wonky backyard longboard

haha, that's funny.  I guess that's the intent - so to speak.  The concept for this one was born way back when I was making a wood board with wavy lines, and I drew this up to someday build from foam.

I like going outside the box like building a wood board out of old weathered fence boards, or painting a new board yellow and adding faux-dings.

This is in the same vein.  

On a philosophical note, a lot of this is kind of a reactionary thing, against the cultural obsession with machine-perfection and cosmetic aesthetics.  Computers replacing human craftsmen, plastic implants in human bodies, etc. etc.  Rage against the machine, I suppose.  Now I admit I love the look of a precision made showroom finish board as much as anyone - I just can't build them LOL, so I go in a different direction.

And maybe on some level I'm influenced by the work of Thomas Vincent Leman, and his wacky fun furniture designs that make you re-think what furniture is supposed to look like.

Yeah, I get that its not for everyone :-)

Although I've had this design on the backburner for quite awhile, I have to give credit (for pushing me to go ahead and try this) to Barry Snyder and Mattwho for their inspirational work with custom stringers posted on this forum.  Even 'tho they're in a different league than my crude efforts.

mattwho wrote:

Huck why EPS?  My take is two more strigers.  What fun! I see your fix's to the usual (glue up blues) problems.

Nice work!  Aloha

Hey Mattwho thanks I've been wanting to try EPS just because I never have,  Some love it, some hate it, wanted to see for myself what its all about.  Also, I didn't think I could get a stringerless blank in poly, but now that you mention it I don't think I asked, either.  I agree, I'm gonna add two more stringers, just a matter of what kind.  Probably redwood, but might be paulownia or just colored glue, also.

I added q-cell as thickener and to make the resin easier to sand, and black for effect, but my cut is not that clean.  Meaning the width of the black glue line will doubtless vary.  I'm thinking I might add a black pin line either side of the stringer, that's why I went with black.  But will wait to see how it looks before I decide.  My motto has kinda become "celebrate the imperfections", so an irregular glue line either side of the stringer might fit into that.

I had saved a stringer from a previous board that died, made from the same blank (9-4B), so that worked out good.

That's a crazy glue-up project in your pic there, nice to see the offcuts put to use, what a project!  Barry's stuff is just on another level.  Yours too.

Thanks all, for the encouragement.

J - when I was just a kid I had a mean stepdad that used to make me go fishing with him, I've hated it ever since, ha!  But that lure sure has a familiar look...

Mike - I could always say its a test in asymetrical flex!

Mattwho - that's a great offer, but I'm thinking of going with a twin-gle-fin setup, aka the thrailkill double, so I would hate to ask for two fins!  Leaning toward a "pivot fin" shape - it would be a special challenge to glass on the fins, so I may go fin box, but really leaning toward trying to figure a way to glass on twin-gle fins.

BTW sways member Balsa did a curved stringer like that, turns out it was really just a strip that was routed into the surface, I'm thinking that's probably what they did in those pics too?  Nothing new under the sun, so no claims to being first here, just doing my thing, but have never seen a pic of actual asymetric curved wood stringer.  Would love to see one 'tho!

Barry I like "Club Twisted", might have to make a logo for that to put on this board!

Cut the blank and glued it back with black resin.  I'm sure I didn't do it right, I just cut it open, slathered some epoxy on, and clamped it back.  I didn't clean anything up, just left the ragged edge from the cut.  Just eyeballed the cut freehand with a handsaw - its wonky in more ways than one!  (more than shows in the pic).  No worries, wonkiness is allowed on this one.

Got it foiled and roughed out.  Emphasis on rough.

My first EPS board, its a lot more work than shaping polyurethane foam, and not nearly as fun!  My hat's off to guys who shape this stuff with confidence, it seems hard to finesse like I can poly foam.  Is it stronger than poly, or weaker?  (I mean in the sense of pressure dings on the deck and fin box strength.)

Haha - wow, 73 yrs young and rockin!!  You go Chubby, hope I can still move like that when I'm 73 LOL.  

The lines are a bit wonky meaning the curve on top doesn't match the bottom, as the saw wandered a bit.  And the glue line looks weird cuz it wasn't a clean line, so its kinda jagged looking.  Lesson learned, I just jumped in and did it, I'll probably do it different next time.  But it'll be OK, the board turned out better than I thought it would, so far at least (of course thanks to spackle, that is!), cuz that EPS is nasty stuff after shaping poly blanks.  At one point I was close to tossing it and saying never again!  I will say this, when you're done shaping, if the board looks good, you feel like you really accomplished something.  

