The Glassing, the painting

As promised, a much quicker post than the ones.

As the title says, in this post I'll be showing you what I have on the glassing I've done, and then a quick bit on the painting.

Along with the Fibreglass that we've already trimmed, we're going to need Resin. Now there are a fair few resins that are available, but not all of them will suit the purpose we want them for.

 For example, The resin I used to use for Boat building was........( Big Breath in ) A Rigid Orthophthalic Polyester Resin....whew. This was used for laminating everything, a good durable resin, but had wax added to it. The reason for the wax? With the wax added to the resin, when the catalyst is added and the resin goes off ( sets ) the result is a hard surface, not tacky or anything, just a good result. The wax is there to seal off the outside of the resin and make sure it goes off completely basically.
When laminating our board though, we want a Colourless resin without the wax. This is because first we'll laminate the board with resin and the fibreglass, then apply a " Hot coat " layer to the whole board.

Resin can be sought from either a fibreglass specialist in your area, or even some hardware stores. Most times these days you can just ask for surfboard resin, if they don't have that, ask for a wax free polyester resin, preferably without colour too.

Gloves , Mask, Icecream containers stirring sticks, and a Squeegee will come in handy today.

Even though this resin is blue, once mixed, it turns clear. How cool is that?

Now looking through my photo's I can see that there are some steps missing from what I'll be writing, My apologies for that one.

Lets set our board up.

Place the face up on the table or stands you are using. A good note to add here is that you'll want at least a 300mm gap under the board if you are using a table, when it comes time to squeegee the Glass down, you need to be able to reach under the board to press the glass on.

On top of the board about 30-50 mm in from the edge, we will run some 1" or 2" tape all the way around the board, As you'll find out, resin likes to flow and form drips on the undersides of anywhere it can, this tape will help us from getting these drips on our foam and having to try and sand them out.

After this, turn the board bottom upwards. Now we are ready to go.

 Place you're layer of trimmed glass on the surface we are glassing ( the Bottom) and mix up some resin. The amount you need will vary depending on the size of your board, in the photo above, I mixed up just under 1 Litre, this was an ample amount for this board. Have a squeegee ready, once we mix the resin, we don't want to be slow pokes, this stuff doesn't take long to go off, even quicker when it's warmer. Polyester resin is mixed at 1% ratio ( Hot days ) meaning for the Litre of resin we have, we only need 10mls of Catalyst to be mixed in.

Once mixed, pour the resin up and down each side of the stringer ( the wood in the middle of the board) trying to keep close to the stinger. With the Squeegee, we will work the resin to the edges of the board. Try not to push on the squeegee, let the squeegee do the work, we don't want to stretch the glass out of shape.
  At the edges, once we run our squeegee out there, it's a good idea to hold the container of resin under the board to catch the run off ( you never know, you may end up needing it if you are short on resin for this layer) for the layer, we need to make sure we push the resin around a wet the glass out, at the same time, with the weight of the squeegee, it should also be pressing the glass onto the foam. If you see an air bubble, we need to work that out, just push it to the edge and around the rail and out from under the glass.

 The rails are important here as well. This is where stands come in handy rather than a table. Squeegee the resin around the rail and stick the fibreglass to the underside of the board, making sure we get rid of all the air or wrinkles we may get. Now, I'd be lying to you if I said my board was a shining example of what it should be like, but I'd be lying, up until this point, The most I'd done on boards were some minor repairs. So find your groove if you can, and quickly, as the resin and temperature  dictate how fast we need to move.

Paper placed under the job will stop you from making a real mess on the floor.

 Once this has been done we need to wait until its cured, within an hour or 2 should be fine, you'll realize there is a slight tack to the surface of the resin, this is fine as it will help our layers bond together better. Had we put wax in, this would be smooth and tack free, but means we would need to sand the fibreglass back for the next steps to bond to it.

