As of right now I feel like trying the glass job myself, I am not completely sure about the shaping part that seems much harder and much more nuanced. Baby-steps. I've seen a shaper work and it was almost mind boggling to see how symmetrical and on point his work was using only measurements, tape and hand-tools. I hope to be able to do that someday! But I also hope to have a rideable ride board. Maybe if I had a place where I could shape with unlimited access, take my time, leave my tools... it would be a bit easier. It is still in consideration though. The good thing is that it is not a big deal. If I can I will, if I can't I'll just borrow a friend's garage, protect it from top to bottom for one or two weeks. I will glass and sand my CNCed design, learn improve in those area and be very happy about it! until I find a more suitable situation and work on my second board. From a virgin blank. :)
I hear you, first and foremost I need to get that local topic figured out! I live in the city and it's not the easiest. Basically I have only, not ideal options so this should be the main focus for now.
For the color well... your analysis is accurate! But I also hear you there and I will reevaluate.
for the resin/hardener ratio I intend on using a scale, I did it for 2 years, with or without charges, I'm not extremely worried here. However I know that the type of pigment I use may impact (or not) the ratio based on the component inside. I Would also need to ensure the compatibility.
would it be possible, in order to avoid the job "cleanliness" concerns, to just drizzle some tinted epoxy into the clear one and do the the job as if it was just clear epoxy? Let the color lay out randomly and use only clear epoxy for the rails? Only on the bottom?
this way a poor tape job and cut lap wouldn't be critical?
If it doesn't cut the difficult enough I'll just go clear then. I don't have a specific scheme I wanted to do... just a bit of color for the fun of it.
The working time (around 20mn) is indeed the "scary" part. That's why I wanted to keep it simple enough maybe I need to make it even more simple.
bonus difficulty, I have only one hand so I need to practice a bit I think :)
thank you for the time you take to answer. It is very much appreciated and I am really taking it into account!
What some backyarders do with glassing in epoxy is to break it up into sections. Mix enough resin to do one side completely, spread that and wrap the rails, and then mix/lam the other side after that. Or mix enough for the flats and then come back with a fresh batch for the rails. Another strategy is to use a slow hardener so you're not on the 20-minute clock. Or to do your glassing when the temperatures are lower (like early morning rather than early afternoon). Or some combination of the above.
The pros need to work quickly and efficiently, so time is money. That beautiful 8 minute per side lamination that you see them do on the vids is the result of practicing their craft hundreds and thousands of times. Backyarders will never do enough boards to develop that rythym. Besides, we tend to have more time than common sense, so in some ways going slow is better for us.
As I say, if you're using an EPS blank then the bead pattern will be part of your look unless you do a solid opaque to cover them. I've never done it, but I saw one builder use a colored spackle to seal the board and scrape it extra flat before fine sanding it back to the foam - the effect was that the colored spackle filled the voids and left the white beads of the form. I think they used red and blue spackle to do it; and then they laminated in clear. The end result looked like confetti. Another way is to use a light tint lamination without sealing the EPS, so the tinted resin pools a little in the voids. I haven't done it in a long time, but I've drawn in chalk on foam and laminated over that. Obviously, some people do paint over EPS but that never seems to completely cover the beads, either so you still get that. These are examples of what I would call incorporating the imperfections of the foam into your cosmetics.
But ideally, all that is later for you. I still think you'll have more than enough of a challenge to work on just trying to get a clean waterproof lamination in clear.
Full disclosure, I did a resin opaque on my 2nd board, so I did the same thing I'm now advising you against. And yes, it ended up looking really bad. Far, far worse than if I had just stuck with doing a clear. So again, I urge you to be smarter than I was.
One more thing, there's something to be said for the aesthetic of novice surfers sticking with clear boards until they develop the surfing skills to go along with the showy cosmetics. Trying to blend in as opposed to drawing attention to themselves. Leastwise, that used to be a thing.
