it’s been awesome, and I’m looking forward to seeing those fresh pics, and seeing how it turned out all finished up. Congratulations!

tim_b · April 27, 2009, 10:02am

As promised, here are pics of the finished board:

etherealprodigy · May 6, 2009, 11:08pm

thanks for posting your journey though shaping.

i just finished shaping my first board a couple weeks ago with the help of a very awesome mentor…

that definitely helped alot & i can recall learning everything you talked about.

were glassing it this weekend & installing fins. i’m def excited to ride it-- thats the best part huh?

i like what you did with the colors, good choices.

haavard · May 11, 2009, 1:59pm

Hi,

the alignment was one of the first things I added to the printing when I did BoardCAD. IMHO printing of templates in BoardCAD is a fair improvement over APS3000/AKUshaper.

Looks like the board turned out very nicely, even looks like something I could ride…

regards,

Håvard

tim_b · May 11, 2009, 7:21pm

Hi Haavard,

Thanks for your comment. As I said, I like what you’ve done with the alignment, but is the “disappearing outline” a known problem? I did some experiments, and it seemed that if an outline went off the page, it disappeared i.e. the tail would print fine until the outline went off the page, then it would never come back; so the nose was missing. The alignment lines print, but no outline.

Tim

haavard · May 12, 2009, 6:59am

Hi,

I havn’t noticed anything like that no. Wasn’t it Shape3D you had a problem with? The code used in boardcad would in this case print sheets with no outline on, but it should print two columns, the outermost should contain the missing outline. The sheets are numbered with row and column which may also be helpful.

regards,

Håvard

tim_b · May 12, 2009, 7:20am

Haavard,

My mistake - it was indeed with Shape3D that I had the problem. I have printed outline templates from boardCAD without any problem.

Tim

RAH · January 26, 2012, 12:23pm

Hey man i love your diamond tail bit, run with the same thing on my first experimental board

http://www2.swaylocks.com/forums/experimental-boards