It is a little cold outside, but don't worry I have the hot coat on

Sorry about the horrible pun, but it is a little too early/late for me to be to clever. Anyway, I just got done putting on the hot coats for the surfboard. A hot coat is a clear coat layer that you put on after the fiberglass layers have cured. You do this for a few reason. First you have to cover up all the fibers of the fiberglass. If you don't it will just wick in water when you take it out. Second, it fills in the weave pattern from the fiberglass and smooths everything out. Lastly, it gives you an extra layer of resin between the foam and the water.

The other day I took my time and smoothed down any rough spots that I had from when I put the fiberglass on. Needless to say, I had a few. Especially around the nose and tail where I had a couple wrinkles. I also had some pretty big drips from the laps. This wasn't too bad, I just took my time and worked all the high spots down until it looked pretty good.

I got a cheap-o Dremel knock-off from Harbor Freight a couple weeks ago for 8 bucks. I threw on the sanding drum and worked some of the smaller problem areas I was having. Again, mostly around the noise and tail area.

Once the lam. layer looked good and smooth it was time to break out the resin. I got some Additive F from greenlightsurfsupply.com so I threw in a cap full of that, 10 pumps of resin, and 5 pumps of hardener. Dumped the mixture out on the bottom and started brushing it on with a cheap paint brush. Next time, I'll go with the foam brushes. They are way cheaper and it is a major hassle trying to clean out the regular ones.



Once that was hard to the tap, it was time to flip over and do the same thing. That's where I'm at right now. The resin is curing up right now. In a few hours I'll be able to take off the masking tape and start working on the vent plug and fin. I've got a busy weekend ahead of me.

Sorry about the lack of pictures in this post. It's kinda hard to take a picture that shows much progress when I'm sanding or putting on a clear coat. Don't worry, plenty more to come soon.

The Deck is Officially Glassed!

After the resin from the other days little dent issue cured up, I was ready to start working on the deck. My lap line was pretty rough looking. I didn't really notice how bad it was the other day so I didn't clean it up as well as I should have. I had some drips, some strings, and a couple folds in the nose and tail. But I took the 60 grit sandpaper to it and started knocking everything down. The pre-coat that I did the other day helped make sure that I didn't get into the foam or anything, so that was nice. It took a good little while and a good bit of elbow grease, but I got it to a point where I was happy with it. I'm sure I could have spent some more time on it, but it looked good.

Now it was time to start cutting the fiberglass and laying it on the board. The top has a 7.5 oz deck patch and a 7.5 oz layer. I think this should be good for the top, but we shall see. I laid out the deck path at about a foot over the half way point and cut it back at an angle:



Cutting it at an angle like this help it from developing a weak point. If you just cut it square, there can be a lot of extra stress in that spot and can snap the board in half.

Next I put on the top layer and evened everything out. I cut it about an inch below the rail and notched the noise and tail (I really need to spend more time on those areas next time, I got a few wrinkles on this one).

The "stand" that I'm using right now is two boxes that I brought some stuff up from Phoenix and two dumbbells that I brought also. This is COMPLETELY insufficient. It basically sucks! They are two low, not level, not sturdy, and are too wide. They suck! The first thing I'll do before moving on to my next board is build some board stands for shaping and glassing. There are a few examples out there and they shouldn't be hard at all to put together. If you are thinking about doing your first board, GET A STAND! Really, get a stand. It will save you so much time and a whole lot of extra stuff to deal with. Trust me, get a stand.

Now that I've got that out of the way, time to start spreading some resin around. This time I mixed up a lot less resin. It was right around 32 oz. I did 22 pumps of resin and 11.5 of the hardener. This was pretty much perfect. I had a little left over, and dripped some but was a pretty good shot for the glass schedule I'm using on the top. This time I also used cheap-o throw away paint brush to make sure I got the rails nice and wet. I think this made me drip a lot less resin, but I'm not sure if it really saved me on any work. I'll have to do a couple more and compare, especially once I have my stands setup.

Everything went good this time, thoough. I made sure I took more time on the underside of the board and cleaned up any hanging strings and brushed out most of the drips.



You can just see the deck patch in the second picture. But everything is looking good. I should be able to flip it when I get home in the morning and start sanding that lap down. I have some Additive F coming in the mail. I hope that gets here soon so I can start getting my hot-coat going and start working on the art work for the board.

My First Real Issue

Well, I've had my first real issue with something going wrong with the board this morning. The other night, when I was glassing the bottom of my board, the box I was using as my stand was a little to wide. So I had to put something underneath the board so I could have a little bit of room to wrap the rails underneath. The only thing I really had was some of the weights that I was using the other day to weigh down each laminate. This worked pretty good last night and allowed me to finish glassing the bottom.

