Gene Cooper method possible to lighten heavy old longboard???

I’ve been thinking lately: could Gene Cooper’s Ultimate Craftsman method of lightening a heavy blank (chamber and filling with a lightweight foam) be used to lighten a heavy old longboard?

I believe Jim Phillips has done that, on more than one occassion.

Brilliant, and certainly do-able, but just dang.  That’s a lot of work.  You could build a new one with less trouble and not, as you say, mess up a classic.  Just doesn’t make much since to me.

all the best

Greg

Ok thnx guys for the replies!

Ahhhm - just weighing in here ( pun intended, you’ll see) , with a reply of questionable value. 

Those old boards were heavy. They were meant to be, they worked correctly that way and I do well remember being inside of somebody that lost their board and it was a ballistic missle coming at me, unguided and dangerous. Why I switched to paipos and kneeboards, that and carrying the damned things up the dune. I remember this old 9’6" double-glassed Weber Performer clone of a  Spoiler rental board, gah, I’ll swear it  weighed as much as skinny 13-year-old me did.  Had to stop a few times on the way up the path to weep. 

But those old boards, yeah, they were heavy but they were strong and durable which is why you still see some around and in surprisingly good shape if they weren’t neglected. More modern longboards, made with ultralight foam and light glass, you see those in beach trash cans after a big day, snapped like breadsticks.

Anyhow-

You have, let us say, a 9-something board made with ‘heavy’ foam and you want to lighten it up. Without radically changing the looks or the shape. But let’s think about it - some back-of-the-envelope numbers. 

Call the old foam 10 lbs/cu ft. In very rough numbers, call it 9’ x 24" x 3". For our rough calculations ( and making the numbers easy) , we’ll say the foam in there is equivalent to something 8’ x 18" x 2" – more or less two cubic feet. Neat. Let’s say the shaped blank way back when went 20 lbs before glassing. Not unreasonable, maybe a little heavy. but lets go with it. 

You remove half that foam, you’re down to 10 lbs, but you replace it with foam that’s half as dense as the original ( put back five) so you’re up to 15 again. Then, add three mahogany stringers, call them 1/4" x 8’ x 2", call that a couple of pounds by the time you figure in adhesives for this and the foam inserts. Up to 17 pounds. 

And then you get to reglass the whole board, over the old glass. Because if you were to rip off the old glass, well, it’s not the same board any more, Old foam comes with the glass, you have to fill that somehow, and on and on and on. Though you do sand it well to get a decent bond with the new glass. You lose a pound of old hotcoat and gloss, lets say. Then add what, couple layers 10 oz cloth top and bottom (with it repeatedly cut lengthwise, you’ll need the strength, lest the four sections it now is decide to travel independantly.), hotcoat, gloss- by the time it’s all said and done, you’re at least couple pounds (at least, likely a fair amount more) heavier than it was before you laid hands on it. 

And a whole lot of work. 

Now, this is assuming that the board is otherwise sound, not a lot of waterlogged foam, no major delams and so on. It’s simply heavy and was when it left the dealer’s rack. And yes, these days, anything that old that isn’t delammed to hell and gone or waterlogged to where it barely floats is a collector item. Unfortunately…  .

If the foam is waterlogged, well, put it on a wall to dry out over the next few decades. with any luck it someday becomes Somebody Else’s Problem. A waterlogged board isn’t a candidate for this sort of rebuild, the foam is mush. Major delams, well, that’s a rebuild too but a different sort of rebuild.  Might have some old cabosil and resin repairs that add weight but now we can redo those, use Gorilla Glue or whatever to replace the resin/cabolsil with foam, do a nice repair glass job so it’s nearly invisible. Likewise other cob job repairs, you would save some weight with a really good restoration job. 

And if you want something very light weight with that shape, making a copy is relatively easy and I’m sure a lot easier and cheaper in terms of labor and materials. 

hope that’s of use

doc… damn those things were heavy

 

 

 

…what he said…

all the best

haha, that was a mouthful Doc. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I can see the positive value of this idea and I’m excited about it. I agree, if Jim Phillips has done it on multiple boards, there must be some reason for it. I have not done this myself (yet) but I have had candidates in the past; now I’m going to start looking for another. Did Gene or Jim replace the hollowed out foam with other foam, or did they leave it empty? Or, would it be possible to leave the spaces empty? Perhaps fiberglassing them?

Upon picturing this process, I’m having a difficult time with the cutting part. Would you sand down the glass along the cutting line to make it easier to cut? What tool would you use to make the cuts? I’m thinking jigsaw, but wouldn’t this cause the old glass to shred/chip?

If you do go through with this, please post pics of the process.

 

 

All the exact details would have to be worked out in the actual doing.

I would not leave the chambers hollow, I would fill with a lighter foam.

(chuckling)  - sometimes I do tend to be making a start on writing The Mediocre American Novel with these. The Great American Novel has been written, several times, pick one, but The Mediocre American Novel field is still open. But I digress, hopefully not so long this time. 