Flip the board over, remove the tape and inspect any bubbles on the edge or drips, if there are any, either cutting them carefully, or sanding the down, will make the top layer easier for us to laminate. Again you can run the tape on the underside to lessen the drips. The only difference from this layer and the bottom, is the extra layer of glass we have, this is no problem as we can place the 3/4 piece under the full layer and the resin will seep through and wet both layers up. Take note from how much resin you had left over from the last layer, and adjust the quantity if needed, remembering that the extra layer will require a little more resin. Mix Up and away we go!! Just make sure this time that you have indeed wet the layer underneath the top layer, the last thing we want is dry glass!!!

The tape hanging down on  my board was okay, but maybe a little too close for comfort in some places

At this point if you have an old board like I did and want to put some colour on it feel free, I used some red and yellow spray cans that I had , just masked out the design I wanted and painted away

An old retro colour scheme. The pin striping in this later reacted to the hot coat, now I need to put another hot coat on to fix up the peeling it caused when I sanded it back. Also after I fit the fin in a hot coat will just tidy up the fin sockets.

If you started with a clean new blank, then painting can be done before we even start glassing. In my case, the old foam and repairs previously were no good for painting on.


The "Hot Coat"

The hot coat is just the resin we have been using, with some wax added to it. Not your standard wax either, this stuff you'll need from a specialist store. Its a styrene wax. not to be confused with straight styrene. 

 The hot coat is the layer of resin that we will use to sand back and give our board a nice finish, it also fill pin holes or slight dents in the board for us. Mix it the same as the previous brews of resin, only this time, crank the mix up to 4 or 5 % catalyst even 9-10% if you think you can work fast enough.
 this resin we can pour on the board ( easiest to start on the first side you did ). And instead of a squeegee, we can use a 3-4" brush to give us a nice even coat of resin over the whole bottom. The added catalyst means the resin will set far quicker than the last lot, When using this resin, I found it flowed out for a lot longer than the resin I was used to, having the extra catalyst meant it was hopefully going to stay where I wanted it to rather than run off the board.

A CAUTION HERE!!

It's also called a hot coat for a reason, if you have any resin left over from this mix, I strongly advise you to put water in the container, Even a good amount of left over resin mixed at 1% can start to turn purple with heat and give off nasty fumes and smoke and potentially set fire!!

After completing both sides, we can sand the board down. This is to make it look nice and remove any grit or dust that has landed in the resin. You can start with some 220 grit then 500, 800 wet and dry ( making sure we don't sand through the resin ) and leave it dull looking, or as I did, 220,500, 1000 ( all on a DA sander ) then polished it up using some cutting compound and my polisher.

So thats it really, After that I ordered my fins in from http://www.shapersaustralia.com/. Now it's a case of putting them in, which to be honest is a bit of guess work as I haven't found any instructions on how to do it haha.

The next posts will be of some of the stuff I've been filling in my time with after moving to Wellington, plus the new Big project as well.

See ya all soon
N

The " Lil Bastard "

As promised, it would be rude not to bring you up to spec on the board before I jump and show you the next couple of projects, If I can sort through all the images I seem to have been taking.

The last post of actual board construction was taking off all the old glass and patching up the foam.
The next step after this is to put some new glass on it. You could always skip this process and go straight out on the water, But you'd be back in no time with what would resemble a soggy noodle.

As always, Safety First, and second and third. So what are we dealing with in terms of materials, this is going to dictate what we should be using in terms of PPE ( personal protective equipment).

This job will use Resins, solvents, Organic Peroxide ( MEKP catalyst ) fibreglass roving. Hazards would be , but not limited to, Harmful vapours, spills, chemical burns.

 

 

The basic PPE , and some other gear needed.

