More pictures of the quad fish

Here are some more pictures. I've noticed that surfboard photos taken up close, such as the one with me standing, or the picture of the fin area, tend to distort the true shape. The last two pictures here, taken from far above the board, give a good impression of the actual outline and shape.




I tried the fish once more, this time at a mellower, walled-up wave with room to turn. The board seems to turn well, and holds well in the face of the waves. I had never tried a quad before, and was pleaseantly surprised. Overall I love this board.

So now I am glad I skipped a bunch of steps in the construction that I was considering and don't seem to have affected performance negatively at all; I didn't make concaves, skipped sanding the hotcoat, skipped the glosscoat, didn't make a resin-dam to create a really sharp rail edge in the tail.

What about drawbacks?

The board feels a little heavy on land because the hotcoat is so thick and I didn't sand it. But that doesn't seem to matter in the water. In the water, maybe the nose area of the board is on the big side. That's part of the fish concept, but it might feel better with less volume. I'll have to surf the board more to make up my mind.

The main problem with the fish might be the thickness of the deck lamination (about 8-9 ounces of glass). During the second test session the board unfortunately ended up with a crack in the deck. I've asked for some advice on Swaylocks.com about that. Probably I didn't glass the deck thick enough, considering the light foam I used. So there's a chance I will need to add another glass layer to ensure the board will last a long time.

It may be a while until the next update, as the surf is really great this time of year, and mostly too big for this board anyway. So I'll take my time fixing it, and will instead surf a lot and start planning my next board project. That project will involve some cool color experimentation for sure :)

It's been a long but fun process to build my own board. After many late nights I'm really glad it's done. At the same time, I'm also stoked to build many more in the future!

Board #1 is done!

Finally! Last week I finished the board! I hotcoated the bottom, sanded open the fin boxes, and added a bit more resin on around the boxes.



I finally took the board out at Ocean Beach on Saturday. In the morning the waves were a few feet overhead and rough, so I surfed a different board, but in the afternoon the waves softened and I gave the homemade fish a try. And to my big surprise - it surfed really well. I loved it!!! At first I didn't dare to duckdive it hard, and was affraid it would break any moment. But eventually I relaxed, made it out through the shorebreak. I only surfed 3 waves on it that day, but may main impression was that it was very fast, faster than the board I copied the template from! I think that may be because my copy ended up slighly bigger, since I shaped the foam to be the same size as laminated original, so that the lamination added extra volume. It seems that the extra volume works well for me. Also my bottom is more flat, while the original is double concave. Somehow it all adds up to a faster board, or at least that's how it feels. Amazing.

Board 1: Leashplug & Hotcoat

I just sanded and hotcoated the top of the board, the resin's still dripping away in the backyard. To prep the surface I sanded with #36 in a few places, then #60, #100 everywhere. At the last #100 pass I sanded away the edge of the round logo.. Oops! Tried to fix the worst with a zig pen. Then wiped off the board with denatured alcohol, taped the rails, mixed 15 ounces of resin (just enough), poured it on and spread with a brush. Can't wait to see the dry result tomorrow morning!


Last week I put in a leashplug, and patched the missing cloth in the butcrack of the fish. I decided to put the leashplug in the stringer. Used a holesaw to get a smooth hole through the fiberglass, followed by router to get out the stringer underneath. Set the plug with resin thickened with bamboo dust. The dust results in a neat redish color, but also tons of airbubbles, so I'm not sure I would use it again.

board 1: Logos

I designed two logos in Powerpoint, printed them onto rice paper, wet the paper with epoxy and laminated a piece of 4 ounces fiberglass on top. Used HP's faderesistant Vivera ink and RR BLUE epoxy w/ UV absorber, to protect the design from the sun. Printed color's came out bright and strong, and didn't run. Some small air bubbles trapped under the round logo, I think too late to fix now.

I bought the rice paper as a roll at Michael's - had to ask three different clerks, as the first two denied they had rice paper. The third clerk who came to my rescue turned out to be a graphic designer who was interested in painting surfboards!

Mixed up 1 1/2 ounces of resin, used about half. Used fast hardener this time, still plenty of time to work with but dry and hard to the touch an hour later.

board 1: Tail Patch

I sanded down the resin and glass used to glue in the fin boxes, and laminated a tail patch over the bottom end of the board as shown in the picture. The green strips you see are just tape used to cover the box opening. This will come off when I sand open the boxes later on.

I used that V shape patch so as not to provide a line where the board is likely to break, but after posting a picture on swaylocks.com someone commented that there was still too much of a line. Hm...

The stretch lamination in combination with the future fins was very tricky, as the stretching of the cloth would produce a cloth tent over the protruding lips of the fin boxes. I had to use a lot of resin and massage the cloth around the boxes to make it stick down, and to get out all the air bubbles under the cloth. The result is ok - I got all the bubbles out - but not ideal, as some tenting remains. I may end up sanding into the cloth when opening up the boxes, making the fin area weak. So I'm considering another layer of reinforcement glass ("football patches") to be on the safe side.

