I’d finished to shape my #2 board, its a 5"8’ fish,it came out pretty good for my secound shape, adn now i have li glass it and i’m afraid to ruin all my job…I’m thinking to resin tint red on bottom and rails and maeby clear or hoatcoat painted deck…
Any advice or help to doir right??
Thank you all
With reason !!! If the boards a keeper better really study first. Did my first glass job, it’s not hotcoated yet. Much more difficult than it seemed. Have a mess to clean up now. Read some tips given to a guy on page one or two of general discussion. As the wise swaylocian’s say “search archives” lots of good stuff there.
Take your time setting up. Research glassing the tail of a fish…
*Be prepared to spend extra time getting your tail / pin cloth cuts tailored right and glassing the pins…
Put extra cloth on your pins as they are very fragile after you have glassed them IE: if you stand you board up on the tail… it is easy to shatter the glass on the tail pins…
RESEARCH THE PROCESS.
Study and be prepared for the test and you will find there is nothing to be scared about and you may find you pass with flying colors!!!
Have fun, its a learning experience. I feel I learned ALOT about glassing just by doing the tails of a couple fish’s.
-Zosurf
Follow Dronai’s suggestion… read through the couple of threads I started the past couple of days to learn from my mistakes! I just finished glassing my first (hotcoat is on but I still need to sand it) but all in all it was about what I expected. The first one is bound to be tough and you’ll make some mistakes (most of which can be corrected with time and effort) but you’ll learn soooo much about the whole process. Each step builds on the last so make sure you take your time and really put the effort into making each step look it’s best. I didn’t and it shows in the lap lines…
The archives are your best bet. Watching someone else glass in your area would be awesome, too, as you can see everything you’ve read actually applied which would clear a lot of things up.
Have fun! Someone else’s post on here about riding a board that you’ve done 100% (plus the lack of $$ to pay for someone else to do it) convinced me glass it myself.
Santiago
your shapes look good.
just take your time prepping, thinking it through and then glassing
and you’ll have great satisfaction of doing the whole board.
a couple more points/tips:
watch the Master Glasser video and/or watch someone actually glassing
(and any other video you can: the archives have some glassing video clips,
Rich Harbor’s web site has some clips as well)
use either Epoxy (my personal choice) or UV-Resin. Both will give you
more working time that will help as a beginner
the beauty of glassing is almost any mistake can be fixed and your board
can be saved. It not like shaping, where once the foam is gone it is gone.
enjoy the process and do it the way you want it, even if that is not the
simplest. (i.e. color, cut laps…) The more fun, the better the final ride.
good luck
On a scale of tint colors difficulty, if yellow is a one (easiest) and violet a ten, red is right there at a 7! Hard to do well, had to do even.
A couple of pointers from someone who has made almost all the mistakes. (I’m sure I’ll find some more)
If you use catalyzed resin: At 70 degrees use 5cc catalyst per quart of resin to give yourself enough time to get it right. That’s 1/2 of normal amount for 1% catalyst. Use enough resin to saturate. If you don’t some of the resin will soak into the foam, and what you thought was wet, will suddenly look dry.
Use good lighting, set lights about 3 feet above the board and at least 3 feet away. 500 watt construction lights on a stand work well. It will help you see the bubbles. Work the bubbles out, but watch the pressure you use with the squeegee. Too much pressure will make the cloth slide. Just push them to the outside carefully. Watch concaves and double glassed areas: bubbles like to hide there.
Keep checking laps: they tend to droop. Just restick them with the squeegee. After you’re close to being done, cut the hanging strings with a pair of scissors, then re-squeegee any pulled cloth.
Check for bubbles, check for bubbles, check for bubbles.
When you’re done, you should be able to see the weave. Too much resin will look shiny and the weave will disappear.
If you want to paint the hotcoat, one note of caution: Sand and polish the gloss coat with minimum removal of the gloss resin. It’s easy to sand too much and remove your paint job. Better to color on the foam, or do a tint.
Just go ahead. Take the risk, and don’t worry about it if something isn’t perfect. Next time you’ll do better. Doug
if it’s any encouragement, my glass jobs are generally crappy, but the thrill of riding a board I’ve shaped, sprayed, glassed and finned , welll…what can I say …
it’s worth it !!
ben
… have fun !
ZoSurf Know exactly what you mean about those swallow tails, I bought my first board second hand and had to repair some stress cracks on the keel, was real happy with the job I’d done, stood the board up and took the corner of my swallow tail of and then had to repair that too. That boards now a wall hanging but I still take it out sometimes, when i make something prittier I’ll resign it to the loft.
Tank you all for the feedback…you can see pictures of my shaped blank here: http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=190373;#190373
Laminate using UV resin.
I you can spray the board the color you want you are better off. A deep rich red is very hard to achive for the novice.
Drew