Tips for glassing my bamboo please

General Discussion
1

 

I recently finished making my first board – a success in part to helpful people on Swaylocks.  I‘ve moved on to making a fin (what part of surfing is not addictive?).  I bought a $9 bamboo cutting board and shaped it per the attached pic.  I’d like to add some strength by glassing it.  Is this bascly like glassing a board?  Two layers of glass per side and sand? 

 

1)       If I place the fin on wax paper will I be able to remove the wax paper after the resin dries?

2)       Any issues with RR epoxy bonding to bamboo? Is additive F needed?

3)       Do you free laps with the glass around the fin edge or just lay it out past the fin edge and cut/sand it later?

 

 

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Nice fin. no prob using epoxy.

I would sand down the leading edge a bit square, then run a bead of epoxy paste (gelled epoxy) along. then shape that as you leading edge. I would then seal the fin with some thinned epoxy (d-alcohol or xylene). sand. then laminate. I often use syringes to make resin beads. 

instead of wax paper u can use any plastic sheeting, freezer/sandwich bag etc, but i dont recommend putting the resin side down on a surface cuz the resin will run and affect the shape - you can always sand off errors tho.

laminate with big overhangs and then razor blade them off a couple of hours after resin set or wait a bit longer for good wood adhesion.  

the biggest downer of this type of construction is fin edge impact intolerance. impacts allows water intrusion and once that happens your fin is soon to be wet toast. the epoxy leading edge will extend the fin life. good luck

 

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Crafty - 

Very helpful info…thanks for taking the time to write it out.  

 

mjl

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To answer your questions, wax paper is fine, and will not stick. No issues that I can see with RR epoxy. Try painting a thin layer of RR over every part of the wood, this way, when you go to lam the cloth on, the wood will not absorb the resin out of your cloth, and leave you with a weave that is noticable to the eye. Don't do free laps either. Just lay cloth over, wet, sqeegee, and cut when gelled. also, a tip for next time would be to have the grain of the wood be going at an angle from tip of fin to trailing edge instead of parallel to the base of the fin. good job though.