Already forgot how much resin I used for this, 2 ounces?

board 1: Fin boxes are in

I finished routing out the other slots for the fin boxes, and glued in the boxes. I roughed up the boxes with sandpaper, and wrapped a saturated sheet of 4-ounce fiberglass around each, then filled up the slots halfways with epoxy and pressed the boxes into place.

This was the trickiest part of the project, because the boxes go through the lapline into the rail, so that I had to route through several glass layers. Also the future fin boxes are really meant to go into the board before lamination. But it wasn't all bad: Having the lamination in place helped protect the board while I was messing around with the boxes.



Here you see what the tail area looks like now. The boxes are close to done, a bit more cleanup with sandpaper is needed.

Next I'll probably laminate a "butterfly" patch of bamboo glass over the whole tail area of the board, as Andrei suggested. I may even put smaller fin patches of 4-ounce fiberglass on top of that - I'm paranoid about the fins breaking out of the board on the first wave!

I'm also considering extending the patch over the whole bottom, which would make the board much more ding resistant, but also heavier. We'll see.

board 1: It's a quad fish!

I decided on quad fins, using future fin boxes.

I agonized over fin placement, cant, and toe-in (the last two are the tilt and rotation of the fins) for a while. Finally I took measurements from various posts on Swaylocks.com.

The front pair will have 1/4" toe-in, the back pair no toe-in. The future fins have cant in the fin, as opposed to in the box, so you only need to worry about getting the box horizontal. The front pair of fins is located as follows: trailing edge of each fin is 1,5" from the rail, 12" from the tip of the fish tail. The back pair has trailing edge 2" from the rail and 6.5" from the tips of the fish tail.

These specifications also agree well with the twin keels on the original blue fish I'm copying. The two fins on each side of the quad basically replace one of the keels.

Today I marked the location of the boxes, and the areas to route out, and routed out one of the fin holes using the dremmel tool with a router attachment. It was slow, but not too difficult. The fin sits in there snuggly.

board 1: Second Deck Layer II

Aloha. André is officially the first commentator of this blog! I'm stoked that someone is actually reading what I write here!

Below are some pictures of the board after that 2nd deck layer dried. The board looks more refined and finished now. It's hard to get a good perspective picture when the board is lying flat - the two middle pictures don't accurately show the real shape. The epoxy is hard to the touch but still malleable, even now, 18 hours after glassing. When it's fully hardened I'll flip the board on it's side in the rack, and take proper glamor shots.

Overall I'm really relieved and pleasantly surprised with how the lamination came out. There are some minor problems...

...there are small air bubbles along the the left pin-line (but not the right one for some reason.) These are probably due to the problems I had when I forgot to brush-coat this area with epoxy as part of the first deck layer lamination. Since these bubbles are small and now covered by two thick layers of glass, I'm tempted to just leave them alone.

...also I again had some problems with the center of the fish tail. This area is concave and hence the stretch glassing pulls the cloth off the board. I'll put a separate patch there before the hot coat. I learned today that you can stretchglass across concave areas by covering those areas with a water- or sand-filled ziplock bag. That'll force the cloth into the convave area, but apparently the zip log bag won't bond with the epoxy. I'll try that on the next board.

Well, well, well: The end is in sight! The remaining tasks are: sanding, fins, leashplug, and hotcoat.

I have to decide on the fins now - either quad boxes or wooden twin keel glass-ons. The quad boxes would be a departure from the design I'm copying, but they'd make the board more travel friendly. If I go for keels, then I'd also have to build or order them. I'm leaning toward quad boxes.

board 1: Second Deck Layer

It's 1:30 am, and I'm dead tired after another midnight glassing session. Also it was my turn to get up early with Peter today, so it's been a long day.

Anyway, I just finished the 2nd layer of the deck lamination, and that was satisfying. This layer of glass goes over the whole deck and wraps around the rails, and thus hides the lap lines on the deck from the previous lamination layer. Most likely this is the last layer of the bamboo glass! Finally! There is a small chance I'll add a second bottom layer, as I'm a bit concerned about the fins breaking out of the board the very first time I ride it. That would be a major bummer, after all this work...

It took me 2 hours and 9 ounces of resin to saturate the lap lines and rails, then I mixed up another 18 ounces of resin and spent an hour glassing the deck. That was a bit more resin than really needed, and less than I spent on the first deck layer (9+21). That makes sense - the foam probably soaked up some of the resin when I did the first layer.

Here are some pictures from the preparation stages for now, more tomorrow when I can see the final result in daylight.

Sanding lap lines.


Stretching glass before lamination.


Mad Scientist?

board 1: First Deck Layer II

Here are some pictures taken the next day, after the deck lamination dried.

There is a small dent in one place, which I'll fill in before the next layer.


