I’m a 19 year old Surferl located in Munich. And thats why I learned surfing on a river, the so called “Eisbach” a standing Wave. I am a really poor student that destroyed 3 used Boards in his first 4 Months of surfing so I decided to browse the web and shape for myself. This forum was a great help, thanks to all who post here. I’ve only built Epoxy/XPS because the Boarddamage is really gigantic in a river with sone walls on the side.
I have some new projects to go and will upload some pics constantly when I move on with them and sometimes also ask a bit
I’m going to surf the Canary Islands for 3 weeks in april so I need to build my first oceanboards and some fins too. Input about some different sort of Fins i could build would be fine. Have no idea what fins work good in what conditions. I would call myself a good surfer, but I’m very bad at reading waves and doing the takeoff. I’m at the level of doing airs and 360’s on the river already, but I only surfed on the ocean in Portugal for one week.
Boards:
5’0 x 18 1/2’’ x 2 1/2’’ That will be my new one (river only)
5’10 x 20’’ x 2 3/4’’ For my girlfriend a beginnerboard (river only)
5’4 x 23’’ x 3’’ Mini Simmons
6’4 x 23’’ x 3’’ Midi Simmons also for the girl
Fins: Didn’t find the perfect technique now. I tried a bit with shaping a wooden one and glass it but the first all broke and my new ones are going well for some days on a friends board now so I’ll see. Perhaps I’m going to use the 36 layers method of chipfish.
Today my blocks of foam arrived so I’m very excited to start now
I’ll allways update my progress till April, but it will be slow, got a lot to learn for university.
Aloha parick, Welcome to Swaylocks and feel free to ask any questions you have about the art of surfboard building but we are not Dudes here so please forget that word when posting. The Dudes hang out at Surfers Mag website. Aloha,Kokua
Hi parick- I like those pics, im curious hows it like on a river wave! Can you traverse from one side to the other and back, or is it more like feeling like youre not getting anywhere? Either way if that was in my back yard id be on it too. And if you are kind of stuck in one spot on an unchanging face that would be great for practicing 360s, huh? Yea the guy chipfish i have read his fin threads and his fins appear all over this site, i pretty much wanna lay up a panel that way too, but i either have extra resin or extra cloth but not extra of both at the same time to try it yet… have fun
Good work! Nice boards. Tell me how you like the styrodur. I still have a big block of Dow’s styrofoam, but I’m not able to find these big blocks anymore. Which type of styrodur are you using (density, surface finish, product number)?
I’d love to see you surf in the ocean. Not being able to catch a wave, everybody thinks you’re a beginner. And then the first wave you have, holpa, 360
dpicton no you can traverse. You can easily generate speed and do small but fast turns.
Well I love the Styrodur. the great thing is you dont have to fix dings. My first board got 2 really big dings but i never had to fix them because the foam doesnt get filled with water and thats why the surrounding area doesnt start to delaminate.
I’m just a bit worried what happens if I’m surfing on the ocean and the board gets sun the whole day… But I’ll see
Today could start with the Outlines. Thats what it looks like if you only shape in your room without a big table I took the measurements out of my Akushaperfile and draw the outlines on paper. The one shown here will be the Wombat.
I didn’t find exact sizes for the Rocker, just one post here. Looks like I will go for 3 1/2" till 4’’ Nose Rocker and 1 1/2" Tail Rocker. I think that should be a good compromise as far as I have read now?
I lay up a 'spine' of 10 or more layers of fiberglass, then add the wood above the tab line, then foil and sandwich with more fiberglass. The spine is the full size of the fin template and will provide a halo of fiberglass around the wood after foiling. The tabs should be extensions of the spine and filled in with glass patches before the final sandwiching of the wood. For fin templates and dimensions, check Swaylocks or the internet. There are all kinds of diagrams out there.
With no stringers in your blanks you can add more fiberglass to the shell without too much weight penalty. Do wide overlaps and stagger them so you don't have a big thick edge where the laps end.
For your ocean board, I would suggest adding 1/2"-1" to your proposed nose and tail rocker dimensions. (5" nose and 2 -2 1/2" tail)
A standard thruster or 2+1 fin set up should work OK in small to medium conditions.
Surfing a standing wave looks like a blast. I've heard the surf can get juicy out on the Canaries?
Howzit parick, Thanks for that and I am sure the rest of the boys here will appreciate it also. Once again I welcome you to the Sways Brotherhood and enjoy what we have to offer you. Aloha,Kokua
Yes johnmellor the tabs broke. Sounds like a really good idea to decrease the wood and go for more layers i just need to buy a grinder to start trying. Doing all by hand is so exhausting.
i will install a thruster on the Wombat but with 4 center fin plugs to be more variable. I wanna try the 2-1 and singlefin too. I’m just scared if a big centerfin with 3 or 4 tabs wont break easily? Not the fin but the plugs, cause i only have the small round FCS plugs here.
