That’s a 10!
PS. If Lamb doesn’t want it, ship it to me and I’ll get it around to folks.
Whoa, thanks for the compliments, guys!
Yeah, carbon over the fluted wings was a bit of a challenge, but not as bad as you might imagine. Glassing over them was actually tougher. I’ve used a couple of methods for doing carbon rails, a combo of the two would probably work best. First thing, even though it’s cheaper to buy full-width carbon cloth and cut it to width, it’s messy as hell and not worth the trouble. 4" graphite tape is the call. On regular rails (no flutes, e-wings, etc) I pre-stretch my cloth over the rail with a million little bits of tape to make sure it’s perfectly stretched and flat. I do one rail at a time. After getting it good and wetted out with a brush, I put saran-wrap all over it to get a nice shiny finish. For the flutes, a spritz of 77 spray adhesive gets it stuck down before the resin gets laid on.
Yeah, what he said. 
Resinhead and Shwuz are hard act to follow, impossible really, but here’s a sneak preview of my next veneer board. I won’t be able to finish before I leave to visit the in laws in Italy for a month, so this is all you get for now. I’m thinking of making this my logo and calling my boards “Wood Joints.” It’s a nod to my Japanese roots and also to my Southern Californian ones (the 70’s, man).
Greg
Thanks for keeping us informed on your latest R and D.
I am ready to put my balsa sheets away for a while and try some new stuff. I have had a few questions as the technique has evolved away from the high density perimeter rails.
Are you feeling the added flex has more benefit than the weighted perimeter rails? You had mentioned before how you liked to have the extra weight out at the rails for penetrating the wave face.
Is the center stringer mainly to maintain the rocker without a bed or is it integral to the structural integrity and flex properties? I ask mainly because of the stringers ability to tie the two skins together and possibly limit their ability to move independently.
Thanks again
cj
Hey cj, I thought I’d mention that the wood above is hickory and is really tough. I did a 2lb eps and nothing under the veneer on the bottom, 4 oz under on the deck. I haven’t lammed the outside yet and it seems so tough I’m thinking of just using 2 oz on the outside.
I always thought veneer was just aesthetic but it is definitely structural. Hickory had some past uses that seems to indicate it as a good wood in surfboards,
from wikipedia-
Hickory wood is extremely tough, yet flexible, and is valued for tool handles, bows, wheel spokes, carts, drumsticks, lacrosse stick handles, golf club shafts (sometimes still called hickory stick, even though made of steel or graphite), the bottom of skis, walking sticks and for punitive use as a switch (like hazel), and especially as a cane-like hickory stick in schools. Baseball bats were formerly made of hickory but are now more commonly made of ash.
Tough, yet flexible! Bows and skis.
Hey Greg, what do you think is the least amount of center stringer you can have in a 1.5 lb eps blank and still hold rocker in the bag without a table? Is just a glue line enough? 1/16" balsa? 1/32 basswood?
The 1/16th stringer is just to hold rocker in the bag. It is the minimum I think is pretty minimal at stiffening the finished board. Not balsa though … that’s not stiff enough.
On rocker beds … I have used them but the reason I’ve gone to stringers instead is that I’ve made too many boards with wayyyy too many shapes. When I think about how many rocker beds I’d need , I’d need a warehouse to keep them all. One for each model and size. I could make adjustables but those a bit of a pain as well. Stick a stringer in the things and I get to finish the rocker in the shaping room and it’s done. Nothing against rocker beds really … just not for the way I like to do things.
Yes I think we all need to be using wood used for meeting out punishment. Hickory and Cane (bamboo). Of the veneers I’ve used there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference between them in terms of structure. They all seem to be good. I’m sure there are some advantages though … cosmetics are going to be a bit more the call I think. The hickory looks nice. Can’t wait to see that laminated … bet it lights up really nice.
So 1.5 or 2lb EPS is not stiff enough to hold a rocker from the shaping room through bagging veneers on?
Re:Hickory
Plus Hickory is cheaper than Bamboo too (see below).
Cypress looks like another option to me based on where the plant grows. Personally I’ve always wondered about Guava since over here the kupuna used to make those “hickory stick” punishment whips out of guava branches cause they didn’t break no matter how hard and how many times they wacked you with it.
Jeff
CMP used thin Obeche veneer panels to act as springers in certain area of his skins(Usually down the middel or in the tail in the fin area. I think he was one of the few guys back then I’ve seen that used multidensity woods veneers in his skins for strength and stiffness. Kind of like Jim Richradson’s carbon fiber glassed XPS leafspring suspension cores for his surflights except just on the skin layer.
| HICKORY FLAT CUT |
FLAT CUT, CATHEDRAL, NARROW HEART, LIGHT COLOR, SAP ON EDGE
| Length: | 83"+ (Minimum) |
| Width: | 8"+ (Minimum) |
| Sqft per sheet: | 4.52 (Minimum) |
| Price per Sqft: | $1.00 |
Per Sheet Price: $4.52
Foam just isn’t dense enough without a stringer. We tried to figure another way, like rocker sticks to check it after bagging. But every way we tried ended up requiring to build something before building the board. Stringers work pretty nice are very easy to put in and shape.