However, this morning, when I flipped the board over to get ready for sanding down the laps I noticed dents in the foam. First thing I thought of was some of the spackle that I used the other day. But I figured this would create a big mess and wouldn't really let me wipe down the board after I sanded down the laps. So I went with resin. I'm not really sure if this was the best idea or not, but it's what I went with. I figured it would also give me a little bit of protection when I start sanding down the laps, so I don't nick the foam again. I mixed up about 4.5 Oz of resin, poured it on, and spread it out. I made sure to keep some of the resin in the little dents on the board and right around the laps also.

I let it cure while I slept and this is what I've got:



The dents don't actually look that bad. I edited the picture a little bit so you could actually see the dents. But it seems to have worked pretty good. I just need to head up to Walmart to get some denatured alcohol (It's the only place open this late that might have it). After that, a little bit of sanding and it's time to glass the top. I'd like to get that done before I have to start work tomorrow.

The start to a sticky mess

I started the next big step with my surfboard the other day; I started glassing the bottom. The glass schedule is going to be 1-7.5 Oz bottom, 1-7.5 Oz top with a 7.5 Oz deck patch. I do kinda wish I would have gone a little bit thicker but that will have to be next time. But let's get this thing going!

I first started by laying out the fiber glass on the bottom of the board. I unrolled it till I had a little bit hanging of the nose and a little bit hanging off the tail (a couple inches for both):



From here, it seemed best to go with a free lap (as opposed to a cut lap). A cut lap is putting a layer of tape down on the board, glassing the bottom, and then once it starts to setup but the glass right at the start of the tape. It seems like this can add some extra issues to the board glassing. So I just cut about an inch below the rail line and went with the free lap:



All of this so far was no big deal. I hadn't actually done much. But now it was time for the interesting bit.... The actual glassing. Everything I've read says this is supposed to be the hardest part for your first build. I don't know about hardest, but it definitely is the messiest.

I mixed up about 42 Oz of resin (32 pumps of Resin and 16 pumps of hardener). I poured about half of it on the board and went at it. I had resin dripping off all over the place at first. Like a 'tard, I completely forgot about the rocker on the bottom and took resin all the way to the nose and tail. So it was dripping of here. I ended up pushing it back a good bit and started working on the deck. This was pretty well saturated when it was time to start working on the rails. With the resin dripping all over the place, I figured it might be easier to just use my hands (I had gloves on of course) to work the resin into the rails. This seemed to work pretty good. Next time I think I'm going to use a disposable brush for this part.

Everything seemed to be going pretty good. I just kept working the resin from the stringer to the rails and all the way around to finish them. I wasn't to happy with how the fiberglass was sitting on the nose So I cut off an extra strip from the scraps and put a little patch area here. I don't know if it was necessary but I figured it couldn't hurt anything. Everything else seemed to go pretty good and I got a bottom of a surfboard with some fiberglass curing on it.



I had about 16 oz left over of resin. So it seems like I went with far to much resin for this layer. I guess it was better to have too much then not enough, but I'll know better for next time. Now all it needs is a little bit of time to cure. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

Spackling a Surfboard? Yep!

If you would have asked me even a couple weeks ago: "Think you'll ever spackle a surfboard?". The answer would have been a definite "No". But as of last night that has changed. With #1-#2 pound EPS it's a good idea to seal the foam before fiberglassing.

A lot of people recommend using some of the fiberglass beads mixed in with a resin mixture of about equal parts resin to beads. There's also a lot of people who recommend doing a very thin coat of Spackle. What this does is just fills in the small holes and small gauges that are in the foam from shaping. Both methods makes the foam soak up less resin during the glassing step and keeps the board a little bit lighter in the end and lets you use up less resin.

So I decided to go the Spackling route. I mixed in a little bit of distilled water into the spackle, mixed it up and poured it on the board:



The spackle was thinned down to about a mayonnaise consistency, so was pretty easy to spread all over the board. The only tricky part was the rails. Trying to make sure I put a smooth consistent layer on their was a little tricky, but it was really good practice for when I start glassing. It was more or less the same type of motion.

Once both sides were completely dry it was time to sand. You only really want to have the spackle in the holes and voids. It's not really meant to be a cover layer over the board, so I had to sand it down nice and smooth.



As you can see, I finally got around to sweeping up the floor a little bit too. That's about it for now. I'll get around to glassing it either today or tomorrow. I can't wait to see just how it comes out.

I Got Some Finny Goodness Today

I had the mail man wake me up to make the delivery, but I got my center fin and fin box. I went with an 8" fin and 10.5" fin box.