 Gloves, and a Respirator are a must! My respirator has been fitted in this photo with some 3M charcoal Filters, these come in different types and grades so you'll need to choose the right one for the job you are doing eg, dust filters....no good, the fumes from the resin will go straight through them. The gloves should be solvent proof, the reason being that the last thing you want is to put your hands in resin or Acetone, and have the gloves fall apart also if you were to spill MEKP ( Methy Ethyl Ketone Peroxide , whew) they would need to withstand this as MEK, for short, will burn the skin if left on without the need to be mixed with anything prior.
  A well ventilated area should be chosen as build up of fumes or vapour, can also irritate the eyes. Quickly whilst on the subject of eyes, These are a common forgotten area of protection, in this case I only have my half face respirator, meaning my eyes would be exposed to fumes and create an entry into the body of solvents if it weren't for the extremely well ventilated area I chose for the glassing. If your area isn't as well ventilated, a Full face respirator or even an air fed respirator would be good.

 Before we can start resin coating the board, we need to make sure our roving ( fibreglass ) is trimmed to the shape we need. How do we go about this? first unroll a length of glass at least 50mm longer than the length of the board you are glassing. For this board I'm using 4oz matting so I'm going to need 1 layer for the bottom of the board, and 1 and 3/4 layers for the deck or top of the board.

4oz boat cloth.

Wait. hold up Nick why 3/4 of a layer? I'll explain this in a wee bit.
Start with the bottom of the board. place the rough trimmed glass on and weigh it down. You could use some books, smooth stones, or as I did some light lead weights, This is to stop the glass moving a lot or blowing around when we trim it to the exact shape we need.

After setting this up, use a pair of scissors to trim the edges 25mm away from the outline of your board. A trick I learned here was to place a light ( hand held is best ) under the board whilst trimming, this creates a shadow on the glass where you need to cut. You can also save time here and trim the top layers too if you'd like, same process as the underneath, only this time the 3/4 layer will be the first layer, then a full layer, like the bottom, will go over that.

The 3/4 Layer

Being the part of the board where you'll hopefully be spending most of your time. it needs to be more durable than the bottom, it has to deal with the constant battering you feet will provide it with whilst taking off. Now as seems to be the  case when I take photos, I have managed to miss a photo of this 3/4 business to make it easier to explain and understand, so bear with me and hopefully I can explain it well.
 To trim this, we follow the same steps as the other layers. We roll out and only trim a length 3/4 of the board. When we place this on the board to trim it needs to over hang the tail by 25mm and the rest will go up the board, falling short of the nose ( due to being a shorter length).The reason it doesn't go all the way is due to the fact we don't often use the nose to jump on, For a short board anyway, If you have a long board, you may want to take this second layer all the way just incase you feel like hanging 10 or have your dog on the nose.
 Now we have a layer that creates a line across the board, with this edge, we'll trim it into a broad point that points at the nose.

That's the trimming out the way, next step is getting it stuck on the board. I'll do this in another post ( no where near as long as the last post was.) As I have been typing for what seems like for ages, and to be honest, I'm hungry and need to look at what's for dinner .
See you soon
N

Return of the Stranger

Well now, it has been too long since any progress report has been made on any project I've been doing. So here I 'll try and bring you guys up to speed.

 I have recently moved from Auckland to Wellington with my Fiance, Originally we moved because of a change in career for myself, yes that's right, after 10 years of work as a boat builder I left the company that had still decided not to invest in me. The change was to become a Roofer, sitting an apprenticeship that would've been 2 years......Problem. When I moved here ( Wellington ) the Company doing the apprenticeships, had decided not to have a host company sorted out for me, and really looked like they weren't trying to hard to start finding one.

The Result? Well I picked up some Temporary work doing bits and bobs, and have now been doing temporary work for Kiwi Rail as a Spray Painter at their Hutt Valley workshop. Super Fun and super busy.

So enough of the background, what of the projects? The surfboard has been put on hold for the time being, although there is still an update on the last time I showed it off. Why on hold? Only due to the fact of leaving my old company and moving, but it will be finished, if it's the last thing I do.

After putting the board aside, I still managed to end up finding a few other projects to carry on with. Most of it has been doing up old drawers, although the latest one is an old Raleigh Bicycle from the late 70's for Nicole my Partner.

But first, I shall bring you the most up to date post on the board.

