Surfboards Love Color

I laminated some test-panels with tinted epoxy. I mixed up 1 1/2 ounces of epoxy, divided it into five smaller batches, and added pigment to each batch. The colors (from left to right) are: Burnt Sienna, Sienna, Yellow Ocre, Venitian Red, Ultramarine Blue.

I then laminated two test-panels that show the colors in the same order. Both panels have two layers of 6 oz s-glass. The first panel was EPS packaging foam.


The second test panel is polyiso insulation foam, sanded smooth to 100 grit.

The EPS test panel is clouded and muddy. That's just because I didn't clean my squeeque between each pass over the panel. For the polyiso panel, which I did second, I improved my technique, and it looks a lot cleaner - try clicking on the pictures to see a closeup. Good thing I practiced on some panels, before tinting a whole baord!

Note that in the blue and red areas, the small irregularities in the EPS foam surface are visible as dark specks. The sanded polyiso panel on the right looks much smoother. I guess this is why these colors are considered hard for resin tints. Yellow seems to show the imperfections in the foam much less. It makes sense that it's the color usually recommended for a first tint job.

I also tried swirling the colors together a bit. That mostly resulted in a brownish mess, with expeption of the blue, which I had poured first.



So I'll stay away from swirls for now... The colors on the polyiso panel came out much brighter and nicer than I had hoped for, I'm very happy with them. I chose these particular colors because they contain non-toxic pigments. I plan to do one more test where I mix yellow+blue to get green, and yellow+red to get orange. That's because almost all green and orange pigments you can buy off the shelf are toxic.

P.S: I stole the title for this post from the following wegpage: http://surfboardlove.blogspot.com/ check it out for some amazing colorwork!

Continuing Education: Blanks and Planer

This will be a fun summer! I just bought my very first set of surfboard blanks, which I hope to turn into finished boards in the next months. I hope it'll be a lot less work than my insulation-foam-fish project... These blanks are all from Surfblanks America, from left to right: 6'8 shortboard blank, 7'8 shortboard/gun blank, and 6'8 fish blank. I hope to turn these into a thick and wide shortboard for smaller days, a solid gun for big Ocean Beach, and... the fish blank will be used for something experimental. Maybe a hull. I also want to experiment with color this time, I can't wait!!!

The blank distributor was a real friendly guy. He showed me his shop, including his new shaping room and computerized shaping machine. He strongly encouraged me to buy a planer, to save myself a lot of work with the shaping. I had always thought I would need to fork out $500+ for a refurbished Clark Planer, but after a bit of research on Swaylocks.com, I found that cheaper alternatives can work well. Also there are simple ways to connect a shop vac to the exhaust of the planer, to avoid all the foam dust. Which is good for me - the neighbour already complained when I hand shaped the first board. So I went out and bought a planer and shop vac today, very reasonably priced.

Just thinking about the planer makes me smile! It feel like I came to a fork in the road and made a decision that will influence my future in a significant and good way. My education as a backyard shaper is beginning.

p.S: I've had the insulation-foam-fish out twice since the repair, and so far it has held up, no more cracking in the deck.

Board #1 is done - again!

I finally had time to fix the crack in the bamboo glass on the deck of board #1. First I consulted with the experts on swaylocks.com, which had different opinions about what could have gone wrong: one felt that polyiso foam was generally unsuitable for surfboards and that I should just trash the board (unthinkable after having put this much work into it!), another thought the deck lamination was too light, and another wrote that bamboo glass can be weak unless it is stretched just the right amount - stretch too little and the lam will be brittle - stretch too much and there'll be too little fiber. In the end I decided to route out a layer of foam around the crack, glued in a block of fresh foam with Gorilla Glue, sanded it level, and laminated over with two patches of bamboo glass.

At this point the ding was fixed, but the glue had left some nasty brown rings in the foam. It occurred to me that this was an excellent chance to add another logo to the board. You can see the result in the picture. Again I printed it on rice paper, and covered it with a 4-ounce e-glass patch.


Then, to make the board bullet-proof and hopefully avoid further cracks in the deck, I laminated a thick (2 layers of 6-ounce S-glass) patch over 2/3rd of the deck. If you click on the photo an view the closeup then you can see a reflection where the patch ends. I forget how much resin this took.

Then I faired out the patch and sanded the whole deck with #36, #60, and #100 grit sandpaper, then hotcoated the deck again (12 ounces of resin). This time I used a real wide brush which made the hotcoating real quick and easy. I few little things went wrong: Unfortunately I didn't have enough fast epoxy hardener left, so I had to use a mix of slow and hard, and it took many hours to cure the hotcoat - way too long. By that time plenty of dust had attached to the surface. I washed off the deck the next day - but the epoxy must have still been slightly tacky - after washing and drying the shine in the hoatcoat was gone. O well, I can do better on the next board... after waxing it won't really make a difference.

The board is a lot heavier now, but feels real solid. Like a tank.

So at this point the board is ready to ride again. The above happened two weeks ago, and the board has been curing away in the basement since then, while I've been travelling for work. I'm writing this from my hotel room, the day before flying back home. I can't wait to try the board real soon!