Go Get Your Blank: Build Thread

Once the concave is in, and while it's bottom up on the rack, I go ahead and cut by bottom rail bands... two little bands to get the bottom of the rail to tuck under the board. These will be soft, almost 50/50 rails the whole way. So the tuck is just to roll the bottom of the rail down to smoothly blend into the bottom of the board with no edge whatsoever. I do it with a homemade "Fred" tool and a hard block.

 

Then I flip it over, and cut the rail bands on the deck side. I measure and make a few dots, then use the planer to "connect the dots." I never found the need for drawing lines, like a lot of guys do. The planer passes make lines... I just use them to navigate the curves and contours. I only do two bands with the planer... a primary band, then a secondary band... then I knock down the corners of the bands with the surform... then clean up the surform marks with a hard block. The hard block makes the same "lines" the planer does, so again... I'm just using those edges as lines to visualize all the curves and contours I'm after.

Here's the primary band. It's critical, because it determines the shape and volume of your rail. Screw it up, and you can't correct it.



And here's the finished deck, with all the rail bands blended, rails turned.

 

Here's the glued up tail block. Mahogany, oak, and walnut. Not attached, but it'll give you an idea.

View attachment 21267

Oh yea... and here's the All Important Nose Bevel... No noserider is complete without it.

 

Hope this works...

 

This one will be sweeter! But yea... It's available.

 

Tail block shaped and installed. Shaped smaller than the tail of the blank... then glued on with 5 min epoxy. then you shape the foam down to the block, and make any adjustments from there.

 

A quick glimpse of where I'm at... Bottom is two-toned brown and "yellow"-ish with fin patch (see rail laps) and deck is a swirled inlay.

 

Took a quick shot of the finished lam, with double pinline... bright yellow and brown/black. I'll try to grind the laps and hotcoat today. Glass bill is 6oz E bottom with finbox patch, deck is 6oz E inlay, 6oz E deck patch, full 6oz layer over that.

 

No, Mitchell... the swirl is in the inlay layer only. See the pic in my May 2 post... that pic is the inlay layer only.

Do a cutlap on the bottom lam, flip it, then tape off the lap line and mask the rails. Tape a drip edge at the rail apex like you do for a hotcoat. Roll out a single layer of cloth over the deck and just rough cut the overhang like you would any cutlap. Swirl your resin into the single deck lam, and pull the excess off the rail and just let it flow off. When it gets to the B stage, cut your inlay layer along the lap edge that you taped off. pull the tape and overhang, and you're left with two cutlapped edges butting up against each other... one rail lap edge, and your inlay edge. Do a clear deck patch and clear full lam over that, freelapped.

But before you do your clear patch and lam, baste the butting cutlapped edges with resin, sand smooth, and do your pinlines. A lot of guys do their pinlines over the hotcoat, and under the gloss coat. I find that when you do your pinlines over your first layer of lamination, then lam two layers of clear over it, then hotcoat over that, you'll never have to worry about sanding through your hotcoat and scrubbing off your pinlines.

 

The irony is... it's not that great!

But anyway... get off CL and "get your blank"... dammit.

If a moron like me can do it, so can all'ya-other rednecks!