If i can’t get a a roll of tubing for the bag, will a large pice of plastic folded around one side of the board work or will the end that need to be sealed be too long to get a good vacuum? What should I use to seal it? Contact sement + Duct tape?
Is it worth the money to buy a good vacuum connector for the bag or can you make something on your own?
What else do i need (besides a pump…)? Vacuum gauge, fittings, valve for adjusting vacuum? What quality of tubing?
If I decide to use a peel ply/breather layup will any nylon/polyester cloth from the fabric store do? Could I use a woolen/fleece blanket from the secondhand store as a breather?
If i can’t get a a roll of tubing for the bag, will a large pice of plastic folded around one side of the board work or will the end that need to be sealed be too long to get a good vacuum? What should I use to seal it? Contact sement + Duct tape? yes you can do that … plain 2" masking tape …
duct tape is useless …
Is it worth the money to buy a good vacuum connector for the bag or can you make something on your own? cut the top off a plastic bottle , place the bottle piece inside the bag , screw the lid on over the plastic , you can now peirce a hole in the lid and fit some hose , seal it with blutack …hell cheap …
What else do i need (besides a pump…)? Vacuum gauge, fittings, valve for adjusting vacuum? What quality of tubing? you could use a piece of garden hose , you can estimate vacumn by pulling on the bag , if it seems a little high , punch some small holes in your bag , as your bag starts getting taddy and worn , cover up the holes you made …
If I decide to use a peel ply/breather layup will any nylon/polyester cloth from the fabric store do? Could I use a woolen/fleece blanket from the secondhand store as a breather? hm maybe i should start a thread ??
Looks like your going to get everybody making vac bagger boards. Keep it up and I’m about ready to dump all my Poly stuff too! What was that TV show in the 80’s, McGiaver sp? Where the guy would build a rocket or a tank out of a rubberband, baling wire, and a roll or duct tape?
I’d like too see a thread of vac bagging a board on the cheap?
I made a really nice bag closer with a piece of 1/2" CPVC pipe and some 1/2" O.D. black rubber tubing. Use a table saw and (carefully) rip the pvc pipe into a shape just like the leter “C”. sand or file all sharp edges smooth.
Kind of like a giant zip-lock closer, costs about $10 US.
Seriously, Bert, masking tape? never would have thought to try that. Main problem I would get is that the bad would have little folds and wrinkles that always leaked past the tapes I tried. After some really bad experiences with duct tape, clear packing tape, double sided tape, etc., I caved in started buying the $6 a roll mastic tape. It’s not too bad if you only have to seal the ends and if the bags are reusable. Also makes it really easy to stick a vacuum tube in one end of the bag, or anywhere else if you want.
Trent
Quote:
Is it worth the money to buy a good vacuum connector for the bag or can you make something on your own?
If I decide to use a peel ply/breather layup will any nylon/polyester cloth from the fabric store do? Could I use a woolen/fleece blanket from the secondhand store as a breather? hm maybe i should start a thread ??
regards
BERT
Hi Bert,
yes that would be NICE! Anyway, reason I’m asking about using peelply/breather is that I’m uncertain if I can get a good bond by using small amounts of resin as you do the first time around with the kookups I’ll propably make. Don’t want the first board to be a total waste, balsa and all. So I was thinking of going cheap with the breather bleeder and rather waste a bit of resin(but keep it out of the lam).
I’ve got 5 yd of peel ply and 4 yd of 4milx32" tubing, along with the special sealant tape is anyone is interested in a trade. I bought it for a bagging project that I decided I couldn’t afford at the last minute, so it’s all new never used. Its only like $27 worth of stuff, but if anyone wants it and has some interesting trade goods (center fin, surf dvds, art, whatever ) just pm me.
What kind of center fin are you looking for? I’ve got an 8" FCS “Classic”/Bahne box or an 8" Takayama cutaway or a 9" TA Cal Classic or a 9" Wingnut cutaway I could part with…some big ones too, but I’m not sure what-all boards you ride…
I also have 2 double-foiled 3" little bahne-box-style fins (slightly mismatched - one has more rake than the other by about 3/16"). I’d give them both to you, they might make good trailers if you wanted to go large on the sides or go with 5…
Well, what I really need is a 7" bonzer fin, but I’m expecting to order that one myself. I was really just looking for something to liven up my 6’8" egg a bit, and maybe play around with on my other single and my bonzers. I like the look of those wingnut cutaways, but 9" seems like a lot of fin for a 6’8". What does the takayama look like?
