Nomad's DIY foil build

[NorCalNomad]

*I FINISHED IT AND IT WORKS. Will be updating this first bit in the coming weeks https://www.instagram.com/p/BUap7taFREv/*

Yup I know there are a ton of other DIY foil build threads but I wanted to start this one so that I'm not jacking someone else's thread. I'll also be constantly updating these first post.

Also going to be reserving a bunch of space to tell a nice beginning to end story of my experience. This will make it so you don't have to wade through a ton of comments to get to the build. That's not to say there is GOLD found in the comment of the threads I pulled info from. Also I'm going to put together all the links and resources I've used in one place.

Resources
I'd recommend screen shooting or pdf "printing" anything you find on the internet and really want to keep as who knows what website won't be there down the road
Of Course the Seabreeze article by Phezulu1 on here.
http://www.seabreeze.com.au/News/Kitesu ... 49403.aspx
Hawaiis' Super low fi wood builds is what really inspired me to get my hands into this project.
viewtopic.php?t=2382338
Lots of gold, since there are multiple builds and techniques in here.
viewtopic.php?f=196&t=2386805
This video by Mat has lots of good idea for how to layup or deal with certain issues and I have screenshoted a bunch of it to reference
https://vimeo.com/136474166


Objectives
1. Build a foil that I can change the wings
1a. Possibly make the fuselage removable from the mast
2. Keep it reasonably cheap and durable
3. Try to make as much of it as I could in my tiny apartment.
4. Not have it be a race machine or a learning foil (I was lucky enough to be able to learn to foil on a shop's Double Agent)
5. Not overanalyze the design too much so I can have more fun.
6. Share what I learned and my plans to help out everyone

Research and Initial Design Phase
*MORE TO COME AS I UPLOAD AND ORGANIZE NOTES*
A little teaser for now

This certainly ate up a lot of my time, and should for anyone so they can get a good sense of what people have done out there.
I decided to use the Seabreeze "plans" as a sort of jumping off point, and then peppered in measurements from some commercial foils. I also converted measurements into imperial where ever it made it easier for me.

So far the basic measurements are
Mast = 36"
Fuselage = 30" I've actually decided to go with a shorter fuselage at 26"
Rear wing based off the Liquid Force Happy foil
Front wing based off the Liquid Force Happy foil but I forgot that my OG wing layup was only 22" instead of 24" wide, so it's a truncated delta shape now.

Material List
So far I've bought/ plan on using.
- 5/32" Baltic Birch Ply (you only need a 1/2 sheet to make a foil)
- 8oz Fiberglass twill
- Knytex Tape 6" (biaxial with chopped mat glass 26.45 oz/sq yd)
- 12k Carbon Uni Tape
- 5.8oz Carbon Twill
- TAP Marine Grade Epoxy System with slow and fast hardener (Will update at the end of the build how much I used)
- SS hardware (have yet to decide on how and what hardware I will use for attaching the wings and board

[NorCalNomad]

Plywood Lamination
*MORE TO COME AS I UPLOAD AND ORGANIZE NOTES*
So not having easy access to a shop right now, I had to get crafty with my circular saw on my roof to cut out all my shapes.

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All the pieces cut out!

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For the lamination having the fiberglass layers in between really sets the shape that you put into them and definitely gives you way more stiffness, which will hopefully let me use less carbon down the road. Also for the wings it lets you really set in the curve and not having to worry about it when your laminating on your FG shells.
Apartment life minus shop = laminating in my kitchen for all the flat parts.
Dry fitting my lamination setup for my mast to make sure I'm not going to put any curve into it.

For the front wing I decided to use the vents that have a nice continuous curvature to be the form. Worked pretty well actually, but almost seems like too much curve.

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For the rear wing since it was a smaller part I just decided to put one single weight in the middle of the wingspan to give me a constant (enough) curve for that. Here is some unedited timelapse footage from the lamination and curving of the rear wing


Finally got a handle for how much resin I needed by the time I got to my last part. Here is a run down of how much I used and layered up so people in the future cna start to get an accurate idea of how much resin they actually need to use.

