Posted on

When it rains … add some colour!

After the bad weather yesterday, did I mention it was drizzle rain all do, so I could not even get the blank back out into the shed (it got to sleep inside), but today, was another story … intially overcast and light showers, I figured no glassing again today, but maybe I could get the logo on and see what happens. So I started mid morning with the logo, via the stencil again as shown in the first pic.

As the weather was not quite clear enough for glassing, I started to play around with adding some more colour … anyway, mid way through the tape up the sky had cleared and out came the sun, so I quickly changed the design idea to get it finished quickly so I could start glassing.

 

In the second pic, you can see all the tape up I did, which pretty much ended up wasted due to my plan to get it glassed this weekend.

So, here I am, at just after 9pm having managed to get the ‘forty one two’ laminated and tonight after dark, I got the hotcoat onto the deck using MEKP rather than UV catalyst. I post more about that when I get some pic …

Posted on

The ‘forty one two’ – skunked by the weather

The plan was to get the ‘forty one two’ glassed today (so the cure process could start) … I don’t want to rush jumping onto this one until its had time to cure, been told at least 7 days, 14 good and 21 best … that will kill me waiting that long and will really slow down the evolution process of this, the first HPSB for FFW Surfboards.

BUT, it rained all do, so working with UV catalyst meant no glassing today … I didn’t want to tempt fate and use MEKP as I do not feel confident going there …. yet!

So, I did some checking of the concaves today, and am pretty happy with how they have come up.

Here’s a pic of the concaves on the board I’m using as my inspiration.

Comparing this and the second pic I posted yesterday … looks about right to me?

Posted on

The ‘forty one two’ – before and after concaves

The design from AKU had a very slight single concave of only 1/16″, not 1/8″ as I posted earlier … but as I said, that is exactly what has come out in the cut blank as can be seen on the first pic here.

(Tip: double click on pics to see a full screen version)

The second pic here is after I have shaped in the concaves … I started with the single (or middle) taking down the stringer so I had about 3/16″ between the fins and about 1/8′ under the front foot … I then cut in the doubles so it runs with about 3/32″ from the front foot and runs through to it’s deepest between the fin with 7/32″ … both the single and doubles fade in from the nose, and fade out to the tail.

Posted on

Shaping Tools – the “round” on the rounded squash tail

In the process of doing the tail on the ‘forty one two’ I went back and looked closely at the tail on the board i was using as my guide. I used the yellow plastic saucer from my daughters tea set when  did he ‘forty one’, but wanted to double check.

So, I layed the ‘shaping tool’ on the board I was copying …

Yep, pretty close, so I used that again.

Posted on

The “forty one two” is here !!!

Stoked … picked up the cut blank for the ‘forty one two’ this afternoon. Sorry the pic’s not better, but I did not have time to get the ‘ozito bay’ set up for some better pic’s, so the garage floor was a quick solution …

Gotta say, AKU Shaper is awesome! The 3D image is very realistic with the cut blank so close to the rendered image …

This one is more “refined” which is what I wanted, and what I had done to tweak the ‘forty one’ file to design this one.

Rails look heaps better, way less foam from the chest forward, and just the slightest 1/8″ of concave in the bottom (which is exactly the measurement I had designed into it on AKU Shaper) … the tail looks much better too, but I won’t really know how much better until I get it into the ‘ozito bay’ and shave some foam off and reshape the machine dags on the blank …

Can you guess that I’m excited?

EDIT: Here’s a better pick of the machine cut blank:

Posted on

The ‘jazz’ – we’ve added some colour

With the machine cut for the ‘forty one two’ not here for the weekend … my gidget and I, took the spare time to add some colour to the “jazz” which is the first board I made, and which was actually made for her … when I made it, the colour and artwork were low priority as it was more about getting into the process of making, glassing, etc ..

Anyway, my gidget wanted some colour, so this is what we’ve ended up with on her board … it’s all water based kids finger paint straight onto the finished board … we have a few spots to touch up and then I’ll spray it with some clear acrylic from a spray can … it’s her design and colour choice.

Posted on

The ‘forty one two’ has evolved …

I’ve been playing around with the ‘forty one’ in AKU Shaper and it has now evolved into the ‘forty one two’ … I’ve pulled the tail in, as can be seen in the picture,  and have taken some volume out of the rails and from the chest forward. Taking that foam out dropped the volume a bit, so I’ve then added some concave into the file design so I will not have to take as much off the blank once it’s cut.

So, the ‘forty one two’ is starting it’s life … I’ve just e-mailed the file for machine cutting … which hopefully I can collect on Friday.

Here’s a link to a full profile of the board …

Posted on

Maurice Cole

While doing some research into different designs, and in this case, the vee … as I have said before, I subscribe to a R&D philosophy (i.e. Rip Off and Duplicate) … no sense trying to reinvent the wheel, right?

So, I was looking at old posts on Swaylocks and came accross this thread and in it Maurice Cole, makes this comment:

” … I have used shaping machines since the beginning and have over a 1000 programs that are the backbone of my design work … and I could not do any design work without it … I like to blow up a design so I might cut 3″ off tail, change railshape mess with concave etc … I always have a starting point that I can duplicate off the machine, but much prefer to do changes by eye, gut feel, and any recent feedback to fine tune a new design … I would be in the bottom 10 % of actual shaper craftsman … working at Rusty’s in the 90’s and with Pat Rawson and Eric Arakawa in Hawaii made me realise that for me to continue making/designing bds I would need a better tool … the preshaping machine! … ”

The thing for me is this is why I decided to use the design software and machine cutting … to get a consistent base design from which I could ‘tweak’ my design idea’s … which, as it would seem, is how Maurice has used the technology.

NOTE: If you have landed here by mistake, having searched “Maurice Cole” … you can find his website here: Maurice Cole Surfboards

Posted on

The ‘forty one’ – butcher or not …

The ‘forty one’ has had a work out over the last week … starting within less than a day of it being finished! So much for letting it cure … Anyway, it started out feeling ‘spongy’. which I was told is common for UV resin, but yesterday, it felt more solid. I put this down to it either getting harder (i.e. curing) or the deck depressions compressing the form to such an extent it can not go much further. Either way, it goes OK.

Two things I feel with it … One, it feels a bit long, which I feel is due to the foam from my chest up … the other, is it feels a bit tighter in turns, and with the same fins, same fin positions, and basically the same concaves as the board from which it was copied, the only reason is the tail shape. This pic shows the difference.

So, the question is, do I butcher this board and chop a bit off the nose and pull in the tail?

Posted on

The ‘forty one’ is finished and ready to surf …

So, in short, I’m pretty stoked to have the 1st board finished. It’s taken longer at every step, which is not a big issue when you’re making board for yourself, but it did become frustrating … As you can read from the history here, there’s been some ‘learning’ along the way.

The good … the glass job on the ‘forty one’ is much better than what I did on the “jazz” … that all stems from getting the laps onto the deck wrapped and wet … which then meant I was not chasing the smooth finish sanding and therefore no sand thru’s , well almost none …

The bad … that’s the sand thru at the front of the r’ear fin … as I posted at the time … gotta learn to take my time!

The patch job to fix the sand thru and bubbles holes around the other boxes came up OK.

All in all … stoked … time to go surfing and try this one …