As in all projects you plan it out first. Austin and Joe sketch out a concept on the good old yellow pads.
Then we make a full size drawing with correct dimension widths and correct wood types.
We first plane the boards to a rough thickness of 1/2 to 3/8 depending on the fin. We use a Grizzly 12 inch table top planer. Then we table saw the pieces to the correct widths. This is when you make your color choices and select the pieces of wood that work well together.
Next we lay the pieces out on a fin jig we made to clap them down. Each piece gets gorilla glue run down both edges then placed on the jig on a piece of waxed paper. Each part is lined up according to the plan.
Those designs are a true ‘‘blast from the past.’’ In the San Diego area, in 1961, Gordon & Smith went hog wild with multi piece fins. Grems would replace a perfectly good fin, in order to jump from a 75 piece fin, to a 110 piece fin. Inflation at its best/worst. Looks good.
Then we use a wax paper cut out of the fin full size. This lets us know if we have to adjust the pieces of board to fit the fin’s angles. You can see where Joe adjusted the wood down to fit the front of the fin’s point. We leave the wax paper template on top or put another piece of wax paper on top so when the gorilla glue expands out it won’t stick to the clamps.
Here we put down one of the two pipe clamps we will use to pull the pieces together. You can see a piece of wood across the center that we screw down to keep the fin pieces from bowing outward.
Fin with all the clamps.
A detail of the wedges we use to push the checkered pieces together.
The fin after the clamps are removed and we have rough cut it with a bandsaw. We will send it through the planer to bring it to final thickness around 3/8. This will also remove all the extra gorilla glue. I will get some more pictures of Austin foiling the fin and then glassing it later. Hope you enjoy it so far.
Troy
Forgot to add that this fin is made with Ebony, Bass, and Walnut.
awesome and right one time. last week my new boss ask me to make one of those.
thanks
uzzi
Another epic thread – bookmarked and many thanks, TSaunders! Looking forward to the foiling shots.
very timely ,
thanks for this TSaunders !
[as i was just talking to josh about D fins yesterday … ]
cheers
ben
this is an excellent thread - sometimes I think we need a “how to” section of Swaylocks just to put these gems all in one place.
More?
Totally aggree! Threads like this deserve special attention so we don’t lose them in the noise.
Your sig says “moderator”, perhaps you can make it happen???
Keith,
Agreed as well. A how-to section would be awesome, I’m working on something now that once I have wired I’ll how-to it…
Any chance that how-to threads could have larger pics added to them, for detail? Or another file format, like .pdf?
JSS
Foiling Clamp and start of the foiling. I don’t have a picture of the after but we foil it using a 7" grinder with a 36 grit disc and follow that with a sander with a hard pad and 100 grit. Final sanding is with 220 grit. We leave a flat 1/16th inch around the fin for the bead of resin.
After foiling we coat the edge with super styrened lam resin three times to prevent crystalization during the beading process. I thought I also would show you the matching tail block for the D-fin.
This shot is hard to see but you can tell how we are starting to build up the bead. We have found that this makes the bead clearer by building it up a little before you glass it with just lamination resin. Next we resand the whole piece all the way back down to the wood with just leaving the resin bead. If you skip this part the resin you basted on the wood would be darker when you go to glass it.
This is a shot after we have finished foiling the bead and then clear coating the whole fin with lamination resin to stop crystalization. We coat the fin with three layers of super styrened lamination resin. It is now ready to lay the glass layers. I haven’t taken those photos yet.