Im Still Here

Hey Guys, quick post, I'm still alive, busy bee so haven't got around to posting in some time. The board is glassed and painted, just putting the fins on, have photos of it all to that point, but have run out of Resin, It seems like I did one too many repairs for mates using my own resin and it happened to use the amount that I needed for this job haha.
 I do have another couple of projects on the go as well, One a pallet Head Board for my Sister and Brother-in-law, and the other, just a simple step made from recycled pallets.......sensing a theme? Correct!
I also have a huge project on at work which is tying up all my free time, We have a 60foot Launch ( 17.9 metre) which is getting a total re-paint.

Anyway, thought I'd let you know

post ya soon

Nick

Standing Around

Well, Its been a little while since my last post, and even though I haven't done any more on the board, I have made some new and desperately needed stands. I may have also been side tracked by the ideas for more projects.

The stands I'm talking about make it easier to work on boards, you can lie them flat or turn them on edge to work the rails of the board. My last ones were made small and would be placed on my work bench, Nothing wrong with that concept, but they left very little room underneath to let me glass rails properly, so the new set has been made a wee bit bigger.

The Original stands I use.

The new stands are made from plywood, foam and concrete ( Nightmare concrete.) I started off with 12mm ply ( plywood).Now this isn't thick enough to support the board properly, so I made a template and cut out 6 stand shapes, 3 for each stand, and glued them together.

The Template.

Starting the mass producing process.

One glued and screwed, and the remaining 3.

The 3 glued and screwed.

The next step was to put these onto legs, and then to put a base on them to hold them in place when I used them.

Pre-base stand.

Completed stands.

The concrete I used for the bases gave me a real hard time. Against my better judgment, I read the label on the back of the pack to see how to mix it. The recommendation was to place the water needed in the hole, then to dump the concrete in and mix. I had a couple of differences with the situation it explained. 1: I wasn't putting a post in the ground, just pouring it into 2 cut down bucket molds, 2: the instructions said not to mix first then pour into the hole, the reason for this being that it was quick set and would more than likely start setting before I finished mixing and 3: I wasn't going to use a whole bag.

My plan of attack on this was to mix it in thirds, that way I only needed a Litre of water for each batch, This was the easy part as my mixing bucket happened to have Litre measurements on the  inside. It dawned om me at this point that I had no way of accurately measuring out a third of 25kgs, the size of the bag of cement. So, the eye-chrometer came into effect. Not wise. Not wise at all. In my haste and panic of using quick set cement, I poured in all the cement I figured I'd need, Mistake 1.

What I should've done is what I do at work when making Polyester filler, resin first, then slowly add the powders to make a consistency we find most desired.

  So with a rapidly setting brew of cement that was a bit too dry, I poured it into 1 of the molds. This didn't go as well as I'd have liked, it was setting and hard to pour, also the stand itself was getting in the way, Idea!! take it out then place it back in after. This very nearly worked properly. I had to get the stand all the way to the bottom of the cement to ensure the same height was achieved on both stands, what was unknown to me at the time was that it had lodged itself on some aggregate and was sitting 15mm higher than I had anticipated.
   Stand 2 went pretty much the same way only that I had help in the form of my Partner holding the stand for me, Thank You very much!!. With this help, the base was kept at the height I had planned, and when set and standing back to admire my work, suddenly realised the difference in height and could do nothing about it.
The next day I up ended the stands to see If the bottoms were okay. The first one was, the second needed filling, mainly due to the fact that when I picked it up a dry patch fell out. So after learning my lesson, I mixed the cement how I should've the day before, and made a perfect mix that didn't set before I finished smoothing it out.
  This being done and left to set, I removed the molds and now have 2 stands ready for the week ahead, the week I am planning to glass the board up.

Well, I shall be off now, and hopefully won't be as long getting around to the next post for you all.

Nick.

Shedding its Skin

So I've kind of cheated at this point, I had already stripped off the glass from the board before I set up the blog. Due to this cheating process I actually have no photos during that phase ( Sorry my bad).

The underside.

The top side ( complete with paint test).

