Dear all Could anyone give me any pointers on the critical dimensions and process for building a spoon kneeboard, a couple of years ago I made a carbon ‘spooned’ bodyboard which works really well and duckdives even better! Would like to make a velo ‘copy’ but know that the detail is going to be far more important than for a bodyboard. Any help appreciated. Cheers Marky
Check romanoskykneeboards.com and check flex spoons for a description and photos of construction…he leaves out the hardest stuff like laminating and sanding and sanding and sanding and sanding…also check the photo archives (search:Paul Gross) and you’ll see a few. Basically the easiest way is to shape the board minus the spoon using a short but thick blank, laminate the bottom (volan only) and sand out the deck right down to the bottom lam. Start building the bottom/deck up with more lams and glass over the pontoons with your last lam (again use only volan). Sand till it flexes the way you want, attach a fin and find some empty clean point waves. (I think the last part will be the hardest). Check the archives for some rough outlines. (remember that Greenough only weighed about 135 lbs). Greenough shifted away from the Velo outlines to narrower, longer, drawn out shapes in the end. Dale Solomonson had some great photos in a post a few weeks ago. Great way to hone your glassing skills…don’t be disappointed if the first few break on your first wave…it builds character.
count on puttin’ in somewhere around 100 hours to complete project.Like Lee said, check the archives to see the detailed work involved-multiple layers of glass for sure, but the key is how much and WHERE to build it up…
Lee V thanks for the reply, the bodyboard I built was carbon/epoxy/styrofoam, really light quick and resposive, thanks for the tips, that was the process that I used with the bodyboard, could really do with some fairly accurate dimensions, particularly nose lift, which is hard to judge from photos. As for the empty point waves, that could prove to be my undoing!! Cheers Marky V
4" of nose rocker that feeds into dead flat @ 24" then 3 feet of flat. You’ll need a blank that’s over 4" thick, flat through the middle, i.e. the 10’3" from Clark.
There’s an alternative method, though it makes sense if you’re going to be making more than one. I haven’t used it…yet…but many have with good results. You start off by shaping the bottom, as above. Glass it well and smooth it off nicely. Coat with a release agent such as Polyvinyl Alcohol or mold release wax, available from someplace that supplies boat makers. Glass on top of the mold, several layers. Vaccum bagging is the method of choice. Epoxy or polyester resin is mostly a matter of choice. Take the bottom off your mold, cut it to outline shape ( bandsaw is good for this) , then use foam sheet ( or balsa sheet if you’re so inclined) stuck on with a good adhesive to give you the necessary floatation. Shape the rails and transitions to the ‘deck’/bottom, glass it, glass on the fin(s) and then , after use, tune the flex with a grinder or by adding more glass. An alternative is to make a female mold and do something similar - best if you’re really good at mold-making. Dale has a few pics of a carbon fiber spoon kneeboard that illustrate this really well. You want to use a good grade of foam, say a marine structural foam. Balsa sheet also will work. You may want to do a few rough calculations for floatation - don’t sand away so much foam that it’ll sink, y’know? Also, if you can find a working flex spoon, the above methods will give you a way to make a (female) mold of the thing, and from there you’re ready to rock. Hope that’s of use doc…
marky v… Id avoid using any (ala surfboard blank) low density foam inside a spoons rails. Use 10-15 lbs./cu. ft. instead. End grain balsa is more labor- intensive, but also very effective at helping to prevent point loading/fatigue hinges in the rails. BTW, spoon proneboards dont function well in comparison to knee spoons because of the prone riders body direct contact with flex panel movement. One solution is to build a prone spoon w/a rigid false deck for rider, putting some air space between dead torso weight and the board`s lower active surface. George Greenough uses the false deck concept in the tail of his sailboards to prevent his back foot from inhibiting the action of rear flex panel… George describes his flexible carbon saiboards as “a Velo (spoon) to stand on.”