I still have a little waiting left to do before I got ahead and get them installed. I'm still waiting on getting my fiberglass and Resin. I also still need to decided whether or not to go get a cheap router from Harbor Freight. I'm leaning towards just getting it. It'll make installing the fin box a lot easier. Plus it will make shaping Kayleah's bored a lot easier too. Either way, I've still got a little while left to install these guys.

This little bit of time gave me an idea though. I figured I'd try my hand at shaping and glassing my own fin. I don't really know how it will come out. I didn't look online as to whether or not you can even make one of of glassed EPS. I'll probably look here later this morning. If I can't really do it that way, then It was just good practice for a wood one I shape later on.

What I did to shape it was pretty easy, it only took like 30 mins. I traced out the outline of the fin that I just got onto a scrap piece of EPS. Did a rough cut out of the shape. It was far to thick so I cut it in half and sanded it down to it was even all over. From here I drew a line down the middle of the edges and a curved line following the contour of the ark already there. Once my guides were all there, I started shaping in the foil and smoothing it out. I think it looks pretty good:



That's about all for today. Hopefully I get the fiberglass in here soon. That's the only thing holding me up at this point.

The Rails are Officially Shaped in!

Everything that I have read on building a surfboard says that shaping the rails is one of the hardest parts. So I decided to go with one of the simplest types of rails; a 50/50 rail. This just means that they are an even half circle all the way around the board. They are some of the more traditional style of rails and are supposed to be the easiest to shape. I think mine came out pretty decent.

To shape these I measured the thickness of the board and went around the entire thing making a dot at the half way point. I connected all of these dots with a straight line:



After marking all the way around I wanted to taper the Nose and the Tail a little bit. So I drew on a simple arch and shaved off some foam:



I liked the way that this looked. I didn't take off a whole lot. But I figured since my rocker isn't very much, that this would help a little bit.

Now, all that was left to do was tackled the rails. So I just broke out the Surform again and started scraping. I just went all around the bottom first. Making sure to keep and even distance from my middle line and make sure that I kept the rail round and smooth. I flipped it over and did the Deck. I made sure to leave the line still. Once I was happy with the rough shaping, I went with the 60 grit sand paper. I used my small sanding block and just started smoothing everything out and blending the curve into the Deck. I flipped the board over and did the same thing on the bottom.



Grabbing the rails for the first time was a pretty fantastic feeling. I definetly got a smile on my face when I did. It lets you know that what you've been doing is actually turning all this foam and glue and wood into a surfboard. I can't wait to get this bad boy in the water!

Now that the board is more or less completely shaped, I wanted to go back and do some more work to my stringer. So I took the planer out and started shaving it down a little bit at a time. Here's where I had one of my next issues. The Cedar wood that I bought wasn't the greatest. So I ended up having 3 small knots right on the edge of the Stringer. This makes it pretty hard to use the planer to smooth it out. I just had to work it over pretty good with that sand paper. Next time I will be a lot more selective on the wood.

That's about it for now. I'll probably do a little more fine tuning and smoothing out the foam. I also need to shave down the nose and tail end of the stringer. Where I shaved down the foam for the rails is still square. I wish I had my Dremel. It would make that a piece of cake. But I'll just have to do it by hand. Aside from that, I'm just waiting on my resin and fiberglass to get here.

Did You Know Glue Needs to Set at Over 60°F?

Well I sure didn't. I let my layers of foam sit over night and thought I was ready to start shaping. But as soon as I slide the saw blade into it, I knew somethings wasn't right. Some places had set up OK, so it didn't all fall apart when I picked it up, but it was still pretty wet on the inside and the layers weren't holding together very well. I read the back of the glue bottle and it said pretty clearly that it is to be used at over 60°F. I guess I never had an issue with this back in Phoenix, but here in Portland that can be an issue.

My only real option was to pull the board inside and let it sit for another day. So that's what I did. I put down some of the plastic that was on the outside of the insulation foam, put a few weights on top and cranked up the heat...

Luckily, that's all that the glue needed to do its magic. Now I was ready to start doing some of my shaping. I laid out my template on the board and broke out my sharpie again. The template is just several pages of printer paper that you print the template out onto. Looking back on it. I really wish I would have found a piece of cardboard and transferred this printed template out onto something a little more sturdy. But, you live and you learn. I didn't have time to finish things up completely so I had to head to work with the board looking like this:



Don't worry. I didn't leave it looking like that for too long. I cut off those silly wings sticking out the back end and broke out my Surform. I leveled off all the rough edges between each glued layer and smoothed out the edges. It's really starting too look like a surfboard now!



A little more smoothing out and my next step is going to shaping in the rails, which are the rounded parts on the edge of the board. That is supposed to be one of the hardest parts about shaping your first board. I picked a pretty easy rail design so let's hope it goes pretty smooth. Haha, no pun intended.