Yes Canaries can get very nice swell too but i’m staying at a beach spot and at the moment I think I’m not going for a reef cause I’m not experienced enough and I’m fine with hip till chest high waves.
FCS recommends several layers of reinforcement on the deck and a channel that connects the resin from the bottom through to the deck. The channel doesn't have to be anything fancy... a screwdriver or icepick would allow you to dig a couple of channels through to the deck. The main idea is to establish contact with the deck so the plugs have some support.
Don't dig out too much foam and when you install your plugs, do multiple resin pours to avoid excess heat from the resin going off. I.E mix a little bit and fill the hole about 1/4 of the way. After cure, mix another batch, etc. Too much heat and you can start melting your foam away around the plugs.
I put glass patches inside the hole before setting the plugs in.
I'm pretty sure your XPS foam is dense enough that you won't have to deal with inserts around the plug installations.
For fin foiling, you might be able to find a simple sanding disc kit that attached to an electric drill. I've also used a "4 in 1" file/rasp tool - a very handy tool to have around. It has two flat and two convex surfaces with two different 'grits' - I will try and post a pic...
Today i could go on a little bit… university takes all of my time as the exams will soon be starting…
I was motivated cause my ordered stuff arrived :)7 litres of Epoxy and 25 m² fibreglass should be enough for the next boards. Job for the next evenings will be to understand how to do resin tint and swirl jobs.
Then I built a new hotwire cutter. I want the colour of this funky bootlace on my boards.
I’ve thrown away some old stuff in my “cellar factory” and built two new stands out of scrap wood. Just need some isolation to wrap over the wood.
will be continued with hotwiring the 2 riverboard blanks out of the blocks of xps in the next days…
By the way the wombat will be replaced by a simmons after reading some post and writing pms to some simmons shapers.
Hi parick,I cant wait to see the simmons you make.I’ve attached a pic of a hotwire I was using a few years ago.My current hotwire is identical in construction just bigger.It is cut from a solid piece of 3/4" thick plywood,and there is a guitar tuner on each end for tightening the wire.I’ve also removed the rollers,they were more trouble than they were worth.I’ve also built one for cutting a nice square edge on my outlines.
in the picture the tailrocker seems a bit to straight… did you hotwire the top first?? the xps bends while hotwiring…(had the same problem while doing my first xps board)… maybe you should reshape a bit of the tailrocker… when gluing the sheets together “bauschaum” works really well!!! shapes like xps and you don’t need to refill the holes…
your first shape made me start shaping, because that was the first documented shaping process I found online Still like to watch your blog sometimes.
I just stood up and measured again but it’s still 1 1/2 Tail rocker. I think it’s the cameras fault and just a bad picture. I’ll post a better one when the parts are glued together and I cut out the outlines.
I’ve got a home made hot wire jig that works very well, but I want to get out of that jury-rigged , home made, way of life and get a more finely tuned system…
I figure, if I’m willing to spend $200 on 3 gallons of epoxy resin, $200 on a proper hotwire bow doesn’t seem like that bad of a deal…
In the last days I started the new riverboard for me. I glued some pieces of old scrap foam together cause I didn’t want to throw them away and it’s just another prototype of which Im not sure if it’ll work good.
I got 3 “problems”:
It’s very cold here, 5° Celsius and for my Epoxy 18°-23° are recommended, but I gave it a try, if only the hardening time will be longer I don’t care. And the weather forecast says it won’t get warmer for the next weeks. It’s 24 hours after glassing now, not that hard that it would be on with the right temperature, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.
I made my first resin tint. I bought opaque powder but it didn’t disperse. I had many small “nuggets” that didn’t disappear after 5 minutes of agitating. Someone knows where this comes from?
And my biggest problem was the amount of extra resin i had to use cause of the color… I used 350g instead of the 250g I normally use but even this was too less and I ran out of resin as i wrapped the rails… I felt so stupid…
I wanted a yellow/red swirl, but running out of resin made me scratching all of it down to the rails and this is what it looks like. The white things on the carbon patch are definitely no bubbles, but look very strange. I’m not that happy with it but still learned something.
Sir- for a typical performance shortboard I shoot more for 2" tail rocker 4" , or 4.5" or so nose rocker…
The 1 ish tail rocker- 3" ish nose rocker combo is more for fish type boards for me…hope this helps?
Don’t worry too much about the ocean size board changing much on you-unless the surfs up! In that case you want a 6’4" 6’10" long shortboard in the 19"-19 1/4" and even 21" wide range - with noses and tails to fit in with the curves…
Also, flat to vee in tail is common, single concave to vee n tail, low rails(hard or soft) are good to go! As for domed decks etc… I’m not crazy about them. I prefer the flatter decks?
