Contribution to the “Spring board building challenge 2015”. Definitely breaking some of the rules already and definitely not in it to win it, but here goes.
Made from block EPS in a 3,5m x 1,1m shaping bay. To be continued.
update 19march: Shape done, working on a huge fin. Foiling with my crappy orbital sander sucks.
update 25march: Taping up cutlap, filling hole for leash plug with epoxy+microballons. Laminated bottom with black pigment and kwik kick.
update 26march: Sanded down lapline until tape is visible, then peeled off the tape. Some guy from sways wrote about this way of both making an easy cutlap and sanding it flush without touching the foam at the same time. Thank you, whoever you are! This one turned into an ugly cutlap, but that doesn´t matter since the black color is so deep. Laminated top.
update 29march: Glassed on the fin and hot coated the deck
update 30march: Sanded the fin and the tape line.
update 6april: hot coated the bottom. Used a sponge for the hot coat this time around since I´m running out of brushes. Worked out decently and saves me about 10 bucks a board. Will use foam brush for gloss coat.
update 13april: finished hot coat and gloss coat. sanding begins…
update 20april: DONE! sanded gloss coat with P240 dry, then P320wet and finally P400 wet. Drew up logo and dimensions with posca pen, and sealed the pen lines with clear varnish. Drilled one small hole all the way through the epoxy+microballons cylinder and one larger hole halfway through for leash string.
ok, so to some final thoughts/questions: overall I´m pretty happy with the shape and I think the glassing was ok as well. However, I always have problems with my hot coats and gloss coats, they seem to get kind of milky. I think maybe part of this problem is because I use a foam brush instead of a regular brush, this puts small air bubbles into the resin. I will try regular brushes next time around. But not all of the milky parts show up during painting, some of them are already there when I pour the resin on the board. I´ve tried both with additive F and without and I think additive F adds some more milkyness but I´m not sure. Maybe insufficient mixing?
main problem #2 is that I find it hard to avoid getting small pits in the resin that turns into shiny spots after sanding. This I think has more to do with uneven shape+glass combined with moving too slow when hot coating (I´m using kwik kick, which seems to lose initial self levelling “flow” very fast).
One time I went overboard with brushing a hot coat, kwik kick and additive f and all that, and it got milky. It was starting to gel and get tacky, and tocuhing it made it quickly turn milky and I couldn’t undo it. So I think touching the hotcoat too much, especially when it’s starting to gel up might cause the milky look. Luckly it’s on top on mine so it’s under wax.
Mine also looks like that while sanding. I wouldn’t doubt my shapes and glass are uneven, or something in my technique causes that. Next time I’m going to keep my resin a bit warmer, so it self levels a bit longer.
