Stringer problems (sort of)

General Discussion
1

Hey hows it goin, i’m currently working on my first (of hopefully many) boards and I’m having some difficulties…

the deck of my board, right untill it gets to the rocker in the nose, is perfectly flat and i’m happy with it. It just gets not so good when i get to around 7 inches from the nose. The foam is flat, but the stringer is thicker than the foam. I try and sand it, but the foam gets thinner and the stringer seems to stay the same. I have a finger planer but it cant get any of the wood out as its not a flat surface. I’m not really sure what to do now but I’m thinking theres some way around this. anyways, just thought I’d get some advice from you guys. Thanks.

*edit - the thickness of the foam and the thickness of the stringer isnt really significantly different, I can just feel it with my hand and it doesnt feel “right”… So its not a HUGE difference, but its there.

2

You need a spoke shave…Did you try using your finger planer, but at an angle?

3

if adjusting the blade on your finger planer still won’t give a good cut on the stringer, get a spokeshave…it’ll get into areas with more rocker.

4

Easy cure is to use the blade of a sureform, bend it slightly, hold across the stringer, and take light cuts.

Wood don’t sand as easy as foam.

5

You also need to cover the foam on both sides of the stringer with some ‘sacrificial’ masking tape. Use 2 layers and do whole, continuous strips from over the nose to over the tail, so it dosen’t peel up with your cutting tool (plane, spokeshave, surform, or sandpaper). Yes, you’ll cut into or sand away some of the tape, but that’s easier to replace during the process than the foam is!

6

It’s normal for the foam to sand way faster than the stringer. You just have to make sure that trimming the stringers is the last thing you do. You can buy a small curved bottom Japanese plane that will plane the concave areas of the nose.

I’ve never used a spokeshave for this, but it’s basically the same tool in a different form, and I’m sure it works just as well.

When you plane the nose: On the deck, or concave surface, start planing at the end of the board moving the plane toward the middle. If you are working on the bottom, or convex surface, plane toward the nose. This will minimize tearing of the wood. Doug

7

Hey Shores,

Even with the best tools you’re probably going to scrape some foam as you make those last passes - and it’s easy to keep chasing the perfect foam and flat stringer on the first boards. Error on a couple scrapes in the foam and not the stringer sitting too high though, or the board becoming much thinner than planned. Benny’s suggestion sound like a good one to help minimize.

Best,

Herb

8

Hint 1: grind the edge of your finger plane to a curve, so it cuts more at the center than the sides.

Hint 2: the finger plane has to be very sharp.

HTH