First Coat of Glass

The shaping is complete and I put the first coat of glass on. It's amazing how much the grain pops out once you get the glass on. The pictures are of the first coat. I'll post some of the hot coat tonight. Two things that I did that were recommended by Brad at Grain Surfboards:

Before glassing, I filled in some valleys on the rail of the board. There were a few places where sanding pulled away parts of the bead and cove strip and/or I failed to get a good clamp on. I taped around these areas and filled them in with epoxy. This was a good way to get experience mixing and applying the epoxy in a small enough area that it wouldn't mess with the whole board. After an hour or two I then began the rest of the board. Brad suggested to let it harded and then sand it, but I waited just long enough for it to stay in the crack when I put it back to horizontal so that it would bond to the next coat of glass. It seemed to work.

Second, I had a few dings on the top of the board. Rather than sanding these smooth, I put epoxy on them first then laid the glass over top, just like you do with the grain surfboard graphic (or your own depending on what you do). This ensure there is enough epoxy to fill the ding and bond with the fiberglass. Otherwise, enough epoxy may not drip through the glass and you are left with either a dent or a white spot. It should be noted that this method does allow you to see the ding. It shows a different wood color/grain when you follow this method. However, I feel it gives the board some character. Just like an antique piece of furniture, the many dings, dents and patches I have on the board add to the character and make it evident that this was a real project, something I created in my garage and not something pressed out by a machine in China. I'm thrilled with the results.

Adding the Fins

There isn't much to say in this post, I'm mainly just adding pictures. Finished up the bulk of the shaping and added the fin plugs. It was just a matter of drilling three 1 inch holes on each side. I was thankful that my method for gluing in the blocking worked as all the holes I drilled found solid wood inside the board. I set them in and used epoxy to glue them in solid. The one mistake I made was that I put too much epoxy in the hole. When I fit the plugs in the epoxy pushed out and went all over. I was scrambling to wipe up epoxy and make sure that I didn't end up gluing the fins into the plugs or epoxying over the fin screws. Once the epoxy had hardened it took a few wiggles and a sharp box cutter to break the fin free but nothing a tad bit of sanding won't clean up. I was happy with the results. Next step is putting on the top coat of glass.

Shaping the board

Here are just some pictures from the new shaping stands. Thanks to Surfersteve.com for the rough plans I used. I Just cut the 2x6's that I used for the rocker table to make the stands. All that sanding is a lot more work than I expected, but then again I am proceeding cautiously using mostly block sander. I've become better with block plane, but I still have trouble in some spots with it causing chips. I don't know if this is because the blade is getting dull or if I need to move in a different direction relative to the grain of the wood. Anyways, I pretty excited about how the board is turning out so far. You can see from the pictures there is still a decent amount of shaping because you can still see where the board is uneven and of varying thicknesses.

I started off thinking I was going to devise some elaborate system of measurements to make sure everything was the same all the way around, but I've found that my eye is treating much better than most of my measurements. Once a portion gets shaped the measurements change and I ended up having to re-measure so that lasted about 10 mins. I have made marks however of points where I want the shape of the rail to change so that that they match on both sides roughly.