Let's Make a 12 Layer Surfboard

When I was looking around online to see how others have built there own surfboards I saw tons of examples with people trying all kinds of things. The vast majority of people were taking two full pieces of EPS Insulation foam, gluing them together and then laying them on another surfboard to create their rocker (The amount of curve to the surfboard). They would then shape their wooden stringer to match up, cut the foam in half and glue them back together with the Stringer in the middle. This sounds like a great way to do it if you have another surfboard (Which I don't) and some power tools to shape the Stringer (mine are all back in Phoenix, Az right now). So I had to come up with another way to do it.

Luckily, I saw a build where a guy cut out his Stringer, just like I did in the last post, and then used this wooden piece as a template to cut out the pieces of foam. This is how I decided to do it. I think it will be the easiest way for me to get this first board shaped.

If you aren't exactly sure what I'm talking about maybe this image will help it make more sense:



As you can see, you basically are just taking vertical cross sections of the board 2" at a time and gluing them all together. I didn't really have any problems here. Just make sure that you take the metallic layer and plastic label layer off the foam first. I just laid my stringer down on my foam, marked the outsides with a sharpie and cut them all out. No worries!

Then I started layering my foam pieces. I would put some glue on both sides of foam, smear it around and then put them together to sit for a few minutes. Then move on to the next layer. Now here's where I had a little snag. I was using Glue-All Elmer's Glue. And I only grabbed one bottle at Lowes. This was not even close to enough. I used up a whole bottle right before I got to the wooden stringer. So I had to let this half sit for the night and go to the store the next day...

Now that I'm all stocked up on glue again, time to get some more layering done. Once I had enough glue it was easy peasy. I layered all 12 layers of foam and stringer and set up some weights on top to hold it down:



Let's let these guys dry and get to some shaping! See you soon.

Lets Get a Little Rocker Going

I've gotten all the things I need to shape the board (at least I hope so anyway) and I'm ready to get this thing going. The way I'm going to start is by making my Stringer and using that as a template to cut my foam. For those of you who don't know, the stringer is a piece of wood that runs down the middle of the board to give it a little extra rigidity.

The piece of Cedar that I have is 8' long and about 6" wide. So I have some room to work with and some sawing I've got to get done. The piece of foam that I had is 8' by 4' by 2". Doing a little bit of math I figured that I would need a rocker that is no bigger then four inches from the outer curve to the bottom straight portion.

I drew up a fairly rough curved shape on the board:



Basically all I did to get this shape was find the mid point of the board and then marked off every 12" left and right from the mid point. My board is going to be 3" thick so at the midpoint I just measured up that 3" and marked it off. Then I just incremented how far I measured up at each one of the 12" marks. I connected the dots free hand and did my best to keep a smooth curve.

From here it is just a matter of cutting it out... I however, do not have a Jig Saw. I have a tiny little 6" saw that is used to cut dry wall. I have definitely given myself a bunch of extra work to do here.

It takes a good while but I finally get my shape cut out:



Now it's just time to clean up the cuts with some sand paper and the planer. It took me probably a good hour and a half to take the blank piece of cedar to a Stringer that I was happy with. I probably should have thinned it down a little bit, but we shall see how that goes.

Well that's all for now. after this I'm ready to start cutting my planks of foam from my template and start getting my rocker on the board worked out.

Bill of Materials

--Place Holder For Bill of Materials

First Steps

Let me start this all of with that fact that I haven't ever really surfed before. Sure, I did some body surfing when I was a kid and used a little boogie board from time to time. But I've never actually SURFED. So this isn't just me learning to build a surfboard. I'm also going to have to learn to surf on that board. That being said, I wanted a bigger board for my first surfboard. I didn't want to commit to a full on longboard so I went with an egg design.

I found a site online called Blending Curves. They have a few really simple board templates that you can print out. I found a pretty simple longer board design:


I plan on doing a Polynesian style design on the deck for this board. I had a few minutes to kill at work the other day and this is what I came up with for an initial design:


Everything I've read and seen, it seems like this should be a good board for me for at least a little while. It should give me plenty of stability and flotation, while still giving me enough maneuverability in the long run to make it fun when I have a little more experience under my belt.

That's it for this post. Stay tuned till next time when we start shaping the stringer and getting some of the foam cut out. Should be fun.

What's This Blog All About?

I have never made a surfboard before.

But, that's all about to change.

I'm in the middle of changing it right now.

I have just started building my first ever surfboard. I figured it would make sense to document the process for myself, and others, to learn from. In this blog I will be be documenting everything about my next several builds. My mistakes and success. My research, designs, materials and techniques. Hopefully you'll be able to take something from what I've done, if not, at least you can get a laugh or two out of it.