So I’m still in the middle of my first board but I have some time waiting for materials to come in before I can finish. So I thought I’d make the most of my time waiting to slowly get started on the next project.
A local shaper has started donating his off cuts of 1.5 eps foam to me so that I can glue up some blanks together. So I wanted to see if anybody has some advice or thoughts on what I’m thinking through right now.
The most useable pieces of foam are about 2” thick and roughly around 3’ long and 23” wide. There are some variations in dimensions between each piece and some are curved at the ends.
They already have colored stringer lines down the middle. So I was thinking of keeping those as the center line to make shaping easier.
I’m trying to decide how I should to glue the pieces together. My first thought is to stack pieces on top of each other for the thickness but stagger them so there isn’t one glue join line right down the middle of the board which I feel might end up being an easy buckle point with potentially four pieces of foam all meeting at one point. Any thoughts on the matter?
I’ve seen how sharkcountry has pieced together his scrap foam boards but his seem to be smaller pieces of foam. And a lot of the Home Depot board threads seem to use pieces that are long enough and are only glued on top of each other for the thickness.
I’ve also read through how annoying it is to shape through glue lines so I’m debating whether or not to cut out rail pieces to hide the glue lines to make shaping the rails easier but I also don’t have the length to make rail pieces that go the whole length of the board.
My plan is to use gorilla glue which a lot of the threads suggest since it’s easier to shape. The kind I’ve found is a non foaming kind though not sure if that matters or not. U also plan on making a hotwire cutter and using rocker templates.
mainly I figured I could go ahead and start gluing up the blank that way I can get started on the second board once this first board is finished.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!
I’m still debating on what the board will be. Originally I was thinking a midlength but I’m not sure how well a stringerless board that length will hold up or if it would be too flexy. I saw in the threads I could overlap all the fiberglass over the rails for added strength also I was considering doing a hemp fabric inlay to add some strength.
But if the midlength is inadvisable then I would probably make it a keel fin groveler type of board.