This is definitely not Hand Shaping pt. 2

In the previous post, I went through the first steps of making the stock blank, and machining the board from that. Then finishing with a light sanding to get the shape just perfect for glassing.  This post will cover the glassing stages.   

The saying goes " There are a thousand things that could go wrong when glassing, and at least one or two will. " 
I made it out pretty lucky in this regard,  I only missed my resin volume estimate on the bottom of the board and did not mix enough epoxy,  so I had to mix another batch,  and then another..   it seems that CNC machined EPS foam tears out some of the little pellets of foam leaving a lot of little pockets, in one regard this is terrible as the board just will never look perfect close up,  but on the other hand,  those pockets create really strong grab points for the epoxy to really get hold of the foam.

here's a detail of what I'm talking about,  you can see all the little pock marks where the foam pellets tore out.

Alright,  on to the glass.  

I wanted to do a cut lap for the bottom layer, so the first step is to establish where that cut will take place.  tape off a line that will later be the cutting line, and add those little crumpled balls of tape to make sure the drip edge formed by the hanging part of the tape stays free from the boards surface.

Then the board is flipped over, layout the cloth and trim it to width.  Here you have to make sure to allow for enough glass to make it to your tape line,  but not too much more.

I used 6oz cloth for all my laminations.  On this board I went with a full tail patch, they say you can use "football sized" pieces to do the same job,  but I thought this was a cleaner approach.  The patch is cut flush with the edge of the board, and goes under the full sheet.

I decided to take the same logo from my children's pushbikes and put it on any boards I make too.  so the "b" Logo was laser printed on rice paper and cut out.   Everything I read was that you "must use Inkjet"  but I found the laser printer works perfectly fine.  perhaps the warning was that you didn't need to use Laser? or maybe when using polyester resin laser printed art bleeds?  I'm not sure.  But laser printed rice paper and epoxy work fine together.

I used the Resin Research brand surfboard epoxy.

Here's what the underside looked like after 40 minutes of babysitting.  I found that where the glass was a lot longer it was a pain to get it to stick to the underside of the board,  the hanging parts were just too heavy when saturated with resin to stick.  Subsequently, I got a few small air bubbles under there that I would have rather avoided.  lesson is, cut the glass a little closer to the tape line next time.

There we have it,  the bottom is glassed. next, onto the topside.

here's a detail of the cutlap after trimming and removing the tape.  it wasn't a clean "zipcut" as it is sometimes called,  but it worked.  The key here is waiting the exact right amount of time before you trim the excess, too long and it's really tough to cut through,  not long enough and it gums up the razor blade.

I've also decided to put the leash plug under the glass. it apparently makes no difference, installing it pre glass or after, but, this way just seemed like a stronger connection to me.

and next glassing the top laminations.  on the top I went with 2 layers of 6oz. seemed like the standard thing to do from the research I have been doing.  The decal, again laser printed on rice paper and it goes under the top layer of glass only.  I'm looking pretty stoked about all this work.  This project literally kept me up at night, thinking and being excited about moving onto the next stage.

and there it is.  top is done.

For the top laminations I went with a free lap, which when inexperienced with fibreglass, leaves all the little hangy bits of glass fibres smeared along in every which way on the bottom of the deck.  It was a real pain to sand them out before painting.. next time I think I will try another cut lap for the top laminations.  it's more work initially,  but in the end it would have saved me some time, and yielded a much cleaner result along the bottom rails.

stay tuned, next update is paint and polish!

Part 1. Shaping

Part 3. Paint and Polish.