This idea had started before Allan Gibbon’s Off the Grid thread, but it’s very much in the same vein (although not quite that far out there). A friend of mine wanted me to shape him a board he could just put in the trunk of his car after he finished surfing. The trunk space is 5ft max, so he designed a 5ft board. There’s an old thread out there where I asked for some design help with it, but we’ve finally got it designed the way we want it. Because this is purely an experiment and we have no clue if it will even work, we’re scrimping and saving everywhere we can. Scrap glass, minimal resin, EPS foam from a block, leftover basswood stringer, and… fins!
I think the only thing that will be proven to work on this board is the FU fin box. But that’s half the fun! I thought I would post some pictures of the project so far. All that’s finished at the moment are the side runners for the fins. I plan on foiling the center fin tomorrow. A big thanks to Chip for making it seem possible!
First step was to cut out the fins from the leftover basswood stringer. They’re 1/4" thick and the template is a copy from True Ames’ bonzer runners. These are the front fins.
Foil. I tried to do it all by hand at first because I was a little afraid of using my sander. That didn’t last long. Medium Flexpads are sweet! My foil is not, but that’s okay.
Glassed with 2 layers of 6 oz, scrap of course, and fin roving on the leading edges. I glassed them on a 1/8" sheet of lexan with a piece of wax paper on top. I studied Bert’s wood fin glassing thread.
Sanded. Took a while before I got the technique down.
Now for the center fin. Made with scrap glass (I’ve only glassed 12 boards and I have bags and bags of the stuff all over the shop!). 36 layers of 6 oz, which I read somewhere would get me the right thickness. These are actually too thick (3/8") and will need to be sanded down. Next time I’ll use 30 layers. Or squeegee out more resin. I used UV cure poly resin for these, mostly to get rid of the rest of the gallon. I want to say I used about 24 oz. I didn’t really measure, but didn’t top off the three 9oz cocktail cups I was using either. Used plenty of MEKP because the resin was opaque and it was around 50 degrees outside. With UV cure I was able to add a new color layer about every 25 minutes instead of hotcoating between colors. Plus I have no poly sanding resin. So when I finished the last layer of light blue, I laid down a sheet of wax paper to seal out the air. The colors are split up into sections of 6 layers, with the middle dark blue having 12 layers of glass.
After the first two colors.
Quick snap shot while adding the last section of light blue.
One big ugly slab.
Cutting out the fin. Template from True Ames, 6". Took me 4 hardware stores to find the right blade for my jigsaw. Ruined a different blade in the process though. I didn’t have a great way to clamp it down so I threw a scrap sheet of plywood onto some saw horses, clamped that down, then sprayed Super 77 onto the plywood and the back of the fin panel. Worked perfectly. I used a clamp too just as a safety precaution. Later I’ll post the picture of myself in all my “safety” gear. Mismatched gloves, hoodie, glassing mask… and an old scuba mask to keep myself from losing an eye to an errant piece of glass. Quite the sight to behold.