The fish tail was tricky, and I had to improvise a bit. I ended up cutting the cloth, leaving a small part of the foam uncovered for now. If you click on the closeup picture of the tail, you can get a good closeup view of what the bamboo cloth looks like after lamination. You can see that it looks all fuzzy, and it may almost seem like there are patches with too little resin to fully saturate the cloth. But those are just a lot of little bamboo fibers sticking up above the lamination. It's supposed to be like that, and you just have to sand the last layer before hotcoating.

The brown Elmer's glue discoloration near the nose (from gluing two foam pieces together when building the blank) turned into a rust-colored halo once I glassed over it. The Gorilla glue that I used to glue in the stringer isn't visible at all, so if I ever make my own blank again, it's Gorilla glue all the way.

board 1: First Deck Layer

I spent last night glassing the deck. It took about 2 1/2 hours from when I mixed the first batch of resin until I was done and had cleaned up. I made the mistake of not saturating the cloth near the pinline and double-sided tape with a brush (as recommended in the Green Light video) first. As a result, there were a lot of air bubbles in that area when I was done glassing the deck, and I it took me a long time to fix that. I had to to mix up additional resin and squeeze out these air pockets one by one. Now I understand why they (Greenlight) recommend starting with the brushwork... I should have listened!

But the deck came out fine in the end. I spent about 18 ounces of resin on the deck, and another 1 1/2 to patch up the air bubbles. I probably could have used less resin by using the sequegee more. Oh well, I decided to focus on getting the bubbles out instead.

The pictures show the board at various stage: the double sided tape applied near the edge of the deck lamination, the glass stretched over the tape, and finally the board immediately after glassing, with the resin still wet.

board 1: Glassing Begins

The 3-day weekend (Labor Day ) allowed me to finally start glassing board zero. That's because it gave me enough time to a) clean up the backyard to make wifey happy on Saturday b) bring a bunch of old crap to the salvation army on Sunday, making wifey even happier, and c) wifey was so happy that I could spend half of Labor Day glassing to my heart's desire.

The pictures show the board after I glassed the rails and bottom of the board. I used Bamboo glass from Greenlight Surf Supply with Resin Research Epoxy. I used the "stretch glassing" technique developed by greenlight, where you stretch the glass over double sided tape.

board 1: Shaping

So I didn't fully manage to ignore the voice in my head: I did the shaping the hard way. I built a blank from scratch, and then shaped that. It all happened before this blog was born, but I documented it well here.

Board Zero

I decided that the first board I would build would be a copy of a 6.1" Fineline twin keel fish in my quiver. I would pick the safest materials and production methods whenever there was a choice. It's the blue board in the photos blow.





Initially I was tempted to build the board of my dreams, i.e. build a "perfect board" both in terms of shape and looks. Complicated shape, resin swirls, fabric inlays, you name it.

Then I realized that for my first board I should keep it simple. One principle in science is to never change too many variables at the same time. I decided this approach would be wise here as well, and this is what led me to copy an existing board. This way I would learn how my choice of material and production method would affect the board, how my homemade board compared with one of similar shape made by an experienced shaper.

During the last weeks, I often heard a little voice that tempted me to deviate from my plan. One sentence I heard many times was: "Why not add some yellow resin tint? It's easy, and the board will look amazing!". Well the answer is that even a little resin tint can affect the curing of the resin. If I add the tint and the board breaks the first time I try it, then how do I know if it's the resin or something I else I did that was the problem?

In the end I was mostly able to resist the little voice, and stick with trying to replicate a proven shape, using a well-known construction technique. I told myself I could then experiment with shape, color, and other materials by changing one at a time in my subsequent board. (So I'll have to build many!)

Learning the Craft

How do you learn to shape and glass a surf board?

I took the overly academic approach and did a ton of reading before starting. That lead me to almost bail on the whole project: For instance, I read on Swaylocks.com about a nasty incident of acute dermatitis from epoxy and fiberglass exposure... The warning labels for the chemicals used are several pages long... Carcinogenic ingredients in resins... Catalyst can cause blindness... Respirator required... The list goes on and on. In the end, what swayed me was the safety list in the book "Essential Surfing" by Gorge Obelian. The last item on the list, item 12, reads in capital letters: "Don't let all these safety requirements scare you out of working with fiberglass materials and resins. The experience can be rewarding if you are careful."

So I told myself to go ahead.

From Dream to Reality

I've been addicted to surfing for a while now. I think most long time surfers eventually dream of building their own board. So did I. One day I decided the time had come, I would take my obsession with surfing to the next level. I started to build my first board. I'm starting this blog as I'm about halfway done.

It would get too tedious to recount all that has happened up to now, both with surfing and with building the first board. My approach in this blog will be to just give you a glimpse of what is going on every now and then, as well as my time allows. I will also use this blog to record details about surfing and board shaping that I want to keep track of, things like the effect of wind and swell on a certain surf spot, and mistakes that I do make when building boards. That way I can use these pages as a reference in the future.

But most of all I hope you'll enjoy reading this. Don't hesitate to post comments!