Anyone ever hear of Bamply? I bought 4 sheets 4 x 8 x 5.5mm for $1.00/sheet. I called the manufacturer and found that it is a poplar core with an Ayous skin. Anyone ever hear of Ayous? It is sanded both sides. Anyway $1.00 / sheet I can’t go wrong there. Was wondering if this would be a suitable stringer material fro the blanks I’m going to cut from a block of 1.5# or 2# eps. And also what glue do you guys recomend for this. I figured Gorilla Glue or similar, clamped tight to reduce expansion.
wow thats a great price! I can get it here for about $15/sheet. I've been using it for fins, and it works pretty well, voids have not been a problem.
Cool, yeah I have a buddy at a lumber yard that keeps his eye out for cull lumber for me. Sheets have broken corners, cracks in edges etc, but I don’t need full sheets anyway. So I grabbed 'em as soon as he called me about it. have enough material now for lots of stringers and maybe some fins too!
Bit this stuff will work you think?
Huckleberry,
Those fins look nice! That’s Bamply huh? You’re giving me hope for this stuff.
Guerilla glue works well for glueing up blanks. Spread the glue on the foam and dampen the stringer.
Kevincc,
do you recomend rolling the GG on with a small paint roller or squeegying it on with a spreader? I guess I’m asking do you need to press it into the foam or just roll it on lightly? What method have you used?
I know you directed the question to Kevin, but I recommend using GG clear or Sumo glue. Both dry white. However, you can add white pigment to regular GG to get a closer to white glue-up.
I lay it on in a zig-zag pattern then spread it out with a squeegee or a tongue depressor. It doesn’t take much as it expands and fills most gaps. Too much glue, and it gets tough to plane the excess that expands on top and bottom of the blank.
Hey, thanks for the feedback. I will use your method, sounds like this Bamply might work out pretty well, sweet! I didn’t blow $4.00 !!!
I squeeze the glue onto the foam then spread it into a thin even layer with a hard plastic squeegee. Make sure your foam is cut straight, use a jointer to make it even and clamp it tight to squeeze any excess glue out. Excess glue that dries on the blank can be easily cut off with the planer.
My understanding is that poplar paints well if you are so inclined. They use it as a lower cost option for balusters and stair railings instead of oak. At 5.5 mm and being a ply construction, I would think it will be adequate, if not fine, as an I beam reinforcement in eps blanks.
I glue up basswood and synthetic stringers using clear “Roo Glue”. You can color it with latex or acrylic paints no problem. Butter the blank halves like a bricklayer and clamp together per your preference. You can butter the stringer material too if you want overkill. Roo Glue sands and planes easily and clean up is simple. The stuff isn’t deadly either. You can check out their other products by sticking Roo Glue in your browser and their site will be listed.
Ayous is the name they use in Cameroon for this usually yellowish white, coarse textured wood. It is soft, very light, elastic and flexible. It is known by several other names and is common to forests in equatorial West Africa. They call it Obeche in Nigeria, Wawa in Ghana, and Samba in the Ivory Coast.
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Hey DS, which “Roo Glue” are you using? I went to their website and they
have several products available. I clicked on “which glue to use” tab
and the glue for insulation foam was/is unavailable. I was thinking
their “superbond” would be the one by default. Is that what you’re
using?
I got some Roo Clear as part of a deal Surfding and I did awhile back when he saw the merits of downsizing from his big shop to smaller digs. That included several hundred eps blanks, basswood stringers and a drum of Roo Glue Clear, which works well for wood but also is listed under their acrylics section. I started working on some new rocker templates and decided to explore PVC foam amongst other synthetics that I can engineer specific location flex patterns into the stringers before gluing up: the synthetic material is uniform, and has no knots to factor into the mix, stiffens up nicely, delivers some lively flex and is lighter than the basswood I have.
I found the Roo Glue clear was used and recommended by Greg (Loehr) and Ding had used it extensively as well. So it was not really a big question mark as to if it would work or not. You can mix a bit of Q Cell in it if you want to thicken the viscosity for some reason, but it works well as the stock formulation. I use webbing with clamps and glassing racks with PVC pipe attached and the glue ups have turned out fine w/o any twisting or other problems.
I don’t know anyone using the tack stuff from them. I should think the clear is better if ever exposed to water from a ding.