This is actually an angle I didn't think about... cuz "my" foamie screams kook anyway so I didn't really think about the showy/skills correlation on the next board. I still appreciate the knowledge shared on the coloring regardless of your point of view on wether I should use colors or not. I still learn! even if now I'm not so sure about colors anymore I will still keep the info for later.
the way it stands i'm not planning on sealing the blank. didn't think that the beads pattern would be so proeminent but it makes sense, I'm probably going clear. I wasn't planning on any art work on the foam, just randomly mixing color in the resin.. but that was before!
out of curiosity why your solid color ended up looking bad?
That's a brutal question because it pains me to look back at that one, but here goes.
It was a 6-10 singlefin egg I was doing for my youngest kid, and he had to talk me into doing color because I didn't want to even make the attempt. Red opaque bottom with a clear deck over a PU blank using PE resin. This was long before I came to Swaylocks so I didn't really have any resources beyond the "glassing 101" video and what we had seen of mixing and using resin colors in a couple of the longboarding videos.
So here's some of the steps where I went wrong:
I taped my lapline, but I didn't use the right masking tape, I didn't get a great seal and I didn't mask off the rest of the dry side. So I got some bleeding under the tape and I got a couple splotches on the deck.
One reason I didn't get a great seal was because I didn't adequately blow off ALL the dust on the blank - if there's dust under the tape then the tape sticks to the dust instead of the blank. I blew some of of the dust off, but not all of it.
I also didn't get a clean curve when I taped the lapline. It took a few boards before I learned how to more effectively stretch the tape to get the curve I wanted and before I developed the eye for laying the line parallel to my rails. So I ended up with flat spots and uneven sized lap lines.
I used too many relief cuts around the radius of the nose and tail (I was doing a rounded pintail) so that when I wrapped them these sections overlapped the edges of each other, which intensifies the opacity of the resin (meaning you could see every cut.). I didn't learn to pre-stretch the cloth around the curves prior to laminating until later on. Do it right and you won't have to make any relief cuts at all.
I took so long to laminate the resin that I left in the cup started to exotherm, and some of the pooling that I hadn't adequately spread during the working time of the resin started to kick, forcing my to rush the rest of my lamination. (next time use less MEKP so as to leave more working time).
I didn't cut/wrap the points at the nose and tail right, so I had bare spots on the tips, and again, overlapping edges.
I had a couple dry spots on my rails
I came back *several times* with repairs over my tips and to attempt to straighten out the lap line, and I spent at least a couple hours with a razor blade trying to dig out the "bleed". Then I came back with filler to backfill the foam I had cut out. It still didn't look right.
I didn't get the right proportion of pigment in a couple of these repair batches to the opacity didn't exactly match. (I'm probably the only one who ever noticed that, though)
I sanded through everything in a couple spots (BTW, sanding a resin tint or opaque puts colored dust everywhere including your tools, your clothes, your hair and everywhere else) That's because my sanding skills were just as raw as my laminating skills
just bringing the lap line down put a bunch of red dust over the dry side because I hadn't masked it. So I had to go back and try to get most of that off.
I made a mess that was so epic it took several hours to clean up. I looked like a crime scene where there were no survivors. Cups, stirrers, squeegee, paper towels, spreaders, multiple pairs of gloves, resin on me, I stepped in pools of resin that had dripped off the laps so there was resin on my shoes, I had resin drops on my clothes. I was so paranoid about trying to get everything to lay flat that I wasn't paying any attention to working clean.
And mind you, this is the *nostalgic* look back. I'm probably forgetting some of the other problems I had that day.
All of the above is why I strongly urge you guys to be smarter than me.
some valuable lessons in there! thank you very much for sharing! unfortunately I doubt that it will prevent me from making them but who knows! I might avoid one or two! when I manage to get everything set up I will definitely give this post a last minute read.
