Two Buck Chuck

Inspired by Swaylock’s and most recently by Stingray’s “One Man’s Trash” post, I’ve decided to try and “restore” my two dollar garage sale find for some pure fun and a learning project. When the seller said it was two bucks I thought gee, the matching fins are worth that much and took it. Once I got it home I became more intrigued by it. Is it a kneeboard, a really small guy’s standup twin fin? It’s only 5’ 0". I really like the custom stringer too.

Anyway, it has this really hideous broken nose fix on it. They sawed it off and slapped some glass on it, not bothering to finish sand. I plan to use some foam to reshape what appeared to be a beaked nose. The bottom has lots of pressure dings, and some of them are so bad the glass cracked in a circle. Could really use some advice on how to deal with all those dings (I know, search archives). I don’t want to strip the glass because I don’t want to tackle resetting the fins, want to preserve the logos, and I kind of want it to have a roadmap of what it’s been through. I am impressed with Stingray’s resin tint with a coverup glass layer though. So maybe fill the dings and re-glass the bottom taping off the stringer and logo.

Lastly, the tail has the glass stripped off the bottom and deck in a really weird way. The more I looked at it I realized the previous owner had done it on purpose for some type of modification. It now has some concaves on each side of the stringers like they were trying to bonzerize it. The rest of the bottom is a slight belly throughout. I want to take it back to that so my plan is to cut out and replace this tampered with foam. Plus, it seems to be deteriorated somewhat, no telling how long it’s been exposed. After copying the tail template I will cut out and replace each section one at a time to keep the stringers in line. After that sets up (two part epoxy? gorilla glue? elmers?) I will strip off a bit more glass around it so I can reshape flush to the original contours. Then re-glass the fixes, which I have absolutely no experience in except one two square inch ding repair! But hey, I’ve looked at Sways alot, how hard can it be?

Please let me know if you see any obvious problems with my plan of attack, it will be a slow process and I plan to post lots of pics.



More pics



…I bet that tail was reshaped…

in my opinion, if you cut the tail go a few inches longer with the new outline

That is an interesting looking find. Looks like a fun project.

I found a board in the trash in my alley a few weeks ago and had planned to use it to practice routing fin boxes for my pro boxes for my fish. Maybe I’ll refill the holes and try to bring it back to life. I can’t make out the brand. It says what I think is “Foam Bones” and then maybe WRV under that but it’s written in some crappy tribal graphic font that is hard to read.

Quote:

When the seller said it was two bucks I thought gee, the matching fins are worth that much and took it. Once I got it home I became more intrigued by it. Is it a kneeboard, a really small guy’s standup twin fin? It’s only 5’ 0". I really like the custom stringer too.

Like reverb said, the tail has definitely been ‘reshaped’ - butchered is more like it. If you add another 4 inches or so, you’d wind up with something not awfully unlike this: http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000302.html - good ol’ Pods, great reference stuff.

Somebody fiddled with it, realised they were making a horror show (channels on a 1979 style twinnie surfboard? YEEsh - somebody saw a fish once and went from there. ) and gave up. Which in turn gives you pretty much license to go wild.

The color tint on the bottom, as you describe, sounds like a good way to go with maybe an inlay on the tail in a contrasting color?

I wouldn’t bother copying the tail template. It’s not original and it is most definitely botched. Instead, make a new tail, starting up at the front of that hideous glass stripping where it’s full thickness, put in a decent sized chunk of new foam and maybe try to recreate the original, longer twin fin tail it had in its heyday.

A cheat- cut the foam right beside the stringers, then cut away the foam so you can make a nice joint when you add to them. I think those are pretty much straight, not curved, so you can basicly cut a kinda wedge-shaped piece of foam, cut the end flat at the right width and then add more foam chunks either side.

Looks like an interesting project…

doc…

I went to the garage to get a more detailed pic and guess what? You guys are right! Big surprise. They did cut it straight across, just below the rear wing/bump. Then they started rounding it off which explains why the fabric doesn’t wrap around one end, they sanded it off. On the other end, looking at the deck side, there is just enough of the bump contour left to see what happened. That would explain the length, it probably used to be around 5’6" to 5’8". So I guess I’ll cut it off again straight across, and glue on a new tail. I wonder if I should worry about lengthening the stringers? I have lots of foam scraps with plenty of stringer but a little thicker than these. Or maybe just a foam and fiberglass flex tail…

Hi Ted,

Yeah, that kinda figures, it really looked like it had been cut down, badly.