 
  Stripping off the glass in this case was easy enough, It was so badly de-laminated that there was very little resistance from the Foam-Fibreglass bond. However, I did run into a few issues. First issue, At the nose of the board there had been a repair done, more or less a hack job, Which meant that as I pulled the glass away, it also took a good portion of the nose and tip of the stringer with it ( The stringer is a thin piece of wood that runs down the entire length of the board, these are also found in the hulls of boats and prevent the board/hull from flexing a ridiculous amount). To solve this, I had to re foam the nose and shape it, Ideally I should've  tried to insert a new piece of stringer then foamed it, but, I didn't have any wood around to replace this with, and it is in fact quite small. Just to make sure though, I will place one layer extra of glass over this section.
  The next snag was at the other end, The Tail. This too had half done repair, well, I say half done. It was actually just a repair to water proof the end, it had a little part of the tail gone and rather than the previous owner wanting to get water in the foam, he did a quick resin/glass repair. This would mean that I had to re foam and shape the tail again, which was shaped as they call " a Swallow Tail". Like the bird. Instead, I decided to straighten the tail out into a "Squash Tail" shape. Tail shapes also change how the board performs, This link will provide a break down for you:http://www.surfscience.com/topics/surfboard-anatomy/tail/basic-tail-shapes

  So, with my saw in hand, I reshaped the basic shape of the tail, then finished it off with a Sanding block and piece of sandpaper. 5 minutes later, TA DA!! new tail 

My new tail.

For the most part, as bad as it looked before the glass came off, the condition of the foam wasn't to bad, I mean it had it's dents and dings, but no gouges or breaks. There was of course the problem of the holes in it, and, as what happens usually when you go under the surface of things, something quite unexpected.

The Unexpected.

This Unexpected "thing" ( I say "thing" because I still can't figure out what it is). Now, during my time repairing boats, you get pretty good at knowing what has happened, Despite the owner claiming other reasons, eg. " No the chain broke and the boat came off the trailer" not " I forgot to put the chain on my boat, then drove off causing it to come off the trailer". But this has me stumped.
   What we are looking at in the photo above is a very solid patch of almost plastic like material. The 2 white dots go all the way through ( more holes), so it is definitely a filler of some sort, but not like any I have come across before. The problem this causes is the fact that I can't sand it out. Sanding hard substances next to soft ones will cause you to eat away at the softer material before the harder material is gone. Solution? Well this one is a tough one, I tired to put foam around it to fill the little change in height, this hasn't really worked, Next thing is just to go ahead and glass the board and place some more resin through this area. This will work as it is the only option really left.

  This would be a good time to describe the foam i'm using. Its called Endurathane. It comes in two parts, Part A, and Part B. You laugh now, but the reason we call it this is because Part A contains a chemical called  Methylenebisphenyldiisocyanate. And Part B contains some really unhealthy stuff as well, so best we call it B instead. The foam is mixed in equal parts, and rapidly reacts to make a closed cell foam. The reaction causes heat ( Exothermic Reaction)  and is best used in a well ventilated area along with proper safety gear. 

Foam from after the reaction of the 2 parts, Mixture was only about 2grams of each part, 32grams will fill a cubic metre 

 

      After the tail and nose were complete, I took time look over the board and fill in any dents, and the holes, that would be too big to fill with resin during the next step. Now I can get set up and glass.

Under the surface, it was a nice surprise to find the original surf shop that shaped it. It also had a dent that needed filling.

A rather large dent in the rail, filled and awaiting fibreglass.

A Bruce Fitzgerald graphic was once here.

Not sure when I'll get around to glassing the board, so I may be a while updating the blog. My hurry up though is that foam has a tendency to draw moisture into it, so I will need to hurry up and get it done before too much moisture is absorbed and needs drying back out.


