Here I'm ripping off the layers of peal ply and breather fabric. The final laminate is smooth and pretty.
I'm following the Nelson Factory build procedure. They squeegee cab-o-sil and epoxy, tinted yellow, to fill the weave. Here you can see how brilliant this technique is. The yellow tint provides excellent visual help in determining where the epoxy is filling as needed and where it needs to be squeegeed more. This yellow ring is where my Divinycell insert is located for the leash plug.
After the yellow cab-o-sil epoxy step, I applied plain epoxy tinted blue. The blue epoxy is the true hot coat. All applied by squeegee. Tomorrow the spot putty coats will be applied. All this extra work to apply a hot coat is just to save weight. With standard surfboard construction, the hot coat is applied with a brush to allow it to flow level and finish out pretty. The problem with that method is epoxy is very thick, so the hot coat ends up being thick and heavy. Using the Nelson Factory (windsurfer) technique allowed me to use about 1/8 the resin I used on my previous board, done the standard surfboard way.
The board weighs 17.5 lbs straight out of the bag. Tomorrow I'll know the weight with hot coat and then I'll have a good guess at the final weight with fin box and paint.
5 comments:
Can't wait to see/test the finished product. Keep up the good work. We are all learning a lot from your experience.
very cool, Dwight. I enjoy following your progress.
What did you learn Brad?
I'll bet you learned $2000 for a race board is a bargain
If a customer ever complains about price, send them to my blog. :-)
Wow DW! Coming right along! I sure have come to appreciate how much effort goes into producing a board.
From what I've seen so far, this round of board building has gone a little quicker than the previous attempts, partly because you have the tools, equipment and your experience from the first 3 boards behind you. But with that said, it is still a huge task! Wish I was down there more during the week to witness the process!
Oh yeah, I think the biker hangout in town has closed (Big D's Garage), maybe you should open up shop in your garage and use that name and build SUPs! :)
Later!
Lookin good bro!
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