#001, Part 3

After much research, preparation, and procrastination, I finally dove into glassing my #001. I spent the greater part of last night squeegeeing, tucking, cutting, grinding, and generally stumbling my way through my first lamination. I learned a few things along the way...

1) Don't forget your notes at home. This led to the first big decision of the night, do I call it a night and retreat home to get my notes and begin another day? Or, do I decide to wing it and (as Obi-Wan would say)..."Trust your feelings". Well, that might work for Luke, but not for me. As a compromise, I called up my girlfriend who dictated my notes from my notebook over the phone, as I sat on the floor scrawling them down onto some cardboard.


Course, this genius idea led to lesson number two...

2) Never depend on notes written down on cardboard thats laying on the ground which is being used to catch drips from your glass job. In no time, my notes were under a gooey puddles of resin. Nice.


3) Keep that respirator on!!! I damn near just about passed out when I removed it to talk to someone on the phone. Some ventilation and air circulation might help here...have to remember to bring that fan next time.

4) Cured lam resin on floor, sticky. Cured lam resin on floor with uncured resin on top...not sticky. In fact, its as slippery as ice. I nearly ate it a few times with full bucket of resin in hand. Wheeee!!!

5) Don't just stand back like an idiot admiring your work while resin is hardening on your tools. Clean tools = GOOD, crusty tools = BAD.

All in all, I think the night went ok. I learned a lot, and alleviated some anxiety over the difficulty of the whole operation. Though, I'm not out of the woods yet...I still have the hotcoat and glassing-on of fins, and sanding. Below are some more random pics...sorry, I don't have "action" shots, it was just me, myself, and I.

Watching resin cure, about as fun as...um, watching resin cure.


Pulling the glass... Ooooh, aaaah!


Cutting the laps. Notice the shaping stands bare-naked...


Here I've already poured and squeegeed the deck, tucked the rails, and am cleaning up the bottom of drips and strings and whatnot. Notice the shaping stands are now covered w/ garbage bags. Something I realized would be a good idea AFTER I'd started pouring resin. Good thing I'd just bought a new box of trash bags and had them handy.


Mood shot of the double concave...


The view from below...


Cleaning up the laps. At first, I used a little electronic hand sander that I happened to have, but the dark sandpaper ended up leaving marks on the lams. So, I switched to white 80 grit wrapped around a piece of wood.


Front and back views of the top lam...


Are the lams supposed to show through this much? Will it blend/disappear when I hotcoat and sand? Hmm...


Closeup of the signature, dims, and little good luck jade stone from Chinatown embedded/laminated into foam. The dims are pretty small, but then again, I'm only 5'5"/135lbs...so it should be ok.


Stay tuned for hotcoating and glass-on fins...

kc

Zippidy Doo Dah

Since I've slowly been running out of space in my little shaping cave, I decided to make some board racks to move some of the mess up onto the walls. Here's the first one...built from scrap 2x4 and some 3/4" dowels. I have doubts as to its strength and ability to hold heavier longboards, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. "Eeeeh, suuuure its strong enough."...famous last words hehe.


BTW, here are some pics of a funboard for a guy at work. Its a bit thick here 'n there (especially in the nose), but since the guy is a total beginner I figure a little extra volume won't hurt. Its 8' x 22" x 2 7/8" or so.




In other news, I'm going to try glassing all four boards in the next week or so. As such, I spent the other night putting together glassing stands. Pretty simple really, just some metal posts clamped to my shaping stands, and some 1x4's screwed on top.Nothing fancy, perhaps a bit flimsy even. "Eeeeh, suuure its strong enough." ;)




Next post, glassing pics...

kc

Thanks Marlin!

Nothing like getting bamboo fins in the mail to make your day. Here are some shots of the bamboo Speed Dialers, Twin Keels, and thruster glassons that I ordered from Marlin at 101 Fin Co. They're super light, and smooth. Great craftsmanship. Truly works of art. The glassons will go on my #001 this week when I glass it. I hope I don't f*** up the install!

Top row: Pavel Speed Dialer quads
Bottom row: Twin Keels


Thruster glassons...


Check the weave...


Do yourself a favor and order some fins from Marlin. He's very cool and you'll be supporting a true craftsman/artist.

kc

Works in Progress

Even though there haven't been any updates in some time, it doesn't mean I have been slacking off. I'm currently working on three boards, and my friend is also working on one. The two big ones are twin 8' funboards, the shortboard is my "practice" blank turned #001, and the fish shape is my friend's 6'0" Mandala clone.

I hope to have these finished by next week. Thereafter I'll set up for glassing. Gulp!


Here's my new planer. The depth adjustment knob on this one is much easier/smoother to turn than the other one (which was stolen). Now I can actually make depth changes during my cuts, something I was unable to do with the previous planer. In fact, this ability has helped my planing tremendously! Guess having the "bad" planer stolen was a blessing in disguise :)


I dunno what you call these things, they're like giant spherical snowflakes that float around in the spring/summer. One of them landed on this blank while I was working on it the other day. I heard they're supposed to bring good luck...


...unfortunately it didn't help when shortly thereafter I dug my fingernail into the blank while surforming....


D'oh!

kc

Spinning

Since the temperature is 1000 degrees outside, and working in my garage-turned-shaping room would be like shaping in a sauna, I decided instead to soak up the A/C and try making a spin template for an 8'0" funboard a few people have been requesting. Here's how it went:

First, I cut out my taped-together outline that I created and printed from the AkuShaper program...




Then, I traced half of the outline onto cardboard, then spun it around and put nose to tail and drew other side of outline opposite the first outline (does that make sense?)...


Cut out the resulting shape, and this is what you get...


So here's the big question...which side is the nose and which is the tail??? Pretty close actually. Hmm, I wonder if I could make a "spin" board with finboxes/leash plugs on both ends that could be used forwards and backwards

kc

Lazy Summer Daze

The summer heat is making movements difficult...let alone trying to shape in a garage when its 95 degrees and humid. Not to mention, weekend before last, my planer was stolen from my shaping room! My landlady offered to pay for a new planer, pretty generous of her. I've put up a partition door and wall to secure the shaping area...should keep those pesky burglers out! Anyways, my new planer just arrived in the mail so I'll get back to shaping again this week. Updates and pics to come soon.

In the meantime, check out these videos. I'm not trying to endorse Proctor in any way, but I thought these clips captured the essence of summertime fish surfing pretty well...

Fish Frenzy 1
Fish Frenzy 2

God bless air conditioning!

kc

Fried Fish & Chips

If you have any interest in custom surfboards and love looking at board porn, then do yourself a favor and check out the pics from the recent European Fish Fry held in Devon, UK. Its nice to see the faces behind the names...

Mr. Richie Pavel (what the hell?)...


Mr. Chris Christenson, Pavel, and M. Caro ("you da man, no, YOU da man...hey anyone wanna order food?")...


Mr. Manuel Caro and friends (Uhh excuse me, Mr. Caro, where's my board!?!?) ...


Of course, there were some cool (or 'sick' as the groms say) new designs...






...along with some innovative concepts. This one has a power assist turbine engine that provides a 3-second push just at the right moment. Almost like having your own personal surf instructor push you into every wave!


In the end, looks like some good fun was had by all...


Hopefully one day in the not too distant future I'll be at the next Fish Fry skipping around like a little teenage groupie stalking my favorite shapers. HeeHee!!!!

(BTW, I stole these pictures from the SurferMag Design Forum. The original thread and zillions more photos here.)

Enjoy!
kc