Nick

The Show begins

When I was around 17-18, I got onto a surf board for the first time. Until this point I had thought of surfing as easy, whenever I saw it on the tv I imagined it didn't take much skill
  I couldn't have been more wrong if I'd tried!!
What came out of this first venture on a surfboard, was the "bug" which most surfers will tell you, gets you on the very first try, and is very hard to shake off. My first attempt to surf was at Matarangi, in the Coromandel, NZ . I still laugh at this, Matarangi, for the most part, barely gets any surf, its just not a surf beach at all. Needless to say though surfing and board shaping was something that I saw go hand in hand with my new job at the time, the world of boat building. I've always wanted to shape my own board, but practicing on repairing old boards seems more logical to me.

So, the first project that has tickled my fancy and, conveniently , just started, is an old Bruce Fitzgerald surfboard.

From this photo, which was the photo I saw when I was bidding on it, doesn't look too bad. Whoever had it at one point brought it upon themselves to turn it into a tow in board ( I assume) On the deck where the foot pads are, you can just make out holes on either side of them, these holes go straight through the board and have had bolts through them to hold ,what i can only guess at, straps or bindings for the feet to hook into. A Lesson in deception here too, what this photo doesn't show, is the serious amount of de-lamination from the tail to about halfway up the board. My heart sank a bit when I found this out, but it was just the start

Welcome to the underside of the board. A mess of repainted re done glassing that on this side, is totally de-laminated...
  Not much more to say about the bottom really. I was hoping it would be a glass up on the bottom and a simple case of filling the holes with some foam and patching them up too, but alas, The whole lot has to come off so I can see what is really going on under there.

Also to note about this, is that, someone has cut the fins off. As yet another assumption ( well really a very well educated guess, seeing as how a big part of my job is also Boat repairs   ) for the board to have been mounted at some point, weather as an artistic piece for a wall, an advertising sign, or table of some sort , is anyone's guess.

You may also be able to see at the end of the tail, what they call "channels". "Channels" are there to propel more water through the board and turn that flow into more momentum , ie, a quicker board. This was previously a tri fin board or "Thruster" that is, it had 3 fins, 2 on angles and 1 set a bit further back in the middle but in line with the stringer of the board.

A typical thruster set up

At this moment in time, I have opted to turn this into a Quad fin board. I have absolutely no idea if this is a good option, but I still think i'll do it, If not just have a board with 4 fins on it.
  Quad fin boards offer more speed. They way the fins are set means there is no middle fin to provide drag or resistance through the water. Of course, there are trade offs for having 4 fins, but to go into detail would bore some people. I've found a great site that covers all the terms I've mentioned here, and goes into way further details about all this related to surf board construction

http://www.surfscience.com/

This isn't the first board I've played around with, the first was and Al Merrick board ( Al Merrick can be regarded as the God Father of board shaping) Again like this board, it was in shoddy condition, but after a bit of T.L.C fibre glass, q-cell, and paint, She looked as good as new.......The Q-cell is a filler mixed with resin to form a bog, lighter in weight than a standard marine filler, and used in minor board repairs. The board came out a bit nose heavy, and overall, heavier than it should've been, but I double glassed it all with heavy Fibre glass ( 2 layers of 6oz mat on each side)

Here are some photos of that project

I later found out that this board had snapped twice. Once in the middle and once at the nose

Weather you know what you're looking at or not, I think we can agree, This is bad

Asylum Industries, the name I've had in my head head for years for a company, And now the name I use when Fix or modify stuff.

 The Name Asylum Industries, comes from and Korn DVD that I used to have in college called Asylum. I loved the band and the Dvd, the name stuck in my head and picked up the industries part when I day dreamed of owning my own Company that would make boards and do custom paint jobs, Something I would still like to do, but I'm certain I need more experience to do so

 The Graphics were provided for me by a guy Called Steve Roach who owns "Letter rip Ltd" a sinage company Rayglass boats use for their graphics

 A base coat of white then a coat of pearl and then a clear coat with pearl put in it, and this is what you get, A board that you no longer want to use in case you scratch it. This board also lights up like a lure in the water when the sun hits it, I sold this bad boy in the end

So with the first project under way, I guess I'll see you when I do the next step, Ciao for now

Nick