Firsttimers Support Group

[Ceedog]

Alright, I'm finally making my own board. Anybody have pics/stories from your first board? Here's my progress so far, I'm copying the Walden magic fish except I think I'm gonna put a diamond tail on it:

[speelyei]

well, the guy who helped me glass the board initially said we could push the MEKP a little, and squirted about 3x the amount into the resin. We added all the pigment and stuff and started pouring it on. Just when we had it about half-@ss wetted out, it kicked almost instantly. to save the blank, we scraped the whole mess off onto the garage floor.
we followed the manufacturers suggestions after that.

[Ceedog]

Has anyone found any good instructions online? I found this site and have been reading up:

http://www.surfersteve.com/introduction.htm

[speelyei]

your best resource is someone who's done it before. There's a book, it's red and white, I can't remember the name... It covers design, repair, construction..

"Essential Surfing", by George Orbellian. If'n you caint find no copy, lemme 'n you kin borry mine.

[Doc]

I thought this was gonna be about something else.

Doc

[Bones]

Swaylocks and there are a couple of videos as well. Shaping 101 and Glassing 101. Try the guy you got the blank from. I think he has tried to email you with some info.

[Ceedog]

Yeah, he sent me an email with some good epoxy info. I just finished the rails today and will cut for the fins next. I eyed most of it and verified with my calipers. It's pretty fun, I don't know why I didn't do it sooner.

[Bones]

Good going. Then comes the messy part.

[erzats]

epoxy works 1.8 billion times better than PE. give'er. Tint it red. call it a bloody marry.

[riverjetty]

UV resin. Love it. I used that same board as a prototype. Haven't had it in enough juice to make it work, and then the kid kicked a fin off. Been sitting in the garage for a year and half. I should really paste that thing back on.

[Ceedog]

RJ what kind of fin set-up did you use?

Area is already cordorned off. 2 more boxes, a leash plug and its time for the glass coat

[Ceedog]

I knew there was a reason I left some room on the tail. I copied the fin alignment from the fish and thought that it didn't look right. I was mostly looking at the distance between center and front fins. I should have been looking at the tail to the trailer. The fish trailer is almost 6" from the end of the board. I'm assuming this is because the tail is so wide. I came down a little but still ended up ~5". It didn't look right so I found some good threads on swaylocks and looked at some store sites. So i'll just shorten the tail since the center box has already been cut. Now it should end up ~6'3"-4" with 3.5 - 4" between the trailer and tail.

[Bones]

Once you have established the distance for the center fin (Back of the fin) from the tail; the side fins are usually the width of of the fin base forward of the front edge of the center fin. Somewhere in the 4-41/2" range. So if you placed the center fin 31/2" from the tail added the width of the center fin base say 4" plus another 4". Your side fins would be 11 1/2 " form the tail. That is the normal placement for a typical thruster.

[Wilbur Kookmeyer]

I think it would be cool if someone layered their board in duct tape and then glassed it.

[Ceedog]

Sounds about right Bones. I ended up 4" tail to trailer cause of the diamond, and 11.75 from sides to tail cause the tail is fairly wide. We'll see how it works.