Hi all, I am in Mauritius, making my first EPS board- a basic fun egg, (what a mission). The concept of products such as spackling and polyurethane glue here is very foreign. 1. Can I use acrylic crack-fillers to seal my blank once im done shaping it? 2. Also impossible to find here is polyurethane glue to glue up my stringer… any other alternatives i could use? 3. for the stringer, can i use regular (good quality) ply? Any help offerred would be very appreciated!
Hi stevos I used epoxy resin with thickener to glue my stringer in eps. Spackling isn’t mandatory, you can glass eps without spackle. I also did a board with a plywood stringer, but plywood is harder to plane down than regular wood, so I cut the stringer to finished shape before I glued it up. No expert here, just saying what worked for me.
Stevos,
It is as Huck says. I am just finishing a twin plywood stringer EPS assembled with epoxy instead of PU glue. I have used epoxy/microballon slurry for patches but not a whole board as spackle is common here.
The key with epoxy anything is don’t put on too much since it’s harder to sand than everything else.
I am about ten boards deep into this. Two things that made board-building easier for me (besides power tools and hot wires): getting good EPS and getting real surfboard epoxy. It’s a pain to fight with poor materials- been there, done that. If I could do it over again I’d just buy a BYOB kit from a vendor for the first couple boards and skip trying to save money with cheap foam and alternate resins.
Recent threads that may be of interest:
http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/surfboard-too-soft-what-do-i-do
http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/spackling-eps
Ah, to be stuck on an island making boards…
Don’t use stringer, Don’t use spackle, you ll make a better EPS/époxy surfboard…