Some of my problems wouldn't have been problems if I hadn't been working in color. It wouldn't have mattered so much if my laps were rough or I had bleed through. The relief cuts and overlaps wouldn't have been so obvious. I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to even out the lamination. I wouldn't have gone through so many consumables.
A few of those problems took quite a while for me to work through. And that was with PE resin. Epoxy adds another layer of difficulty over certain aspects of those problems.
If you ever want to do resin tints and opaques, especially different colors on the bottom and top, then learning how to do a cutlap is an essential skill. And clear laminations are a reasonably safe situation to practice with. If it goes poorly on a clear lamination then it's no big deal. Parts is parts - you can always fix it.
If you wanted to try your hand at a freelap - which is also an essential skill - you could do both on the same board. Cutlap for the bottom lamination and a freelap for the deck lam. A deck lam with freelap that ends on the bottom makes for an easier sanding situation insofar as blending the lapline smoothly onto the bottom contours.
It's important with both to get into the habit of cutting your cloth cleanly and clipping any stragglers that may hang after the laps get saturated. Any ragged edges or stragglers are what mess you up when you're trying to take down the edges. If it takes you 3x longer to cut your cloth because you're trying to avoid leaving any corners then that's time/effort well spent. Smooth is better than fast.
Exactly!
As of right now I feel like trying the glass job myself, I am not completely sure about the shaping part that seems much harder and much more nuanced. Baby-steps. I've seen a shaper work and it was almost mind boggling to see how symmetrical and on point his work was using only measurements, tape and hand-tools. I hope to be able to do that someday! But I also hope to have a rideable ride board. Maybe if I had a place where I could shape with unlimited access, take my time, leave my tools... it would be a bit easier. It is still in consideration though. The good thing is that it is not a big deal. If I can I will, if I can't I'll just borrow a friend's garage, protect it from top to bottom for one or two weeks. I will glass and sand my CNCed design, learn improve in those area and be very happy about it! until I find a more suitable situation and work on my second board. From a virgin blank. :)
I hear you, first and foremost I need to get that local topic figured out! I live in the city and it's not the easiest. Basically I have only, not ideal options so this should be the main focus for now.
For the color well... your analysis is accurate! But I also hear you there and I will reevaluate.
for the resin/hardener ratio I intend on using a scale, I did it for 2 years, with or without charges, I'm not extremely worried here. However I know that the type of pigment I use may impact (or not) the ratio based on the component inside. I Would also need to ensure the compatibility.
would it be possible, in order to avoid the job "cleanliness" concerns, to just drizzle some tinted epoxy into the clear one and do the the job as if it was just clear epoxy? Let the color lay out randomly and use only clear epoxy for the rails? Only on the bottom?
this way a poor tape job and cut lap wouldn't be critical?
If it doesn't cut the difficult enough I'll just go clear then. I don't have a specific scheme I wanted to do... just a bit of color for the fun of it.
The working time (around 20mn) is indeed the "scary" part. That's why I wanted to keep it simple enough maybe I need to make it even more simple.
bonus difficulty, I have only one hand so I need to practice a bit I think :)
thank you for the time you take to answer. It is very much appreciated and I am really taking it into account!
What some backyarders do with glassing in epoxy is to break it up into sections. Mix enough resin to do one side completely, spread that and wrap the rails, and then mix/lam the other side after that. Or mix enough for the flats and then come back with a fresh batch for the rails. Another strategy is to use a slow hardener so you're not on the 20-minute clock. Or to do your glassing when the temperatures are lower (like early morning rather than early afternoon). Or some combination of the above.
The pros need to work quickly and efficiently, so time is money. That beautiful 8 minute per side lamination that you see them do on the vids is the result of practicing their craft hundreds and thousands of times. Backyarders will never do enough boards to develop that rythym. Besides, we tend to have more time than common sense, so in some ways going slow is better for us.