I was toying with different design ideas using inlay fabric and resin tints, but I think I've settled on just painting the blank and glassing it clear.  Probably just go with single box fin too, don't have the energy for my original plan of twin-single glass-ons, maybe another board down the road.  Trying to keep it simple on this one.

The EPS feels really light, and I'm not a big fan of light boards, so I'll probably go a bit heavy on glass, I like 'em strong anyway.  I picked EPS cuz I wanted a stringerless blank and didn't think I could get it in poly, but didn't think about the weight.

BTW this one is a reproduction of my "magic" board, which is getting older and nearing retirement!

Did a foam stain / seal on the rails - the spackled foam took the stain really uneven.  No biggie, I can tint the glass, just have to figure how I want to handle the clean line, not sure if I want to try to do that with a squeegee, or mask off and glass separately.

Put a fabric lam down on the deck and tail (bottom), didn't babysit the tail part like I should have, it got some bubbles which I had to cut open and push some resin into, then weight back down.  Seems to be OK now.

You can see my crappy glue-up line, I'll hide that with pin lines.  

I'll probably keep saying this, but working with EPS realllly makes me appreciate polyurethane foam!

Funny mattwho - yeah, workin' out of town, no surfboard building, during week. Hope to get some progress this weekend if I can sneak out from under the honey-do's!

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edited update: Watching the ultimate craftsman videos on another thread, Marc Andreini talks about doing a foam stain, and says it takes several coats to even out - so I masked off and did another coat, looking much better.  Trying to match the beautiful blue of my Murphy's Law mini-mal by StingRay.

When I pulled the tape from the cut lap it took huge chunks of the seal coat with it. Looks like crap. Time for some remedial work already!

Fresh out of resin again, but did manage to get a layer of glass on this one, top and bottom.  I added a bit of yellow on the bottom lam, and a lot of yellow on the top lam, because there was more to cover up on top.  Cut the tail for my wood tail block / leash attachment.

few more pics of the tail block / leash detail - gonna be similar to the detail in the last pic, from another board

thanks, just more of my eccentricity, something to do until I get more resin...

BarrySnyder wrote:

What keeps the inside of the cut brass from cutting the leash rope?

Or do you round it?

Barry - I chamfer the edges with a drill bit, clean up with rat tail file if needed. No burr or edge.

tail block / leash attachment and fin box ready for next layer of glass

thanks noleash!

Here are some more pics, I hand cut some tissue into strips (no straight edge, just free cutting with scissors), and using resin and a small brush I put them down as pinlines.  Then I hit it with some 220, and it kinda frays it a bit, I like the look.  Still ready for more glass, but when I went to buy some resin they only had it in 3 gal. quantites, so I'll wait and buy some online.  I don't need that much.

Funny Mattwho, although you have me wondering, are Posca pens expensive?  I've never tried them but they look like a fun way to add surfboard graphics.

For awhile now I've been playing around with laminating colored tissue as a graphics technique, as opposed to painting or drawing.  It has it's limitations, as some of the colors can be fugitive when exposed to prolonged UV.

Dark blue is the worst, but they all fare better when glassed over with tinted resin.  The red and black pinlines I've done it the past have held up pretty well, however, so I thought I'd use them on this board, this particular design lending itself to the slightly imperfect hand-made look.  

Here's some of my past work with tissue graphics.

A little progress, snuck out to the surfboard shack and got a bit of glassing work done this weekend, In lieu of deck and tail patch did a "reinforced hotcoat" (per Gene Cooper), maybe have it in the water soon?  I'm hoping...

Finally finished this one up, got some beach shots this week.  No ride report, waves just haven't been there for a couple weeks now.  Some windswell this morning, but kinda disorganized looking and not very clean, so I opted to start work early so I could get off early, lotsa holiday traffic on the way home.

I did resin pinlines on the deck (over the paper pinlines), and left the paper pinlines on the bottom.

Glassed heavy by most people's standards, finished weight 15 lbs., about 5 lbs. lighter than my comparable polyurethane foam board.

One of my buddies told me it made him dizzy looking at it, haha.

a few pics in action...