Now, rather than cutting it straight across, a suggestion.

As I mentioned before, cut along the stringers, like so. Then cut foam and glass.

I would use a handsaw, fairly sharp, along the stringers, then cut the foam with a saber saw from the bottom. It’s gonna be flatter there, so you will find it easier to get a nice square cut in the old foam which in turn makes it so much easier to cut new foam to meet it nicely, lots less filler goo and so on.

Remove lunched foam and such leaving the stringers kinda hanging out there by themselves, then it’s relatively easy to add on to the stringers, use a scarph joint if you can, it’ll make aligning it easier.

Then, put in new foam;

Now you can reshape it to whatever you want.

I wouldn’t necessarily be guided just by what I sketched, instead I’d use the ‘channels’ on the bottom as my guide for where to stop cutting. Where they started, that’s where you finish, where they cut away glass, that’s where your cuts in the foam end.

That way, you are going to be putting new foam right against old glass. Two good things about that: it hides your glue lines somewhat and when you shape down the new foam to the level of the old glass you can get it right at the same level and your glassing over it all will be that much easier. No little transition ‘steps’ from old glass to new foam, it can all be continuous.

It’s a somewhat more complex process than just cutting the tail off square. More steps involved, but the individual steps are easier/less complex and I think they’ll help you turn out a better job.

hope that’s of some use

doc…

WRT the tail shape, at 5’ you’re looking at adding quite a bit of length to get it up to a normal length. I had a 5’11" MTB twin fin that had a double-bump like that one, but it ended in a round-pin. Wish I could find the photos, and really wish I’d kept it. Anyway, that’s another option to consider. I think it would be more likely that the previous owner cut off a round pin tail to make a fish out of it than that they cut off a swallowtail to make it a shorter swallowtail.

If that’s the same “Pure Fun” as Hank Byzak’s label, he could probably tell you something about the original tail shape.

760-634-2553

Edit: Just noticed you’re in Carlsbad… he’s in Encinitas. Run it by his shop and let us know what he says. 244 North Coast Hwy. Encinitas, CA

Thanks doc, that’s exactly what I was thinking about. Some of that glass is separating from the foam so I’ll have to remove more. What is a good way to get a clean cut without going into the foam? Straight edge and utility knife? Also, the inside area of glass next to the fins is coming away badly. I’m wondering if I should remove the glass all the way up in front of them and reset after foam/glass repairs.

The stringers are really thin so I don’t know if I can make a clean joint, plus I have no material like it (don’t want to turn it into two hundred dollar chuck). I have large pieces from a reject blank I used for practice and it has a center stringer. I was thinking about extending that stringer into exisiting foam when I add new foam. This is the opposite of a trash kind find whittled down to a smaller board, I’m adding on to a really small one. I don’t mind if it ends up a little Frankenstein-y, it will add to it’s character!

Shwuz - it alos lost 1-2 inches off the nose, I figure it was a 5’8" or so.

Benny - it looks like his logo and I do plan on going by there as soon as I get a chance.



Widest point in front of centre and a wider tail. Is this how it should be?

hey, that’s the same pic in doc’s link above. I don’t think this board has the wide point pushed that far forward, but maybe. Anyway, that’s probably the tail config I’ll shoot for.

Hi Ted ,I like where Doc is going with the repair. You could always air brush in fake stringers or try paint stir sticks or…???

If you choose to add a layer of glass to the whole bottom you will gain alot of weight. If the fins are not cracking at the bases or loose I would not touch them. I’ve tried lots of different methods of cutting the glass for a repair like yours. I always go back to my trusty old utility knife. Buy extra blades before you start cutting.

