Anyways, get ready for lots of eye candy (not necessarily 'pretty' eye candy, but something to look at nonetheless). I've been collecting pics of #2 and #3 progress for some time now and figured it was about time to dump them.
In Part 2, I'd finished my cutlaps and hotcoating. Figure, I'm ready to start working on the finbox installs, right? Uh, not so fast. Dunno how I missed it, but after reading up on finbox installations, I found that its recommended to have an extra patch/layer of glass where the finboxes will be installed. Too late to put the patches under my lamination, so no choice but to stick 'em on top of my hotcoat (according to Swaylocks). First cut the patches, then prep the area by rough sanding where the patches will go, and then laminate the patches on. Ugly, but relatively painless.
Ok, back to business. Routing the holes for my Probox install was a breeze. Used some spray adhesive to stick the jigs onto the board, then slowly routed out the hole with a trim router. The Probox install kit comes with the bit and bearing for the router which makes the process a cinch. Still, on my first hole, I screwed up and accidentally routed the hole too deep. (Complications from this mistake to come later...)
As a side note, when setting the leash plug on one of the boards a few days earlier, I failed to completely top off the hole with resin. So, I took an extra minute to tape off the plug's opening and topped off the resin. Hmm, guess I should've taped off the area better, but it all sands off in the end. No big deal.
Ok, back to my finboxes. I've already poured the resin/pigment/milled fiber mixture into the holes and squished the finboxes in. Remember that one finbox hole that I routed too deep? Well, extra resin pooled in the bottom due to the extra depth and the whole thing got pretty hot. I panicked and dumped water onto it to avoid a meltout of the foam (wrong move btw, you should use a soaked rag or paper towel instead). I paced back and forth wondering if foam was melting underneath. Talk about nervewracking. All went well though, no meltout, whew! Now proceed to let the resin gel, peel off the jigs, and we're ready for sanding...
Ok, I must admit I slacked off on the sanding pics. Just picture me with an electric sander running around the board a thousand times in a big white dust cloud burning through here 'n there. Took some 80 grit to grind down the boxes and leash plug, then moved on to 120, 150, and 220.
Fast forward to some pinlines. Laying the tape here, not easy as they make it look on videos, but after some trial and error I got some (barely) acceptable results.
Paint on some pigmented hotcoat resin, and begin my favorite pastime: watching the resin cure...oh yeah.
Ok, enough watching, lets pull the tape...
The tape, post-pull. Hey, kinda looks like a tertiary protein structure!......uh, what?
Thick, then thin, then thick, then thin...the story of my first pinline. But hey, at least I didn't use cheater tape (and it shows, doh!).
Almost home now. I decided to do a polished sanded finish instead of a gloss coat. Took it down to (or up to?) 800 grit, then compounded, and polished. The finbox reinforcement patches can be seen if you look closely. I tried my best to feather the edges of the patches and blend them in, but you can see some weave and whatnot. Not perfect, but I couldn't be bothered to get too obsessed at this point. Polished with some super duty compound and surfboard polish. Ends up looking almost like a fresh hotcoat. Stuck in the fins for effect, and voila!...#2 is done.
Looks like a board Santa would ride...
Still have to lay the pinlines on #3 (the yellow board), but should be done by the end of this weekend. After that, and some sweeping, I can start shaping again and try my first attempt at a fish shape. Can't wait!
kc
2 comments:
You mention:
"I screwed up and accidentally routed the hole too deep"
I'm trying to learn to do finbox installs, too, and I'm wondering how it's possible to go too deep.
Don't you just set the depth on your router? Did the bearing slip off the side of the jig?
Just trying to learn more from this great blog...
if there's a way to screw up something as simple as routing a hole, i'll find a way. its kinda tough to explain, but here goes...
basically what happened was, when setting the depth on my router, it was set to a depth where the top edge of the bit was just under the bottom surface of the glass. turning the router on resulted in the foam getting cut away, but not the glass. after cutting from the middle outwards in circular motion, i ended up with a 1/4" lip around the edge of the hole near the jig's edge where the foam was cut away but some of the glass remained. i tried placing the finbox into the hole, but it wouldn't fit...the "lip" needed to be cut away.
at this point, i realized my mistake, reset/decreased the depth (measured, remeasured, and measured again), and then repeated my cut. lo and behold, it cut the lip away and i was left with a perfect edge exactly the shape of the jig. but by this point, the damage was already done, my hole was about an 1/8th of an inch deeper than it should've been. this would allow for extra resin pooling and heating up. this is apparently more of a problem for EPS foam rather than poly, but hey, its still stressful!
hope that helps...
kc
ps. i'll try harder to document my blunders next time...sometimes it slips my mind when i get caught up in the panic of a mistake :(
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