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Postby erzats » Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:07 am

I just realized that pics and stories of board building were the purpose of this thread:

I wanted a pintail shortboard (ish). My roommate at the time had an old Rick (shaped with Brewer for a while) 8' pintail semi-gun. Wide point way forward, hard rails on the back third of the board. Overall I had some really fun waves on the board bt it was coming to pieces. So, I sought out something similar for my first shape.

I shaped mine as a copy of a bing lotus:

Image

But, only having seen them on the web, I tried to come up with measurements using illustrator, the above photo, and some playing around. (yes, I probably went about this 180 degrees opposite what many would do. I'm left brained what can I say).

I took the scale measurements from illustrator, and put them on brown paper every foot along the board's length. I then used a piece of doweling to connect the dots. The problem with wood is that it flexes differently depending on how the grain is aligned. So, I wound up with some flat spots in the template that you can see in the finished board. Whatever.

I settled on something like 7'2" x 22 1/2" with 18" in the nose and 16" in the tail or some such. Thickness of 2 7/8". It's got float! Went with 2x 6oz deck and 1x 6 ox bottom with a fin patch. Rails were meant to be egg up front and down in the back ~1/5 of the board to really hard at the tail. I came up with pinched everywhere with down in the back 1/6th and not much in the way of hard rails anywhere. Oh well.

I went with a standard PU blank in a fish-like rocker and template.

One day I just went at it. Wilko was hanging around, and gave me pointers when I needed them but also (amazingly) knew when to shut up.

I sawed and shaved and scrubbed.

For the glassing, I decided to go with epoxy after reading a lot about it on Swaylocks. Chose bright yellow. Wilko showed up right as I mixed my first batch and showed me some tricks and just stood by and gave encouragement as I went about it. The epoxy did exactly what it was supposed to do and, aside form the odd moth it came out pretty good.

Cut lapped, glassed more, trimmed, glossed then sanded. Went with 400 grit on the bottom and 200 grit finish on the deck. Couldn't be bothered to take it to mirror anywhere.

Here's the result:

Image

Image

Image

A little weird. Fin's a bit too far back, box is kinda crooked, but, I've had some really fun waves on it. When she goes, she really goes. One fall I'll bike it down the coast.

Not too many stories, but there's my process.

Hope it's coming along.
Last edited by erzats on Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby speelyei » Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:33 am

excellent!

man, i love funky boards.
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Postby Doc » Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:12 pm

Looks like an ear of corn.

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Postby erzats » Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:22 pm

doc wrote:Looks like an ear of corn.

doc


surfs more like a head of broccoli though. Must have cross pollinated...
Last edited by erzats on Tue Jun 30, 2009 6:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby speelyei » Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:32 pm

look at those points... you could spear somebody. or yourself.
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Postby Ceedog » Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:03 pm

Cool board Erzats! Like the color. I was wondering if color would hide things better since mine will have 'character' in certain areas. What was the hardest part for you? So far, for me, it's been trying to not ding the blank and the rails. Glassing starts tomorrow.
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Postby erzats » Wed Jul 01, 2009 2:12 am

Read up on the colors since resin tints will give you splotchy results unless you are perfect with wetting out the glass with resin. Certain colors make this more obvious than others. Yellow is the easiest. Maybe blue is hardest?

As far as the hardest thing. I can answer two ways. The worst thing is probably the rails but while shaping and even before glassing I liked them. So, technically, that was the hardest part of the board as it came out "wrong". The hardest thing while doing was glassing. I think the panic of knowing you have 1/2 gallon of resin that will kick in a few minutes is what makes it hard. Take your time and don't be afraid of REALLY wetting out the laps. Good glassers seem to know how to dump tons of resin and then squeege it over the glass and back into the bucket rather than the floor. Oh, and sanding sucks. Get a variable speed sander/polisher. I did it by hand. Mainly stopped sanding at 400 because I couldn't stand the boredom anymore.

But really, overall, I don't think there was any moment when I wasn't having a good time.
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Postby erzats » Wed Jul 01, 2009 2:16 am

I guess the bottom line is that be sure you are ready to glass when you choose to. But, somehow balance that with the tendency to want to "scrub" the board until the end of time until it's 1 1/8" thick and 14 " wide. I learned from my sister TippyToes' surf guru that you should really take the shaped blank out of the racks and feel what it's like under your arms with rail in hand. Somehow that seems to help.
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Postby SlimVest » Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:38 am

Being short on tools of the hand variety, I've decide to go high tech. I'm going to design a board, fish most likely, in the 3D modeling program i use at work. Was intending to send it up north to have it "shaped" by the machine at Ewaliko's shop and then I'll do the clean up shaping. Am I lame? I feel a little guilty not trying it all by hand first, but shitt, you work with what you got. I'm using a old 70s board design guide the foulweather sent me a while back. It's got nice cross-sections for a Lis that I'm hoping to modify slightly in an attempt to make the board a bit more friendly. Don't intend to glass it myself either. We'll see what happens.
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Postby Nash » Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:41 am

SlimVest wrote:Being short on tools of the hand variety, I've decide to go high tech. I'm going to design a board, fish most likely, in the 3D modeling program i use at work.


Nerd alert.
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Postby pra_ggresion » Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:59 am

Just out of curiosity, does that program use a natural/clamped spline method for curve fitting? Probably has elliptical, but what if you want a hyperbolic fit?
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Postby SlimVest » Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:51 am

No F'ing clue.

I'm going to use Solidworks and export a 3D dxf file. That's the file type the shaping machine program wants. Or a gcode file works too.
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Postby Gazsurf » Wed Jul 01, 2009 12:59 pm

SlimVest wrote:No F'ing clue.

I'm going to use Solidworks and export a 3D dxf file. That's the file type the shaping machine program wants. Or a gcode file works too.


Would a rasp-file work? Or the adze-file? I have some in the basement if you need 'em.
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Postby Ceedog » Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:46 pm

That's the type of file I'll be dealing with. Glassed the bottom today and understand why it is important to just dump and squeegee. I had one rail left when the pail started getting hot. The last foot or so ended up lumping up but everything seemed to be wrapped ok, but I'm afraid to go back into the garage.
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Postby pra_ggresion » Thu Jul 02, 2009 10:49 am

SlimVest wrote:No F'ing clue.

I'm going to use Solidworks and export a 3D dxf file. That's the file type the shaping machine program wants. Or a gcode file works too.


Make sure you copy the dxf for more than one release year. You never know which one will be compatible.
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