We are familiar with foam and fibreglass to make surfcraft but where else and what else do you use your specific shaping or glassing skills to use ?
I know of a shaper who also makes prosthetic limbs from foam + epoxy, interior car parts, golf club heads, outdoor sculptures, Patient slide boards for ambulances…
Where else do you employ your shaping or glassing skills ?
This may not be what you’re looking for, but it IS true. The time: 1963. The place: North Shore, Hawaii. The tools used were Masking Tape, Poly Resin, and North Shore beach sand.
Our crew had purchased a 1949 De Soto beach car. It was painted black, with a brush, by the prior owner. About two days after purchase, the radiator started leaking. Really bad! We had to carry a 5 gal can of water, and add water about every 5 or 6 miles. We took the radiator out, and repaired it by pinching off the leaking tubes, and making a tape dam on the bottom side. We then mixed up a slurry of resin and coral beach sand, and poured it into the area. The sand was important to prevent cracking of the resin as it set up. Shrinkage was eliminated by the presense of the light weight coral sand. That repair lasted until we came back to the Mainland, three months later. That car was on the road every day, as well as jungle cruising, up in the Koolau’s above the North Shore.
Would love to see Greg Loehr chime in here. I believe he used to do foam mock ups for the U of FL engineering department. He shaped a catamaran hull for me out of foam. And glassed it.
I was used to design industrial parts but know i repair and make them too,hi tech composit parts for bike, car and ulm planes . Really interesting to work on other standard some good stuff to adapt to Surfboard building.
For the normal 9-5 I do repair on wood, stone ( granite, marble), stainless steel, tile and all sorts of other stuff but I do quite often use poly and epoxy resins for repairs. These were all done with epoxy and poly resins (and a few other un-named products haha)
I recently fabbed the frame, battery tray, landing gear, and canopy for my first tricopter build. I’ve also been building carbon fiber double bladed SUP paddles for my girlfriend and her crew…
John , what sort of copter is that and what do / can you do with it ?
I’d like to see if I can use one for surf video, maybe even put pontoons on one ?
I’ve made some body armour for a pig hunter and at the moment I’m bagging lightweight golf club faces with veneer and carbon,the more flex in the face the more control.
It’s a pretty basic tricopter. If you spend enough $$$ on a GPS flight control board they (any multicopter) can be quite stable and do things like autohover or fly home without pilot input.
Those tile repairs are impressive. We just had our kitchen redone so that sort of stuff is on my mind.
I do DH and or other sorts of longboards from time to time. All vac bagged around foam molds, which I guess are shaped somewhat like a surfboard is.
Cruiser for my first year of college.
Turned out to have way too long of a wheelbase for my liking.
Too little of a foot platform. Would tuck and my foot would be on the rear baseplate. Still good for low to mid speed. Liked this concave.
Formica and birch. Super solid and smooth ride at speed. Current dh setup, not that I skate much anymore.
One on the right is my magic board. Odd setup, but I’m so confident on it so it works. It’s wedged about 8* in the front and a bit less in the back, runs 50* randals. Super responsive and twitchy, just how I like it. Amazing at low to mid speeds. Can’t hold a turn at high speeds. Killed it on quick runs to class.
I’m not sure if fairing in the hulls of Boats and Yachts from 8 foot up to 120 foot is shaping. It does involve gallons of epoxy resin, 55 Lb bags of micro baloons, thousands of sheets of sand paper and a ton of man hours.