Here is my contribution to the threads on board making, only this time it is what can be done with an old and very tired windsurfing blank instead of skipping it!
Started life out as “Brainwaves”, no doubt in it’s day it must have been quite nice, although the “no bullshit” logo on the front is different!
All the dark areas are where water has got under the glass, in this case epoxy. Footstraps were glassed in, something that would create a problem later.
Board started out at 275 cm, chopped 5" off the nose and 12" off the tale, basically from just above the fin box as the whole back end was a disaster area. In taking off the glass from the deck however quite a chunk of foam came away too as where the foot straps were, oval deck patches had been glassed on first and these pulled a bit of foam out when the deck skin came off…
This shows the damaged area where the foam was pulled away during stripping. No way the straps were going to come out either, so hacked them off with the grinder…
After reshaping. Routed out the sides of the box and filled with foam. I also tried to router out the nylon anchors for the foot straps, again really difficult on a sloping angle and they tended to melt too, tested my patience a bit… Filled with what I thought was a light filler used to fill polystyrene cornices. Not the best stuff
Decided on a fish tail as this board is 7’3" and my daugther doesn’t want a minimal per se, so I made it into a fish as the rocker is flat through the back, this being a windsurfer originally, and the extra width would give her some stability as she is still learning and the minimal her sister has is roughly the same, but kids being kids, they don’t want exactly the same as the other…
and it had the advantage of cutting out the rotten bit of foam where the fin box had leaked water into the blank.
Here is the finished article…
Had to be flourescent pink… with glitter in the resin to make it sparkle!
I know the purists here may laugh and say no way does this resemble a fish, especially with a nose flip, outline like that etc etc, but in giving this old blank a new life and I hope my daugther some pleasure. who knows, it might get to ride the Severn bore too one day!
Did you make the fins ? Can I please have a shot of the fins , out of the fin box ? [ I wanted to see how you did the bases for them to go in the fin boxes …]
cheers ,
ben
…will you be [able to be] riding it , too , or is the “fluoro pink” brighter than that photo lets on ?
Haven’t finished the fins yet, just stuck them in to see what they would look like. Basically using Berts’ technique as posted on his thread about wood fins. making 2 sets for this board, one set with a broad chord as seen in these pics and another set with a thinner chord. Will post the pics when done.
I planed to do the same to a very, very, very old TenCate Beacher sailboard that is left on a near beach for ages. I convinced my girlfriend to help me to carry it from the beach to the car.
When we picked it up from the sand, a complete family of mouses started to run from the interior of the board to everywhere, so I decided to give the idea up and try to recover my gilrfriend who was screaming and running like Forrest Gump from the beach…
Fins in pic: Base 6" wide, by 6" tall,boxes set 1.75" in from edge, 8.5" from tips and they are set straight for drive.
2nd Set are 4" base by 5.5" tall
The board does have a name, as can be seen in the pic…“Rocket Fish”…Now whether these dims do actually make it quick or not we shall see, but with this rocker in generally smallish stuff we get over here my guess is it will squirt nicely through the sections…we shall see.
