my home depot board

a few people thought it would be a good idea to post the home depot process of making a board, so here is mine


bought some sheets of eps foam from home depot, 3/4" was the thickest, not really ideal. came in 4'x8' pieces, so i cut them in half is it was 2'x8' slices.


peel off the layering on both sides of the foam


use elmers glue, holds good enough to work but you can still sand through it when shaping. these panels would also work well as light modifiers for photography... see that light bounce.


after all the foams pieces were glued and taped, i layed them over a lost speed demon II board, to get a similar rocker. it won't hold the exact rocker, it will bounce back a bit, but its a good start.


glue drying overnight


cut my foam in half down the middle


smoothed the cut edges a little bit to get a nice bond.


glued in the stringer. this is where the bumps started happening in the road. i used hardboard for the stringer, because i had it in my garage and didn't want to buy anything. this stuff does not sand well, at all. dont do it. again, elmers glue

 

took one pallet from the backyard


couple screws and a skill saw later, shaping stand


template of the lost board i traced, and the rough stringer. the stringer will help lock in the amount of rocker you want, since the foam is glued to it.


also traced out some fcs m5 fins


i think i cut the foam down to under 7' before i made the blank, but since this boards end result is 6'3", you can play with your rocker a little bit here by positioning the template forwards or back before tracing


cut out with a standard straight wood saw. foam is much softer than the standard pu foam.


little rough around the edges. i left room for error.


shaped it up a little, thats a lot of foam to remove. at least its soft

 

starting to take shape. don't let the excitement overtake you, and rush


another huge mistake, i already had the rocker i wanted on the bottom, so why did i take away foam from the bottom, rather than the top? still kicking myself. oh well, i have a board with super rocker. its fun, just doesn't paddle quite as fast.

(need to fix this image when photobucket works again)
pain in the ass not sandable hardboard. cutting it like this was a little easier, but still not fun.


you can see on the deck where one layer of foam ends and the other begins. the disadvantage of using thin foam. oh well


this angle makes the rocker look worse than it is, the nose is lower when resting on fins. its still pretty bad though


not exact but a good shape to work off of


i decided to go resin research, because that is what was used in the thread i was reading. you are supposed to get more resin than this for a surfboard, but my order was messed up. they sent me the rest that i was supposed to get no problem


i should have put more time into the blank, but i was anxious. here i am taping off the rails for the first layer of glass. i figured its my first board, ill learn as much as possible, so i tinted the top and bottom different colors.

 

put magazine pages over the deck to protect it from resin dripping. would look cool just to glass over it


had a scale to measure out the resin pretty exactly


two layers of cloth, the first layer pretty much gets cut to the edges of the rails. the second layer is long enough to wrap around the rails on overlap onto the tape.


made a dark green color. had my dad help me out since he has experience with fiberglass, and i had none. always good to make extra, i forgot all my amounts though


brushing some resin onto the rails so the cloth sticks, and pasting cloth to wrap around the rails.


my stringer looks black, i like it. letting it harden


dried, laps are all looking pretty good

this is where i start getting lazy with the photos. i then cut with a razor blade along the edge of the tape to get a nice clean line. this was often at 2am when i had work early the next morning, so it was often rushed


only one layer on the deck, since im doing an inlay. you don't have to cut it to shape, since its just going to be cut out anyway. i think i taped along the edge of the fiberglass that was already there, and let the tape hang over the rails so the new resin didn't get on the board.

 

cut out the inlay with a razor blade along the line of the other color

i think i added two more sheets of cloth over the deck, and at least one wrapped around the rails to strengthen them. they came out clear so you don't have to be so exact with cutting it out, you can just paste it onto the bottom of the rails. if you weren't doing resin tints, you could do all three layers of cloth on the deck at once.


after all the layers are on there, painted on a layer of resin with a 99c brush


drilled out holes for the leash plug, and vent plug (since its eps)


heres my vent, some cloth to firmly attach it, some tape to make sure no resin gets on the threads


drying. this thing will need some sanding


bought a board of oak, planed it down to about the right thickness, then used a table jigsaw to cut out the shape of these, and then put a belt sander in a vice to sand the right curves into the fins. i love the look of wood fins and decided to do glass on instead of a fin system


mmmmm, oak


i taped off both sides of where the seem meets, and used black acrylic paint to make a pin line, to hide the imperfections. matches the stringer.

 

first layer of glass over the fins


cut off the excess with a razorblade. leave some extra, 1/4"?


found two pieces of scrap wood, and hot glued them together to match the fin angle of an existing shortboard.


tacked the fins on at the right angle with hot glue. as far as fin placement, i copied the placement from the lost board. more attention went into these fins, but im only going off of what i have photos of. ill post the thread i got all my info from at the end, don't worry


used a dremel to sand down the extra. you want to leave some though so you can drag the fins across that sandbar.

yada yada yada..... resin.... sanding.... other stuff

surfboard!

looks like it works


like how the colors came out. different from most of the usual boards.


fins are my favorite part. you can see i didn't do final sanding yet to get the back right, but i coudln't wait any longer to try it out. i forgot to mention how i taped up the back and poured in some extra resin so it created that hard line, when it was all sanded and finished up. its mentioned in the other thread


so as far as how it surfs, the first swell i really got to surf it in was danny. little slow to paddle, doesn't float as much as other epoxy boards, but once you get going on a wave, this thing turns on a dime (thanks super rocker) and is actually really fun. i haven't been surfing that long or anything but i sure am addicted and it was neat to ride something i made.

these boards are more delicate (home depot) than your average board. i left it in my car while at work, in the sun, without unscrewing the vent plug (that was smart) so i do have some delamination. its still water tight as far as i know, but it stills works. i wouldn't recommend a shortboard as a first board, my next one this spring will be a retro twinzer fish shape sort of thing. you can really screw up one of those and it will still be fun.

http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1020650

this thread, is what i followed religiously to make it. he has many more photos and much more detail on every step of the way. read it

 

hard to judge time since i had to try to fit in time around work. you could do it in a week if you have the time, easily.

thanks, i guess since the foam that i used is so porous, i wanted to make sure i didn't get delamination since these boards are a bit more delicate than a conventional board.

i used a wood saw to cut the blank, and a block cheese grater type of thing, can't remember the exact name for it. you can see it in a photo or two sitting on the blank. this foam is much softer than PU blanks so it was easy enough to remove the foam. i didn't mind putting in the extra time. then just sand paper and stuff

yeah respirators are a good idea. epoxy is much less harmful than glassing PU boards though

for my next board, there is a good possibility i will just buy a blank, unless i can find some better foam to use