Actually, while that’s fine if you’re making a one-off, the way to go for more than one is this:
Shape your first, experimental board of foam, try it and see. Then, use it as a male mold for a number of laminates, and squeegee them well. If you’re set up to do vaccum bagging, then by all means go for it
Pop that off the mold, then use sheet foam, cut to outline shape, and then stick that to the deck side. Again, vaccum bagging is ideal. Shape your edges, laminate, laminate, laminate and laminate some more. Hotcoat, sand appropriately, glass your fin or fins on and there you are. Sand the glass to tune the flex.
If you want to get cute, make a very oversize male mold of whatever you like, do a lamination or six a bit oversized relative to what you want to wind up with and then saw it to shape, then go with the foam, etc, as above.
Sanding away all that foam is horribly time consuming, if nothing else. And there’s a surprising number of ‘found’ objects that’ll give you a nice spoon shape ( or otherwise, if you don’t want a spoon ) when used as a male mold. You may never look at an old refrigerator door the same way again.
It is looking good Paul. Thanks for posting the pictures.
Since the weight issue is becoming a bit of a lottery I will go with 10.5 lbs. My reasoning is that the board is a first time experiment and will therefore probably be heavier than ones to follow.
Looks good Paul, nice hull, cant wait to see it,ride it?Ill bring my 9’4’’ Paul Gross spoon so we could compare.Ive got one of those Pope hollow fins that would be cool to try on that shape. Keep at it.KP.
Looking great. I’m super impressed by your methods and am building a hollow wood one with pretty much guidance off your site exclusively. It’s a lot harder than anything that I’ve attempted as far as woodwork. Construction is nothing compared to it, and building cedar-strip canoes and skateboards is a fairly simple in comparison too. I’m kinda poor for all those clamps you use, so it’s a lot of waxed hydro twine and elbow grease. Primitive, yet effective. I’ve got a decent warp going on the one end, but this is my first, so hopefully I’ll improve. All your work and guidance is much appreciated… Joel “Red” Feenstra