Hi Ted,

Sorry about taking so long to get back to you, last night was one of those ‘doc has a glass-and-a-half of wine and falls asleep early’ nights. Sad, getting old. Or maybe the right word is ‘pathetic’…

In any event-

Cutting glass- you know, what I like to do is cut away most of it or score it well with something else before I attack it with the utility knife. 'Cos the glass plus hotcoat plus gloss is pretty hard stuff, and pushing hard to cut it always seems to lead to something ugly. So what I’d do is go at the cut with a veneer saw or something similar, cut 'til not quite through, then finish it with a knife.

Run this little guy against a straightedge, it’ll do the job for you.

They also make a tool for scoring plexiglass, that works well too. Either tool is under ten bucks at a good hardware store or tool place.

Uhmmm - normally, I’m prone to leaving things attached that are attached at all, but in this case I might make an exception , as there’s going to be a lot of work going on here and reglassing: the less in the way the better, especially if the fins are kinda marginally attached.

So sand away the glass and such at the bases of the fins and carefully take 'em off. I’d also take your sander and sand the sides of the fin low down ( once they’re off, that is ) so the extra glass and glass rope that were used to attach 'em goes away. It’ll make reattaching them cleanly a lot easier.

Oh, and use some cardboard or something to make a template of where the fins went and their angles and such. Then you can feel comfortable about being able to get 'em back in the right spot.

Replacing/extending the stringers…well, something occurred to me last night. Namely, why in hades would somebody have a strange-stringered blank like that made, or use it? Especially Hank Byzak, who is no dummy. Then light dawned over Marblehead:

Quick, inaccurate and dirty sketch, but hopefully it’ll make sense. The narrow swallowtails that were popular on twinnies like this was originally, well, what better way to do 'em but with the stringers going right to the tips. While a non-centerline vee-shaped stringer setup like this would suck from the point of view of laying out a roundtail or such from templates ( it’s not centered, it’s not paralell to the centerline) , it’d make a lot of sense for a narrow swallowtail.

Now…strengthwise, stringers don’t do diddly, so extending something from your practice blank piece into the old foam wouldn’t accomplish anything beyond making life difficult. And inletting the old stringers into one piece of new foam…y’know, I wouldn’t want to try that. Especially as they taper apart: to fine-fit the foam without adding great gobs of filler the new foam would wind up going further in, the taper cuts for the old stringers would have to get wider and globbed full of filler, train wreck.

But cutting along the existing stringers is easy, and adding onto them is too.

If you have, or have access to, a small tablesaw, you’re pretty well set. Just cut a couple of strips of wood that’s reasonably close in appearance, spruce or pine or something, that’s the same thickness. And that’s thin. It can be lots wider than the old one ( taller, that is) and stick up beyond the foam, you’ll be cutting it down when you shape the foam anyhow. It doesn’t have to be anything beautiful or perfect, just ‘good enough’.

Cut out the foam in the center, between the stringers, nice square cut at the end. Remove that.

Do a scarph joint in the new pieces or any cut at all, really, that gives you a fair amount of glue surface stringer-stringer, use those as your cut templates for the old ones ( a nice sharp utility knife should do it ) and stick it together with glue when it’s done, both sides. Stuff the new piece of foam in there to hold it in position while the glue dries ( use wax paper between new foam and glued stringers) , then glue up the center foam piece when the stringer extension glue has dried. Then, cut out the sides as needed - I might make a template for the cuts on those, then cut two identical pieces of foam, stick them in, cut outline and shape as needed, glass, reattach fins and there ya go -

Gawd, cobby drawing, isn’t it. But hopefully, it shows what I’m thinking about here.

The advantages are that it’s small jobs that are really not all that hard individually and it all proceeds in stages to bring back something like the original blank. Fitting the new foam very cleanly is relatively easy. It keeps most of the looks of the original too. I mean, why go frankenstein if you don’t have to.

See, I originally trained as a boat carpenter. That’s my real trade. And the cool thing about doing boat repairs is this; you have to understand the original construction, why they did it that way. Then, why does it have to be repaired? What went wrong with the original? Last, given the constraints of the tools and materials and skills you have access to, how to improve on the original construction so it does the repair and at the same time corrects what was wrong with the original system…'cos after all, it needed to be fixed, right?

This is kind of the same thing. Why was it done this way in the first place, what was right and wrong with the approach, how to fix it clean, as easy as possible so it does what it was meant to do originally.

