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.