In any event, yeah, back when they wanted to make boards lighter, but not right away. Foam was so much lighter than balsa, which in turn was so much lighter than redwood or hollow box paddleboards. What we’d call a heavy foam board now wasn’t. not then. Come the Australians and shorter, lighter boards and it all changed. But when they were ‘heavy’, they worked with it. Shapes were meant to be what they were. Come lighter foam and glassing, the shapes changed. Materials can drive form. Some shapes, perhaps modified a bit, work lovely with lighter construction and probably a bit shorter, a smidge narrower. All good. Some don’t, also fine. 

Okay, a few things. The surftechs and such with somebody’s name on them…I’m sure the various somebodys approve. They’re getting paid to. Same as a lot of the ‘reproductions’ - I had a shipment of ( Insert famous name here) boards, that I know for a fact that Famous Name didn’t shape, probably never laid eyes on 'em., The shop owner loves old boards and he got talked into it by another old name board fanatic who’s also happens to be an idiot  who saw some out on the West Coast. What they resembled most of all was the line of 1960s Dextra popouts that also had Famous Name on 'em. I’d discount that boards have somebody’s name on 'em. Like I wound up discounting the Famous Name boards. Gawd, they were horrible. 

Uhmmm- these days it’s not as bad as it was, the really crazy collectors kinda lost interest after the dot com bubble burst, but still, the ‘value’ of a lot of bad old boards has been inflated. Some of them, gah. Had some guy come in with a delamming, waterlogged coffee brown Dextra he thought was was worth $500 and that;s what he wanted me to give him for it. I offered him five bucks to take it away and burn it. If it would in fact burn. The market is crazy. And there are still people who will pay silly money for anything that will float on its own.

Putting another layer on top of  what was on a surftech, yeah, well, I think you’d want to go heavier on a project like this, but that’s me. Caveat emptor.

Why would Jim Phillips do something like this? Good question. First off, he’s really, really skilled, he can do things most of us,. rightly, wouldn’t attempt. And I suspect that he does some of it for the pure hell of it, because he can. Another reason? He got paid to do it. Somebody with some old boards came to him, waved a whole lot of money around and Jim is no fool. Make some jigs, fun with table saw and router and there ya go.

I’d do it myself if the money was right.It could be interesting. One jig, sled type to hold the board parallel to the table saw fence, double up or triple up on saw blades to remove the width the new stringers and glue would add, several jigs to rout out old foam and cut new, use them with the appropriate router cutters and there ya go. If I was being really cute, I’d do the chambers your foam plugs go in in such a manner that they’d act like the biscuits or splines you use in wood joinery, to nail your alignment between pieces smack on. Might be best to do the stringers and their cutouts first, use them as router templates for where the chambers go in the foam. Typically, a router cutter might be long enough to rout through half the width of one of your pieces. That’s good. You can happily rout each side independantly  to fit the stringer cutouts without them interfering with each other. Glue, band clamps, there ya go.Glass over, collect the balance due ( yes, I would want a hefty amount of up-front money) and call it a day. 

(chuckling) and that’s how ya do that…   . 

But- try it first on one of the ones in the garage. Learn, make your mistakes on that or those before spending money on an older board.

Hope that’s of use

doc… 

 

 

Great American novel?  I’m gonna go with Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird, two personal favorites. 

I follow Josh Martin on Instagram, and he posted a video awhile back of ripping a wood board for chambering on a bandsaw, that would be my first choice if I had access to a nice one like he’s got. 

Hey Huck you want to do it ! So let’s go do it and you’ll know if it’s want you imagine.

I bet you’ll not win some weight board will be heavier and stiffer for me, but i can be wrong.

Not a problem you’ll make an old board ride again, you’ll spend some money?  Not a problem you’ll have good time to do it no?

I’d use a Festool rail saw to section the board lengthwise…

Router jigs are easy to make…

No big deal…

Have fun …!!!..

I vote router. Check out cnc router bits, they make some specifically for foam and plastics that aren’t unreasonably priced and you can get them long (2"+). I used my trim router and straight bit to “chamber” the frame of my most recent hollow wood board project. Basically used the stamped steel edge guide that came with the router for the convex side and taped a curved “single point” home made block to the guide for the concave side. It worked better than I anticipated. My only advice if you try this is to mark a line on the edge guide where the center of the router bit is, it might be on the guide already but mine wasn’t marked. As you are routing keep that line touching the board so the chamber wall stays even. Mine ended up with a few wavy spots before I marked my guides. Hopefully I explained that well enough. If not I can make some pictures of what I mean.

Good Luck with the project and share any pictures of the journey!

Thanks Paul, I didn’t see it as a big deal either.  Prob won’t get a huge weight loss, but it would be nice to lighten it up a little.

.

Just like that. I probably should have watched the full video, my bad.

It’s worth watching, a lot going on with this build. I use his reinforced hotcoat method all the time now.