As I say, if you're using an EPS blank then the bead pattern will be part of your look unless you do a solid opaque to cover them. I've never done it, but I saw one builder use a colored spackle to seal the board and scrape it extra flat before fine sanding it back to the foam - the effect was that the colored spackle filled the voids and left the white beads of the form. I think they used red and blue spackle to do it; and then they laminated in clear. The end result looked like confetti. Another way is to use a light tint lamination without sealing the EPS, so the tinted resin pools a little in the voids. I haven't done it in a long time, but I've drawn in chalk on foam and laminated over that. Obviously, some people do paint over EPS but that never seems to completely cover the beads, either so you still get that. These are examples of what I would call incorporating the imperfections of the foam into your cosmetics.
But ideally, all that is later for you. I still think you'll have more than enough of a challenge to work on just trying to get a clean waterproof lamination in clear.
Full disclosure, I did a resin opaque on my 2nd board, so I did the same thing I'm now advising you against. And yes, it ended up looking really bad. Far, far worse than if I had just stuck with doing a clear. So again, I urge you to be smarter than I was.
One more thing, there's something to be said for the aesthetic of novice surfers sticking with clear boards until they develop the surfing skills to go along with the showy cosmetics. Trying to blend in as opposed to drawing attention to themselves. Leastwise, that used to be a thing.
This is actually an angle I didn't think about... cuz "my" foamie screams kook anyway so I didn't really think about the showy/skills correlation on the next board. I still appreciate the knowledge shared on the coloring regardless of your point of view on wether I should use colors or not. I still learn! even if now I'm not so sure about colors anymore I will still keep the info for later.
the way it stands i'm not planning on sealing the blank. didn't think that the beads pattern would be so proeminent but it makes sense, I'm probably going clear. I wasn't planning on any art work on the foam, just randomly mixing color in the resin.. but that was before!
out of curiosity why your solid color ended up looking bad?
That's a brutal question because it pains me to look back at that one, but here goes.
It was a 6-10 singlefin egg I was doing for my youngest kid, and he had to talk me into doing color because I didn't want to even make the attempt. Red opaque bottom with a clear deck over a PU blank using PE resin. This was long before I came to Swaylocks so I didn't really have any resources beyond the "glassing 101" video and what we had seen of mixing and using resin colors in a couple of the longboarding videos.
So here's some of the steps where I went wrong:
And mind you, this is the *nostalgic* look back. I'm probably forgetting some of the other problems I had that day.
All of the above is why I strongly urge you guys to be smarter than me.
some valuable lessons in there! thank you very much for sharing! unfortunately I doubt that it will prevent me from making them but who knows! I might avoid one or two! when I manage to get everything set up I will definitely give this post a last minute read.
Some of my problems wouldn't have been problems if I hadn't been working in color. It wouldn't have mattered so much if my laps were rough or I had bleed through. The relief cuts and overlaps wouldn't have been so obvious. I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to even out the lamination. I wouldn't have gone through so many consumables.
A few of those problems took quite a while for me to work through. And that was with PE resin. Epoxy adds another layer of difficulty over certain aspects of those problems.
I understand! if I do clear should is there still a reason to do a cut lap? or a free lap makes more sens then? maybe cutlap for training
If you ever want to do resin tints and opaques, especially different colors on the bottom and top, then learning how to do a cutlap is an essential skill. And clear laminations are a reasonably safe situation to practice with. If it goes poorly on a clear lamination then it's no big deal. Parts is parts - you can always fix it.
If you wanted to try your hand at a freelap - which is also an essential skill - you could do both on the same board. Cutlap for the bottom lamination and a freelap for the deck lam. A deck lam with freelap that ends on the bottom makes for an easier sanding situation insofar as blending the lapline smoothly onto the bottom contours.
It's important with both to get into the habit of cutting your cloth cleanly and clipping any stragglers that may hang after the laps get saturated. Any ragged edges or stragglers are what mess you up when you're trying to take down the edges. If it takes you 3x longer to cut your cloth because you're trying to avoid leaving any corners then that's time/effort well spent. Smooth is better than fast.
Pages