Hot Coat
glassing
taping
After all this time, I still wonder about the proper way to tape up the tail rail. I get it done, but I believe there is a better way. Any tips you want to share?
Well, for me, it depends on the kind of board I’m hot coating. A longboard, nose rider witha 60/40 rail right through the tail, tape mid rail. For a high performance short board, well that’s a bit more complex. In that situation I want a really good, tight, sharp rail for water release. I always hot coat the deck first, tape to mid rail. Then I lightly sand the top 1/4" or so of that hot coat for adhesion to the bottom hot coat. This also gives a good surface to seal the tape against so there is no leaking of resin in the next step. Bottom up, I level the tail of the board (really important) and first tape a tangent to the rail ending up to just above the bottom of the board so I create a well to hold resin to eventually form the hard edge. Don’t mash the tape to the board; leave space for the resin t fill; make surre the bottom of the tape is sealed against the top hot coat. Close up the forward part of this well so resin doesn’t spill out the end of the tape. I usually make that 6"-to-12" forward of the forward fins. Then I tape the board normally to the deck hot coat line all the way around, even through the tail. Pour the hot coat and let it fill that tape well and don’t brush too much. Just make sure everything fills with resin. Otherwise just hot coat normally.
This should give you a nice amount of resin to form as hard of an edge as you would like.
Hotcoat deck first
I tape about to my lap line.
Baste coat nose, tail, and rails.
Hotcoat.
Flip board and prep the bottom lap and scuff half the rail (I was taught originally not to use a bottom tape but then you got a bunch of resin drips to grind down but it still works fine)
tape off at mid rail and make your hard edge dam- baste coat nose, lap line and fill dam.
Then hotcoat bottom.
You can certainly skip all the baste resin but I think it makes for a better end product
If your doin 1 board at a time UV certainly speeds things up in the baste stage
if you’ve got multiples going - by the time your done with the last one the first one is usually ready to get a hotcoat
After having a resin edge start cracking for no good reason, I kind of skipped that stuff for the most part. On some resin edges I’ve done since, I have been known to add a few strands of fin rope in the resin build up. I’ve also done the tapered overlap thing that goes from a normal width lap at the nose and fades to nothing in front of side fins… this allows me to let the tail lap just hang - a perfect dam for the fill coat and final fine tuning.
John the board I’m doing now is done that way. The deck lap along the tail is left hanging straight down, and the fill coat on the bottom is done before I cut it away. I’ve used thickend resin and glass fiber before, but I think this method will be the way I do it going forward. I’d rather have a strands of fiber or an aerosil mix versus just resin if I did it as an afterthought, but they always have a slightly translucent look and that makes it more noticeable.
John, I’m off topic on my own thread , but Davo Dietrich in Cocoa Beach used to leave a 1/2 inch or so of saturated cloth not folded over on the tail. Then when doing the fill coat he would add resin until it was sort of a tray to hold resin. From there he would build a thin resin tail block. It was all done in one step as I recall. Worked on square tails and dove tailed fish.
How much dang resin are you guys adding that your tails are cracking or your worried about that???
It doesn’t take much to get a razor sharp edge
I’ve added a hard edge to older boards that had soft edges, so they needed more than what you’d do if you were making a board with the edges from the start. In some cases I changed a rounder tucked edge to a more vertical one and that requires a bit of buildup. For those I ran tape along the apex of the rail then more tape that went up higher and filled in the space. Mainly did these to see how the differences felt. It’s way easier to add to a rounder edge than to round off a straight edge.
The board in question, in my case, was a Yater Surftech longboard with the ‘structural veneer’ wood grain. Come to think of it, it did have a boat load of resin to make that edge. I figure it flexed enough to start cracking and ended up sucking water. I never hit anything or dinged it.
Because i mostly use thick fiber i used to round tail rail to allow flat bottom lam so before finish coat i masking tape hard rail and fill with resin silica + micro fibre or Glass powder mastic. Sand shape then finish coat.
Lemat, how do you place the tape? Are you able to aplly the fill coat in one step or do you fill coat the bottom first then with another tape line to do the hard edge in a second step?
I do it in two time. First i tape hard edge like you with two layers of tape for more stiffness and fill gap with reinforced mastic. I put after lam plugs with same batch of mastic. When cured i sand shape hard edge then i tape all around board, apex rail, and finish coat.