Which is fun, ya know?

Hope that’s of some use

doc…

Doc, you are freaking me out, I had the swallow points epiphany last night as well. I was thinking, if I drew lines out from the stringers a foot or so, then picked an arbitrary point-to-point dimension, say four inches, it would give me a clue as to what the board’s original length was. I’ve seen plenty of fish or other swallow tail boards with stringers like this so now it seems fairly obvious that was the original design.

I also thought putting in the middle foam section would be best for stability of the stringers, but your idea of using wax paper and the foam as a wedge to glue up stringer extensions is brilliant! Now I won’t go so Frankenstein after all. Plus my idea of a double to single stinger would just look…pathetic! But I like the idea of showing what repairs were made - kind of like a restored hot rod body before they paint it.

Stingray - paint stir sticks, another good idea. I’ll have to remember to sand off the Home Cheapo label!

OK, a paint stick will require a little sanding…

It looks like 2 7/8 might be the point-to-point measurement, that yields about a 5’6" board after adding an inch back to the nose.

This is going to be fun. I have some recovery from minor surgery before I can start messing around effectively in the garage again and I have a blank to shape for a friend, but hope to get started on both in a few weeks. Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Quote:

I was thinking, if I drew lines out from the stringers a foot or so, then picked an arbitrary point-to-point dimension, say four inches, it would give me a clue as to what the board’s original length was.

Exactly! And that’ll let you develop some very good outline templates, working off the stringers. Again, given some cardboard or lauan plywood, you can lay it out full-scale and there you’d be.

Quote:

I also thought putting in the middle foam section would be best for stability of the stringers, but your idea of using wax paper and the foam as a wedge to glue up stringer extensions…

Right, and what’s even cooler is that you can cut that truncated wedge of foam at an arbitrary length, long as you get the angle/taper right and the narrow end is narrower than your cut at the end. Then the only real fitting you have to do is at the truncated end and maybe one side which is relatively very easy, a block and sandpaper.

If you have access to that tablesaw then setting up a taper jig to cut the taper is kinda easy, quick and it gives you a nice smooth edge besides.

I might hot glue a drop or two only between the new stringer segments and the old foam, so the new segments of stringer don’t go elsewhere on you while you glue in the center piece. They’ll cut easy enough when the time comes, it tends to be relatively soft stuff. Then you can glue up the side pieces and be ready to shape.

Showing the new pieces against the old… yeah, the trick is to make them nearly invisible, sort of 'the only reason you can see this is ‘cos I wanted to show off’ compared to the ‘it didn’t really fit but I put in a lot of goo’ approach.

Heh- the worst I ever saw was a guy who kinda glopped in some foam chunks, bits and pieces really, then formed tape around it and poured in a wet resin and filler mix. He wanted it to be lightweight, I guess, besides which he had gone a little nuts sawing out old slightly munched foam.

He forgot something. Foam floats Really Well in a pool of resin. It wound up looking like a jello mold with marshmallows on top. Not terribly lightweight either. As he was my competition in the ding repair business at the time, it was doubly sweet.

Anyways, you’re started now. Sharpen up your saw…

doc…

the only thing bugging me right now is the 2 7/8 dim between the two projected ends. The picture is a bit small to see, but the stringers are lined up on the INSIDE of the two straight edges I have there. The ruler is set where the new length would be, and the 2/7/8 is between the two sticks, not the outer edges. Makes sense? So it looks like the tail will will take a radical curve inward below the two new wings to get over to the new tail points. Unless the tail points are really rounded like the way it is now. Doesn’t seem right. The pics you posted of the MR board you can tell his double wing twin is more than 2 7/8 inches point to point, look more like 4 at least. Off to ponder…

Hmmm, maybe it will work.


Right, typically those tails were more like 5 inches to six inches, point to point, though they ran deeper, say 1 1/2"- 2".

However - they also tended to extend 9-11 inches behind the fins and with that relatively narrower tail you might even go to eleven and change. Drag it in from that second set of wingers too…

So - lets see… maybe something a little more like this?

Not terribly unlike

Hey, you pretty much have a blank slate here…have fun with it

doc…