Hello to everyone. Newbie here …first post
Short intro. Backyarding for about 4yrs. Self taught. (lots of reading and youtube) Aussie made. Shaped roughly 50 short boards of various sizes. Some hits some misses. Ride 20 or so. Sold one or two and the rest lay dormant in the board rack.
Which brings me to the tilte of the topic for those interested.
What do I do with my shapes that don’t work, were learning tools,etc. RE SHAPE THEM. Perfect. Mmmm…Lets try.
After thinking out loud and testing on one of the first boards I came up with this method that has been just about perfect over every board stripped of glass and reshaped. (bearing in mind that most of my early boards are around the 6ft to 6ft4 in lenght and 19 3/4 to 21 in width and around 2 5/8 thick) I have the room to move.
First with a trimming router I router around the fin boxes the thickness of the glass ( I test the depth before commencement) being careful to follow the original profile of the boxes. I was using at the start pro box post install then gearbox pre install now gearbox 2 pre install. This helps the glass lift away around the boxes more cleanly.
Second with a jig saw i cut around the outline of the board about 2mm from the edge. Slow and steady. At this stage you should be able to see the edge of the foam.
Third with a stanly knife (its what we call it in Aus) run the blade under the glass approx 10mm around the deck and bottom glass. There will be some slight tearing but a sharpe knife blade works best.
Fourth with your fingers start at the nose of the board and lift the glass up about an inch around the perimeter of the cut top and bottom cut. This will stop the tearing of foam around the rails when lifting (hopefully for you).
Fifth grab the glass at the nose and peal to the tail of the board like a bannana being careful around the tail area when tail pads are fixed.Same with the bottom layer. (this may not be the case for some as we all use different foam,glassing shedules and techniques. Im using surfblanks Aus) Areas of glass that dont come away are usually around decals.
Sixth with your trimming router set a fine trim and trim off any left over glass
Seventh retemplate, remark, recut, reshape, resand. Fill any imperfections in the foam or live with it if not to bad.
Some points and observations from my experience. Try and keep the lenght of the new template close to the old if thats what you want. (think fin placement) In saying that I have cut down a 6ft1 to a 5ft 8 with no detrimental effect on performance due to original finbox placement. I 've gone shorter on just about every reshape and some surf well beyond expectations. Clusters are gonna be further forward for the most part. Remember when sanding down the hot coat go easy on the fin box. (remember depth of tabs on fins). Extra layers of glass over boxes help. Tail thickness may be to thin after stripping. Check first. SLOW WORKS BEST
In closing I can consistently cut and strip the glass in about 1/2 hr with little to no tearing of the foam. There are imperfections after reshaping and I can live with that. Im just about at the end of my to strip quiver and have improved my skills greatly to produce a board that works.
Thanks for reading