I have top share the same breathing space with “The Crank”, he has always 30 boards started and unfinished. The hall way is jambed with semi-shaped blanks, all precariously balanced atop each other, with barely enough space to squeeze by the Rube Goldberg mouse trap ambush. I contract to do the Tudor tail and noseblocks and had a Nu’uhiwa Noserider in hand and was attempting to get by the bottleneck. I felt my elboe touch a stack of foam and heard a noise that told me the whole pile was in motion. I had the Tudor by the rail in one hand and had only one choice, sacrifice one board or ten, I tossed the Tudor out the open door, flipping it so it would land on the tip on the nose and tail, bottom up. No, that wasn’t what physics had in mind, it landed like that, but the reverse rocker acted like a giant leaf spring and as it flattened, then recoiled, it bounced off the ground and leapt onto my compressor. It left a nasty pie cut in the ear of the nose, parking lot asphalt gravel in the rails and an assortment of other gashes and dings. I saved “Cranks” pile of foam and had to take the Nu’uhiwa in to show to Joe and Shroz, it is a 190.00 blank. They were freaked to say the least, but I heat gunned the pie slice first and got nearly all of it to puff back to it’s normal postion, but the foam did split when first crushed. Next it was to get rid of the road rash, then I shortened the boards length at the nose by and inch and re-templated it, that got rid of the tear in the nose rail. Not bad a couple hours work for 20 bucks worth of tail block!
Actually you use a heat gun, not a blow dryer. ( you can use a propane torch too, but best to stay with the Heat gun, if your faint of heart.) Heat guns blast a lot hotter and will cook a blank if you don’t keep it moving. All you do is hit it with heat, back off, hit it with heat again, back off, hit it again, etc. It just starts expanding the foam and in no time its all better. You’ll be amazed how big of a ding you can pull out of a blank, like a 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep. Even if the foam tears you can still pull out most of the problem. Heat Gun about $10.00 at Harbor Frieght, best friend a glasser ever had.
-Jay
…Give em the heater…
I could be seriously mistaken (if so correct me), but I swear I read an article a while back that mentioned that AIPA’s stinger design was actually invented when he dinged the rail of a freshly shaped board against something in the shaping room. Rather than trying to fix it, he cleaned it up and mimicked the gouge on the other side, thus inventing the stinger.
Wish I could remember where I saw that…
JR
Here are some progress pics for the board after the nasty ding encounter…
The idea for the spray came from here:
This was the proposed design:
And after some long hours of painting and free hand curve taping…Voila!
One thing I can’t rap my head around, is how to paint adjacent colours??
For the grey bit… I had to put tape obviously on the white zone side, and also on the light blue side…
When pulling the light blue side, small bits of paint are going to get pulled up as well, ruining the blue paint job…
How do you guys get past this??
A
p.s - once you get a hang for free hand curve taping, it becomes beautifully smoothed out… just requires some practice - thanks kokua!
That looks great Ant, good job…
I’m not too sure about the taping thing for seperating colours but I think the final edge colour (dark blue) gets free handed…or you could use a stencil instead of tape for a sharp edge.
BTW you missed a bit…
Howzit Herb, The heater has always worked for me and I’ve seen some pretty bad foam dings. How are you doing these days.Aloha,Kokua
Hey,
For taping on paint try “softening” the tape by taking the piece and sliding the sticky side across you leg or chest once or twice, the fibers from your pants or shirt will stick to the tape and reduce the tackiness(of the tape, not your clothes) then the trick is to position your spraygun/airbrush to spray from directly above or slightly behind the tape, if you spray at the tape edge it will lift.
Hope that helps…
Josh