Thanks Greg
1/16th stringers sound like the way to go for production then…
Once again thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.
shwuz,
that board is a knockout for sure! i remember when you first posted some carbon rails
a while back. those look so tech!
have you ever tried to cut the carbon as the resin is gelling… kinda like a cutlap… to
make the carbon taper at the nose and tail? … does that make sense?
Thanks Chrisp, yeah I actually do tape off and cutlap the carbon. It’s a huge pain to get a clean cut with the carbon since you can’t see the tape (everything is a huge pain with the CF!), but worth it.
**hey jarod **
** nice work love the fidle back.**
** yikes f###ken surfboards are startin to look like furniture haaaaa’’
**
Tape the lap with 2 inch tape. Laminate the rail and when it’s ready to trim, tape it again with the same 2 inch following the top of the first layer of tape. Now you know where the lap is.
Hey shwuz.
Ditto all the above posts, Simply beautiful…
I’m just starting a twinzer fish kite -board, that will have carbon tape rail band on, thanks to your inspiration.:))
My kite-boards are sub-skinned with 3mm. core-cell then the 1/40" bamboo skin is inset into the core-cell by routing a “step” following the outline the shape of the bamboo…
Although the carbon still is a cut lap, it does not need to be perfect as it actually sits below and inboard of the edge of the bamboo, because the route depth has allowed for both material thicknesses…
This is not as critical on the deck, as the rail laps even thing out easier…
1/35" routes or whatever it measures out to are not as hard as it sounds, and kind of fun to do…
I route the inset into the deck core-cell as well, as I don’t like the idea of feathering the veneer at the edges, as this causes it to splinter if sanded too thin…
Here’s a tip that replaces tape used to hold down veneer, rails, vac-bag materials and such:
Go to you’re local dollar store, and buy a 100’ roll of 6" wide saran wrap that comes rolled up on a cardboard handle.
You can initially tack the skins down with tape, then stretch this plastic around the board in a circular motion perpendicular to the stringer and from deck to bottom, picture a spider wrapping up a fly with webbing… Weird analogy…eh??
… As you stretch the saran wrap material it clamp the skins firmly in place with no shifting, you can now remove the tape “bits” and vac bac the skins,knowing they are tightly pressed bown to the core, and will not shift…
It has better clamping force than tape, and won’t stick to excess epoxy like tape does…
Cheers Kiterider…")
Hey Greg,
I’ve been using 1/4" pinstriping tape for the lap edge, just quicker/ easier, more accurate, flatter, tape line…
I thicken this tape line up with 1" to 2" as req’d…
I seal my 3mm. core-cell skins with a mixture of epoxy and a small amount of 1/32" milled glass fiber,(used to use milled carbon) then thickened it up with phenolic micro- balloons…
Unfortunately these balloons are brown in color, therefore requiring a paint job where exposed, but they are somewhat structurally superior to light weight micro balloons…
I just finished a 5’ 6" x 19" kite fish that came out at 5lb. 14oz before rail bottom paint…
I anticipate a finshed weight of 6.25 to 6.5 lbs. That’s a board with 1# eps core, 6mm. A500 core-cell bottom c/w sanded in single concave…
Top skin is 1/8" core-cell with bamboo deck patch… Rails are 5/8" A550 corecell… quad box inserts are 3/4" core-cell, footstrap inserts are 1/2" core cell… Deck glass is 3 layers of 3lb 3.3oz. glass, bottom is one 6oz, S glass with a sacrificial cap of 3#…All glass under core-cell was 2.4oz…
Pretty fricken bomber construction eh?? Yes… I’m Canadian. .lol
You can kite - jump this construction to 30ft.+, without worrying about failure upon landing,
Is it stiff?? Surprisingly , not as much as you’d think… Remember this it a kite board… I use a high flex modulas resin on all internal parts as well as Gorrilla type glues where applicable…
Only the outer resin/glass is very clear high performance epoxy ( MGS) that holds up well to impacts and has good UV properties and transparency…
I love reading posts on this group and applying all the sound surfboard construction ideas to kite-surfboards…Thanks to all !
Cheers Kiterider…')
The kiteboards I’ve made have to be built more like a sailboard. They take some serious abuse. 6# is a nice weight. Surfboards aren’t being jumped to 30 ft yet … when they do they’ll be built for it. Being thinner you also have more flex but flex in those isn’t quite as big an issue. Different parameters of performance. Like to have you check our stuff sometime. I think you’d like it…