it’s a pleasure for me to be able to ask you here on swaylocks. Such a rad place on the internet! I hope to be able to contribute something to this community as I finally started building surfboards this year.
Anyway, to my person: I’m a student from Germany’s north coast and to be honest…I do not have the opportunity to visit a shaper and ask him for help or info. So surfboard building is kind of trail and error and watching videos/reading on the internet.
I’m still working on my first board and have a question what to do next.
The board is a 6’9" PU board, laminated with Silmar poly resin.
On the deck I did a layer of 4oz cloth “until” the edge of the cutlap from the bottom. 2nd layer is 6oz wrapped around the rails to the bottom of the board.
I had no mayor problems with laminating.
So I started with the hotcoat process.
Mixed my own hotcoat resin and tested the resin before possibly ruining my board.
Resin hardened as expected - non-tacky with wax rising on top.
So I did the hotcoat on the deck.
At this point I’ll show you some pics, as a lot of you are very experienced and pics will tell you more then I can do.
As a side note: the hardened hotcoat resin on the entire deck and rails is not tacky!!! Cured just fine.
The problem I have is that the area close to the rail (incl. the rail) on both sides is quit level and “the weave of the 6oz cloth seems to be saturated”, but the area along the stringer has some strange solid “uprisings” of resin and the weave seems to be saturated poorly. I can still see the weave on some places. My guess is that I applied to much pressure with the brush on my final brush along the board, especially along the stringer area and nose and tail, and removed to much resin. I hope you can see it on the pics.
What do you reckon should I do next???
Weight is not an issue for me! I thought about either handsanding the surface slightly and applying another thin hotcoat to seal the board properly. Or to sand it normally after hotcoating the bottom.
First off… nice first board. you have done a great job with laminating. Your hot coat isnt bad either. In my opinion you have a few options. Sand it out as normal after applying the bottom hot coat. You could also do a little cheater coat over the “dry” or textures spots where you feel weave may pop out when sanded. You could do this right away just over the top, or sand it out slightly first and open up any little pores that may need help getting resin down in them. Dont sand so much as to actually hit the weave, but just to open up any spots that would be hard for resin to get situated in. Then do the bottom hot coat and sand it all.
Also looks like you may have pulled your tape a little early or the hot coat. Thats why you got that little drip curtain. Also you can hang around while the hot coat is setting up and periodically brush along that tape line to eliminate the drip curtain or too thick of resin on your edges.
Come to think of it, maybe you didnt even tape off, but I doubt it.
Your first board looks better than my first ten, so take this with a handful of salt. First time sanding down a hotcoat on your first lam, there is a good chance you are going to hit some weave, so just sand out as normal and then do a second thin coat or “gloss” and should cover your low spots, just keep her clean. Sure the more experienced guys will have some tips for yer when they see the thread…
…hello; that s all good; no problem with that hot coat. May be in one of the pictures I see kind of a raised stringer. Anyway, if you do a hot coat with more resin than that, you ll finish with a very poor fiber/resin ratio, so that is ok. If you will apply a gloss coat, start to sand with a coarse grit and finish with no more than 120. If you will apply an spray finish start to sand with not so aggressive grit and finish with 220 then the spray.
Regarding cloth schemes: Your first deck layer was not good to cut it to the bottom layer cut lap; you should have the rail covered because two things:
1-resistence due to the rails is what you cut more in the shaping.
2-the rails should have more strength and be more rigid than the bottom (to flex) and the deck is the intermediate in flexibility.
