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First plywood kiteboard

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PoltergeistWZ
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First plywood kiteboard

Postby PoltergeistWZ » Sun Jun 12, 2016 10:20 am

Hello there!

My friend, Kuba, and I (my name is Wojtek, nice to meet you!) are building our first ever kiteboard. We have about 4 years of experience in building longboards, our work had many ups and downs during this time but we've gained a lot of precious knowledge on working with plywood and fiberglass. That's why we decided to build our own board and to use plywood for this purpose.
We rejected the idea of building a board of paulownia or balsa wood because it is quite difficult to get it here in Poland. We also wanted to try something stronger than foam board. We suspect that a plywood board might be kinda heavy but we hope that, when nicely tapered, it will work fine and be just light enough. Please, follow us on our jurney through the world of building kiteboards. :roll:
If you have any ideas, pieces of advice or you'd just like to share your opinion on this project, feel free to post a comment below!

Stage 1 - building a rocker table

We designed the board to have about 6cm of continuous rocker. To build the ribs we used some old pieces of particleboard that were laying around in my garage. After cutting all the straight edges on a table saw, we roughly cut the shape of the rocker using a jig saw. Then we used a more precisely cut piece of plywood with the shape of our rocker, we screwed it to each of the ribs and using a router mounted under the table we copied the shape from the plywood template to each of the particleboard ribs. The result was quite satisfactory. :thumb: The top surface is a piece of hardboard (?); basically a very fine particleboard (don't know the exact name in English). The result of stage 1 looks as follows (the middle ribs are yet to be screwed, the same with the surface piece):
13405106_1121035344621274_866382678_o.jpg
13405145_1121035511287924_199375207_o.jpg

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby longwhitecloud » Sun Jun 12, 2016 10:31 am

60mm rocker as in 30mm each end?! 60mm at each end is way too much - nah i see in pic now - 30mm rocker is fine

good work, just go for it....

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby rynhardt » Sun Jun 12, 2016 10:41 am

What size board are you aiming for, i.e. length and width?
And how are you going to be shaping the core? I've seen various methods on-line to get rocker into plywood, from steam to wet cure to heavy weights..

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby PoltergeistWZ » Sun Jun 12, 2016 11:38 am

Here are all the dimensions, this is only an initial project and as we progress some dimensions might change.

Image

We are building a wakestyle board and after doing some research I figured out that wake boards tend to have about 6 or 7 cm of rocker. We will probably bend it using steam and/or hot water. We are going to route a channel for resin edges in flat piece of plywod, pour the edges, then taper the whole board using a jig (a "bridge" the router can slide on, which slides on pieces of wood at an angle to get the taper). Many users on this forum used a similar type of jig to get tapered egdes. Then we are going to steam the board, pre bend it and then proceed to vacuum lamination.

Do any of you happen to have a blueprint/plan/template for drilling inserts? How to position the holes and what are the dimensions?

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby rynhardt » Sun Jun 12, 2016 3:55 pm

PoltergeistWZ wrote: We are building a wakestyle board and after doing some research I figured out that wake boards tend to have about 6 or 7 cm of rocker. We will probably bend it using steam and/or hot water. We are going to route a channel for resin edges in flat piece of plywod, pour the edges, then taper the whole board using a jig (a "bridge" the router can slide on, which slides on pieces of wood at an angle to get the taper). Many users on this forum used a similar type of jig to get tapered egdes. Then we are going to steam the board, pre bend it and then proceed to vacuum lamination.

Do any of you happen to have a blueprint/plan/template for drilling inserts? How to position the holes and what are the dimensions?
Yeah wake boards have around 6-7 cm of rocker. If you're mounting boots, then insert spacing is normally 6" (or 152.4mm) per boot, and the boots are between 46 to 52cm apart. There are generally 3 sets of inserts per boot so you can adjust your stance width. Another easy cheat is to search online for a wakeboard of the same size and see where they put the inserts.

Wakeboards generally have the inserts located on the centreline of the board. Kiteboards tend to have the inserts staggered, i.e. more ducked out and sometimes closer to the heelside edge.

On my boards I generally mount boots so I run the inserts on the centreline. You get footpads/straps with multiple mounting holes that make them easy to mount on a wake style board.

If in doubt, get your boots/footpads first and then mark the insert locations on the board.
Attachments
wake inserts.png
typical wake inserts
wake inserts.png (398.71 KiB) Viewed 4704 times
Vanhunks-foot-strap-and-pad-600x600.jpg
adjustable foot pads
Vanhunks-foot-strap-and-pad-600x600.jpg (43.93 KiB) Viewed 4704 times

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby PoltergeistWZ » Sun Jun 12, 2016 5:49 pm

Very thanks for your help! But is the spacing between bolts the same with boots and with straps? Are these 6 inches also applicable for footpads? At the moment I am planning to build a wakestyle board but I'll buy a set of pads for it - it'll just make everything cheaper, we're a bit short on budget but we want to get this board on water asap :D

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby rynhardt » Sun Jun 12, 2016 8:14 pm

PoltergeistWZ wrote:Very thanks for your help! But is the spacing between bolts the same with boots and with straps? Are these 6 inches also applicable for footpads? At the moment I am planning to build a wakestyle board but I'll buy a set of pads for it - it'll just make everything cheaper, we're a bit short on budget but we want to get this board on water asap :D
no, the spacing for kiteboards are not necessarily the same. Sucks, I know.
Best is to buy your footpads first and plan the inserts around what you have.

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby plummet » Sun Jun 12, 2016 11:09 pm

Looks like good dimensions. Except the 60mm rocker will give you a horrendously power hungry board. You will need to design in some concave to counter act the rocker or pull the rocker back to 40mm is.

Thick is the ply you are using? It will spring back if its too thick. So 60mm table might work at making a 40-50mm rocker....

Ps. Don't bend your wood by steam and water. That ads moisture to the material and can weaken the glues between the plys. Use thinner ply wood and laminate the sheets together to get the desired rocker......

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby PoltergeistWZ » Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:25 am

I realize the actual rocker will be smaller and there will be a bit of springback, but that's fine. If I glue the plies in shape first, how do I route a channel for edges and taper the whole board? I thought about doing it first with a flat piece of plywood before any contact with lamination table.

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Re: First plywood kiteboard

Postby plummet » Mon Jun 13, 2016 11:26 am

Do all that first. Then layup glass and laminate plys together at the same time. Then you will get the least spring back and strongest design.


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