Kevlar Progress

Three Stages...

Kevlar layed up, then with 2oz fiberglass over the top:

Then saturated with resin and covered in peel ply to bleed the excess resin into the bleeder cloth (cotton kinda stuff) as the pressure of the bag squeezes the laminate:

and a fuzzy picture of the final laminated deck after the peel ply and bleeder were removed:

Curing overnight...will get to bend it tomorrow!

the Stage III

Here we go...time for me to get into some details...

This board has been circling my head now for about two months; but it's a project as a whole that's been a nagging question for me since my first experiments with this type of particular flex about four years ago.

What I'm after is a kind that twists around the center of the board, changing the outline, rocker and projecting out of turns with the same type of motion as a Flex Spoon.  Imagine a rail line lifting from the tail; altering the rocker curve and outline, then when unloaded, springing back to it's normal shape....Awesome.  I know.  

The problem is with a surfboard's thick center, you can't take the same theories that the spoons use (think: a tuning fork shape of stiffness around a flexible center) to achieve the same flex pattern; it's totally backwards and only stiffens the board (think: the greater the distance between two laminates, the stiffer the part will be).

I've been through the parabolic stringer thing and I'm not sold, it's not as flexy as I want...just not enough for me and what I'm thinking of.  This brings me back to where I started.  Here is my new project-in-progress; I've named it Stage III.  

I built a 1/8" thick Paulownia skin that is shaped to use the nose and tail areas of the board to act as a torquing forces around the weaker center.  That was then sucked into the area that I routed out of the deck so it would sit flush:

In the bag ^

After removing it from the bag the board felt way too stiff so I did some brainstorming and took the volume out of the sides of the board, in order to lessen the distance between my final laminate layers.  This will be replaced with EVA foam after glassing:

That got the board much much closer, but it didn't blow me away until I decided to route the center out of the paulownia patch to allow the shape to work as two individual arms instead of one twisting body.  the strength nose-to-tail is 99% unaffected, but allowing MUCH more twist.  That cavity was then filled back in with EPS foam:

This thing threw me for a loop today but with a whole lot of brainstorming it's transformed into something more than I could have thought up.  I've gotten too deep into the 'plan' with some earlier boards, this one i've decided to work as I go and see what I can do on the fly and work as I go with the flex pattern.

Tomorrow I'll be bagging the deck Kevlar and 2oz fiberglass on...I'm so pumped....

Supaspesh

Connor and I have been workin' it out over at the glass shop on some REALLY cool boards for the past week...

Lots of good tunes have been played, and some sweet colors have been layed.......sssstoked!

Adventures in V-Baging

As i mentioned a little bit back, I am underway on my next experimental board; this one involved lots of kevlar, resin-x, 2oz fiberglass, stringerless EPS, paulownia wood, and a vacuum bag...more descriptive posts will follow :)

Step 4!

Step 1) get a hull

Step 2) ride it

Step 3) gather your thoughts

Step 4) write me an email...

here is Eric's email from yesterday:

"Ok I am finally writing this because I finally got to get a taste of
the red board on the kind of wave it does its magic at...
rode malibu - I have to say, I am embarrassed to say, I think I got
one of the funnest waves of my life on it -- on a crowd-gone-home,
dark evening lined up
(besides my first wave ever as a kid, going straight in hawaii).

Damn that board is epic.  This is a very special surfing, surfing
points on such thin railed, forward, flat, awake foiled dreams.  (for
those of us who like to surf small waves, and with feet somehow
parallel, in some psychedelic and remembered death kind of way, chop
up the babylon flavor in a metaphorical meditation

Thank you!  I can't wait to get it out to a long lined up point again,
some midweekday.

Irie,
Eric"

GO HERBIE GO!

Herbie and I are off to Shelter Surf Shop today to visit Graham and shape a board with him...stoked!

No Way

Seriously?  it's saturday?

Well either way, Morg won the Follow the Light Foundation's big-ass grand prize grant for being super badass...big ups and I couldn't be more proud, I heard he also won the people's choice award too, SNAP!

Word on the street is he won because he put a picture of Herbie in his portfolio...it's highly likely.

I cruised over to his house only to find that he hasn't even cashed in his big check yet, its just sitting on his mantle.....

 

The nerve.

Pleskunas Spoon

I took a short vacation up to Santa Cruz for the first half of the week with Stephanie, we got some time to go visit Scott up in his mountain abode and he showed us some of his friend's finds...here is one that caught my attention:

The owner wasn't present but Scott said it was an old Pleskunas.

There was at least one layer of carbon/kevlar hybrid in there:

Cool board!  TONS of flex, I haven't gone that floppy with one yet but I'm always curious to try something new...

Santa B.

Just found this great little video that Brandon made, cool to see some good friends shredding and having a good time...THIS is surfing:

Inspirted

Inspiration coms from many different places around my shop..........I saved this cup for months in the hopes of using the scheme on a board sometime.  Eric C's velosim got the treatment I've been waiting for!