Meant as a center with some sidebites. Probably would be driveless as a single. Mine’s black.
I’ve got too many ideas to use with the bagging. Among them:
A veneer over EPS board.
A solid-balsa rail, nose & tail block, deck ply, shell, filled from the bottom with pour foam. Shape the bottom, bag on the glass.
Old blue jeans from thrift shops bagged on to EPS (to reduce amount of resin needed) and then glassed over. How cool would a denim board be? Got the idea from one of G. Hunt’s ideas we talked about once. He wanted to make a board that looked like our binders and Pee-Chee folders from 8th grade, scribbled all over with Led Zeppelin Rules! and Dicso Sucks!
EVA foam bottom bagged onto EPS for softness after glassing, trying to get the water-contour effect of a mat.
And the list goes on. Like the Green Acres song, I can’t turn it off!
The denim, definitely the denim!! That would be so f-ing cool! And use a belt-loop covered in fin rope as a leash-loop. Maybe spell out your sig with brass rivets. Or gold thread, parallel-stitched like levis seams. Yeah, that would be pimp! It’d be a wax-melting mother, but what a look!
Bert’s onto it, again, Havaard. You sound like your having too much fun.
Over the years I’ve learned there are pretty much no rules when it comes to technique. As long as the resin mix and saturation ratio are correct, and of course the environment, it’s up to your own inginuity and imagination.
If I decide to use a peel ply/breather layup will any nylon/polyester cloth from the fabric store do? Could I use a woolen/fleece blanket from the secondhand store as a breather?
If you are on a budget, you can use trash bags as a peel ply. It works great. I use a product called Armalon which is a teflon-coated fiberglass fabric. It’s great because it’s durable and can be used over and over again. You might be able to use the nylon/polyester cloth from the fabric store (because it looks identical), but you might as well use the real stuff, because it’s fairly cheap. For a cheap bleeder/breather material, you can’t beat several layers of paper towels. It works great. The blanket idea might work aslong as it’s not too thick. The real stuff is pretty cheap though, at about $1.50 a yard at 50" wide .
Be careful with what you use as a bleeding cloth, it must only hold excess, you don’t want it to soak out necessary resin leaving your laminate understurated. The recommended bleeder plastic and cloth are not overly expensive, do the job properly, and work out cheaper than a replacement board. If you have the time experiment with alternatives first, a lot do work.
No Bert, I’ve not had the pleasure of surfing that part of the coast. I’ve been from Perth all the way around to Broome, but not between.
I’ll keep you guessing briefly as to where it actually is.
It’s a now very well known long left-hander on an island on the other side of the ocean to the above mentioned coast. I worked there for three years with a resident aussie making boards. I lived in a shack across the road and surfed some of the most perfect waves in my life, most mornings on my own for at least an hour, fanned by a gentle offshore. The workshop was about 100 meters down the road
It was there where I met and colaborated with an aeronautical engineer, working on glassing techniques and fin design (which I adapted to my bottom shape design with good results). I worked with him a lot over the years learning about and working with epoxy and vaccuuming etc.
And sadly that’s the only photo I have of myself surfing there.
Be careful with what you use as a bleeding cloth, it must only hold excess, you don’t want it to soak out necessary resin leaving your laminate understurated. The recommended bleeder plastic and cloth are not overly expensive, do the job properly, and work out cheaper than a replacement board. If you have the time experiment with alternatives first, a lot do work.
Problem is to find a supplier in Norway because the shipping of materials from the US are overly expensive.
theres no perfect pressure …so many different jobs can be done with a vacumn , all of which require different pressures …
proper support and you dont get a twist …
im just waiting on some pvc , then ill do an extensive thread …
ill show pvc sandwich , i wont go as far as balsa sandwich and some of my latest techniques , but what i will show will get everyone started , from there i can forsee many variations and improvements …
at least itll show the simplicity and the posibilties of using a vacumn to build sandwiches in any manner your imagination can come up with …
Please do.