OK, so I’ve got this old board that a friend dropped off at the house when he moved to Colorado about 7 years ago. It’s at least 10 years old, and I think he picked it up at Pier Surf in Hermosa Beach.
The glass is delamed in a few places, it’s got some pressure dings, and it’s sat in the sun way too long.
But I’ve got the urge to try some compsand style vacuum bagging, so I thought I’d strip it down, knock off about 3/16" on all sides, laminate it with cedar strips, glass it, and turn a piece of garbage into a thing of beauty(or maybe just learn a little about vacuum bagging). I can think of about 10 reasons why this isn’t a smart thing to do, but I’m tempted to try anyway. I’ve got a few questions though.
Has anyone heard of this shaper? I’m guessing this board is nothing special, but thought I’d see if anyone knew the history. The best I can tell, the signature reads “Ellitt,” NOT “Elliott”. The brand is Open Ocean.
While I’m at it, I can make some slight mods to the shape. The dimensions are: 6’10" x 2 5/8", 11.5"x19"x13.5". I’m not too fond of the rocker, but I figure that’s easy to change during vacuum bagging. Any suggestions?
Is this board worthy of such attention? Any input on how it will surf? As it is, I’m scared to get it wet and find out, but I thought some of the pros on this site might be able to “eyeball” it.
To keep weight down, I’ve considered “chambering” the foam (Clark) before I put the compsand on by simply drilling holes in it. Has anyone tried this? Thoughts?
I reckon you’ll lose a lot of foam from the rails if its got anything like a half decent glass job on it, and stripping boards is a bugger of a job. Also if you want to change the rocker with the vacuum you may find the stringer a bit difficult to keep from springing back to where it wants.
Blanks are pretty cheap, especially seconds or rejects and a lot less waste to git rid of.
But that is how i shaped my first board, so who am I to try and talk you out of it.
It also looks like an excellent beginners board, so maybe give it to a grom if you’re not gonna fix it up and ride it.
Thanks for the input. Since I want to strip the glass and take a substantial, though measured, amount of foam at the same time, I was thinking about taking a router and setting my bit to 3/16th and criss-crossing the board with it in stripes, or a checkerboard fashion. I wouldn’t intend to remove all the material this way, but would do this about every inch or so. Then I could pop off the glass where it was left and sand everything down level with the bottom of the router lines.
This would guarantee that I return to the original shape when I put 3/16th worth of wood back on. Anyway, that’s the theory, but I’m not sure if it’s gonna work.
Also, I’m not completely sure that I want the original shape back. I was thinking about doming the deck to get the rails a little thinner. I’m curious what made you peg it as a beginner board, and how you would tweak it.
And the stringer would be easy to saw out with a table saw – might not make that much sense to keep it around anyway, with all the wood that I’m going to add to the rails.
It was just the overall volume of the board that makes me think it would be a good beginners shortboard.
If you route around the rails on the deck and the bottom you should be able to peel the deck and bottom skins off in one go and not have to worry about all that fibreglass dust. Or even start with a Stanley or some kind of utility knife first and see how it comes away from the foam.
Seeing as the board is only 19" wide when you saw out the stringer you will probably lose another 1/4" from the saw blade, which pobably won’t be so bad if you are going to go with timber rails.
Sounds like a lot of trouble when you could probably sell the board and buy a rockered blank.
You could strip it and practice rail band techniques on it. I have one that I stripped and when someone comes over to shape their first board I let them make a few passes with the planer and then have them template out one side and practice rail bands.It seems to help with the confidence and great mystery of mowing foam.Just another suggestion.
Seagun, its a good candiate for the project you have in mind. On the rails, I think it would be a good start to put a flush-cutting bit in a router and set it to cut maybe 1/2" to 3/4" off before you do anything else. Cut from the bottom side where you’ll have a better corner to run the router along.
For a compsand, you have to square up the rails anyway to put on your balsa (or whatever) strips. So having a nice square cut from your router to begin with is helpful, not harmful.
After buzzing off the rails like that, the deck & bottom glass panels will come off easy peasy. Then all you have to do is plane or sand it smooth & put the skins on.
Or, rather, put the bottom skin on, add the rail pieces, shape the rails, give them one extra pass over the top so they don’t thicken back up with your deck skin, and bag that top skin on.
I wouldn’t mess too much with reshaping on this one. Not worth your trouble. Use it to get the hang of the materials, and then you’ll want to make yourself a better one from scratch anyway, probably with a lightweight core. Besides, if you do a nice even router cut all the way around the rails, and then add back on as much balsa as you took off in foam & glass, you’ll know you have a nice smooth template. Start reshaping, and you’re awfully likely to get flat spots or bumps in your outline where you tried to make new curves match old ones.
I’ve done them all different ways. But that way just seems to come together with the least drama.
Rails before any skins, and your final board is too stiff. Plus, its just that much harder to get the rail profile & thickness you want when you keep adding stuff on, after taking it off.
Rails after both skins, and you get these cracks between skin & rail where the edge of the skin is only supported by foam which compresses.
And when I do the bottom skin first, it firms up the blank enough that I get a more reliable shaping process on the deck & rails. Mostly important with stringerless EPS, I guess.
I was going to saw the rails off, but your suggestion with the router is a much better way to go. Should make that part a piece of cake, and sounds a lot harder to screw up.
My plan was to put a first piece of wood on the rails, then laminate the bottom and deck skins, followed by the remainder of the wood for the rails.
Since the edge of the deck will be supported this way, it will prevent the cracking problem you mentioned. But is this what you referred to when you said it created a stiff board?
Lavarat, I hear you about the lighter foam (and Entity and art). It would make better sense to start with a real blank, but what I’m really after here is getting a handle on the lamination technique so I don’t screw up a “good” board.
And while I’ve made some hollow woodies, I’ve yet to mow foam, so reshaping would be a risk. I don’t think I could turn an old longboard into a fish like you did, so what I’m after is trying to recreate what I started with.
What do you mean when you say “reshape like Lob and Neira”? I couldn’t dig that out of the archives.
Niera has made some cool blanks by adding foam(pictured) in the middle.And Lob made a great fish by putting a 2" balsa strip down the middle to make the blank bigger.
My advice is to try to make a great board, on your first try.It takes the same amount of work and $$.So make some thing you really want to ride.Composite boards have a lot of drama involved.On your first glass job I would use UV poly resin and a standard glass job.
I did my first vac bagged board the way you described in your drawing. Be careful of the vac pressure. The difference in density of the first rail band and the foam creates a hard spot. I had very slight indentations just inside the first rail band, not noticeable visually but you can feel them.
