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.