- 4oz Mast and Baseplate (3 plywood, 2 4oz sglas...yeah these ones didn't get the 8oz twill. With the twill you'd probably need closer to 6-8oz)
- 5oz Front Wing (3 plywood, 2 8oz twill) After shaping this wing I probably could have used more since it seems a little dry in some spots.
- 2.5oz Rear Wing (3 plywood, 2 8oz twill)
- 6oz Fuselage (5 plywood, 4 8oz twill)

For the fuselage I laminated it so that I can still easily slip my mast into it so as to take advantage of strong joint. I don't think I'll make it removable for this first build to make it easier on myself, and so I have to order less speciality parts/ good SS fasteners.

The piece covered in celowrap is my baseplate lamination since it has the same 4.5" width as my mast and the same thickness. When I join the mast and fuselage I have room to put some 8oz twill in the joint to help strengthen that joint.

[NorCalNomad]

Shaping the Wings and Mast

Since I went with bent wings I couldn't use an easily use a jig to help me get the shapes I need. If you build a "rocker table" for the wings I'm sure you could devise a simple enough jig to profile the wings more accurately. One of the nice things of having the anhedral and dihedral shapes is that I'm always shaping the majority of the wing on the concave side. Trying to do the same shaping on the convex side would SUCK.

But since I'm trying to keep this simple I'm just going to use printouts mounted to styrene to be my measuring jig for handshaping.

So I was able to use my boss's backyard for the majority of my wing shaping which allows me to cut down the ghetto clamping on my roof. Also he has a proper sander so I don't just have to use my sanding disk adapter on my drill

Starting to shape the rear wing. The number of plys and fiberglass layers makes some excellent lines to follow.

Rear wing done and about to start the front

Rear wing and part of the way shaping the front wing

Back to the roof for the end of the front wing and the mast.

Since I have to profile so much length on the mast I decided to first profile one end of the mast and establish my ply lines that I can pull across the length of the mast.

Took a little too much out towards the trailing edge so I have to shift my lines a little

At %45 done

[NorCalNomad]

So after shaping everything and accidentally breaking my fuselage in half it was time to start playing with resin again.

First up was making holes for the inserts and bolts. Made the holes oversized, backfilled them with epoxy, then drilled them the right size. Actually had fill the holes "twice" since the first amount that I put in soaked into the plywood and didn't fully fill them.

I have a drill bit made for drilling plastic and that REALLY helped to make clean holes in the epoxy.

Starting to resemble something!

So since I broke the fuselage it was a real pain to line everything up. Did a bunch of dry fitting to make sure I could do it fast and solidly when laminating. I used the kynex tape (biaxial+chopped strand) to fill the gap between the fuselage and mast. The holes in the fuselage were to let some of the resin seep out. This was also my first try at ghetto bagging (wrapping with celo wrap), wasn't really needed.

The wings though are a different challenge.

So I tried the rear wing first and tried to do both sides of the wing at once and ghetto bag... without a proper vacuum bag. Although I did figure out that cold water surf wax is perfect for filling holes since it gets malleable with skin warmth and should melt out REALLY easy.

So the front wing I decided to do a more traditional freelap surfboard style lamination of one side at a time. The top surface I tried to see if using celo wrap to smooth out the surface really would work...not really. Also wanted to see if I could use it to "pull" the fiberglass around the corners, kinda but not really worth the time. So on the bottom surface I laminated it up, waited until the resin got tacky but still malleable. This took a few hours since it's slow set resin. But that let me wrap the fiberglass around the edges and smooth it out really nicely. Thank god I won't have to sand the leading edge!

[NorCalNomad]

-Space reserved for build 4-

[NorCalNomad]

-Space reserved for build 5-

[NorCalNomad]

-Space reserved for build 6-

[NorCalNomad]

-Space reserved for build 7-

[NorCalNomad]

-Space reserved for build 8-

[rynhardt]

Looking forward to following this!

Since there are a lot of foils now on the market, is there any particular one that you're using as a baseline? The plan view of the wings look somewhat similar to the Liquid Force foil fish.