I got to ask why make things hard ?

Why not just go Clarke foam and polyester.

Add glass rovings eitherside of the stringer and down each rail on the underside.

Before all the people say it won't be strong enough, thats how all boards used to be and it was plenty strong enough.

Advantages are it is cheaper, qiucker and easier, and you know the first board you make will be bad, so wait until you make a good one in polyester before you go sandwich construction and spend the extra money and time.

Been thinking of doing it myself. Reckon I could knock out 3 in polyester in the same time and cost as one in sandwich.

Then again I would never pay money for a polyester board, so not sure how my logic works.

I would skip the 5mm and go for 3mm as its much easier to work with.. If you skip the paint its gunna be yellowing fibreglass over green Airex that will look like poo after awhile.. A good coat of white 2pak hides everything and keeps the water out..

The only reason why anybody shouldn't build a board is the spare time required..

Why learn to paint when you can buy $15 Picasso Screen prints? Why learn Guitar when you can learn the kazoo..

Have a look at www.ecboards.co.uk/ (menu on the left) and if you are still game after all that then go for it :-)

Richiefish said...

barn said...

I would skip the 5mm and go for 3mm as its much easier to work with.. If you skip the paint its gunna be yellowing fibreglass over green Airex that will look like poo after awhile.. A good coat of white 2pak hides everything and keeps the water out..

The only reason why anybody shouldn't build a board is the spare time required..

Why learn to paint when you can buy $15 Picasso Screen prints? Why learn Guitar when you can learn the kazoo..

what are you inferring about the kazoo ???

Well guitar is to kid's kazoo as windsurfing is to............

Mark _australia said...

Have a look at www.ecboards.co.uk/ (menu on the left) and if you are still game after all that then go for it :-)

Thanks for the link, some useful info on there.

We went through a stage of making our own boards in the late 80's in Auckland.
We used polystyrene and put a 3mm ply stringer down the middle.
Then used 2-3 layers Epoxy/glass can't remember what weight. If I can give any advice it would be to take your time, don't rush, especially when shaping, glassing and setting the fin box & mast track.
Getting a good glass finish without experience is really hard and we ended up painting them with epoxy boat paint...Similar to modern boards I suppose. Get an electric plane.
It was a lot of fun.. especially test driving the one you made against your mates and comparing.
Also gave us something to do when there was no wind, in between changing the gear boxes in our cars to get us to the beach, but hey we were single with no kids back then.

sideskirt said...

.

Shaping the bottom Vee was prety interesting and time consuming work, but I liked it.

I will put carbon fiber cloth on top and if it will look nice (no cosmetic failures) I will just put lacquer on top.

sideskirt I'm wondering what was so time consuming about shaping a v if you started with a flat bottom
be very careful about trying to get a clear finnish because you cant see the pinholes, when im laminateing i use a layer of 3oz satin weave, the weave is so tight it eliminates pinholes as well as makes things easyer when sanding the filler coat

keef said...

>>>>>
be very careful about trying to get a clear finnish because you cant see the pinholes, >>>>>

I'll second that!!! Board looks fantastic until you throw some solid colour at it, then all these pin holes pop up.

I've just finished a medium wind speed board, (53cm), and I fixed the problem on this one.
squeegeed a thin layer of resin thoroughly over it, after it came out of the vacuum bag.

Of topic, Hey keef, next project is a fin and custom footstraps for it, I'll get back to you when I've made some progress.

keef said...

sideskirt said...

.

Shaping the bottom Vee was prety interesting and time consuming work, but I liked it.

I will put carbon fiber cloth on top and if it will look nice (no cosmetic failures) I will just put lacquer on top.

sideskirt I'm wondering what was so time consuming about shaping a v if you started with a flat bottom
be very careful about trying to get a clear finnish because you cant see the pinholes, when im laminateing i use a layer of 3oz satin weave, the weave is so tight it eliminates pinholes as well as makes things easyer when sanding the filler coat

time consuming was learning the right way to shape....I had a very wrong idea...

laminating will be done by a boardbuilder who earns his living with this, so I am just shaping... I found out it comes about 70$ more expensive than doing it by myself, since I don't have any closed room where I could do it and no pump it is better way.