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Hey girls and boys!

Ever wanted to build a board? It's not that hard. Follow me on my journey

Got some wood strips, 10mm thick:
Decided about a new board design, blunt copy of some other board. Transparent flowers paper to see how the wood looks under. Most important - avoid the wood knots

This is the board top. Flip the wood strips and double check the bottom wood for a nice look. Flip it again and again till you 100% satisfied. There is no room for error here since one knot can ruin your work.
If all good, mark the wood with pencil from 1...n so you know which is first and last. Pencil the SQUARE outline. Will need it later.
Cut the template off your design and sand it well. Will need it later. I'm using a belt sander here:
TBC

Now we have a template.

The template must be perfect coz I'll be using it many times to build a few boards. Hopefully. The question is tho, how to check if the template is symmetric?

I added a small video how I check this. The vid is 4x faster than normal (for a fast viewers 4 full seconds! Check it out!

My reasoning is that if one offcut matches other corners, it's perfect:



TBC

Making a plank is easy, just find some spot where you can use your clamps against the wall. This is why we need a square cut wood plank (see my comment from above). If the plank is not square, very hard to glue the wood strips:
Thinning the board tips, I am using a hand belt sander (stationary is good for the rails). This is the hardest part for me:
Now I am using the above template to make a channel for my pre-made rails:

This is an example with a bamboo core and the template on left side:
'Cat the Inspector' is looking after my work:
How easy is to assemble the pre-made rails is on the below vid. I'm using a minimum amount of PU glue for this. If pouring epoxy it would be mess all around, heaps of waste and most importantly the colors would not be so vivid:



Joining the PU rails (as seen on my posts):



Cleaning the PU excess with my router (trimmer) add on:
See how clean the rails are:
One can use the belt sander as well (dust everywhere). The board is now almost ready for glassing.
The core weight is 1333 grams.

My target is 2kg board or less. And an awesome of awesomeness looking board.

TBC

Nice tutorial style post. Keep it coming. What wood did you use in this build? Would like to know what glass and epoxy you are going to use too.

Thanks.

This is Paulownia wood and I'll be using 1x 200g UNI on top, 1x Biax 120g on bottom, and UNI carbon strip (1 or two on top). That is it. Epoxy? Probably W.System 105. My preferred epoxy is Entropy Super Sap CLR but no one sells the stuff in here.

D.

Very interesting.

Why not one piece of wood for the core?

I think if we look at any production board, most of them this days are made with a number of small tiny wood strips.
Other than avoiding knots in a wood and wood wrapping, I think it is due to the cost. It costs much less to make a plank with wood strips (maybe even in one $ digits).

Almost done!

Now we thinned the tips and rails a bit, and it's time for drilling. I'll leave to your imagination how to drill the fins holes (keeping some trade secrets:) As seen, the fin holes are done with colored epoxy. I've drilled more holes on one side to have option for moving the fins back and forth.

Now, prep the inserts holes. For inserts I'm using Forstner bit and just a few millimetres deep hole. The rest will be drilled before glassing the bottom.
Prep all materials for glassing, blue is perforated film, on board is bleeder, far above are FG and CF.
Now I know all FG + CF is 266 grams.

For this board top, I've used 120ml 1:5 WS fast epoxy + 70ml 1:3 WS ultra clear. Just to remind myself, my target is around 2kg board.

I've preped my rocker table before glassing with 8.5cm rocker and 3mm concave.

Here it is:
No fancy equipment, no more than $5 spent on this rocker table setup. Two clamps are holding an perspex sheet in the middle, and a few wood pieces and the board template under making a rocker. No more, no less.

Here is a side 8.5 cm rocker:
And a sealed vac film all around:
What is under the pump, I'm hoping, is my best work ever.

TBC

The nervous waiting what happened under the pump was worth every second.

Whoooooooo.....

First glimpses of unfinished board (uncut), absolutely no wrinkles and no dry spots:




Ended up with 4.5cm rocker and 5mm concave which is well done. Weight 1820 grams atm.

Now everything is easy peasy after the top. The bottom glassing is not going on the rocker table any more since the rocker and concave is already built.

Next thing is drilling inserts holes all the the way through and bottom glassing with 120 grams FG biax.

If glassed with something like 220 grams Uni FG, this board would be like a concrete block, not much flex.

This is the result of bent wood in two (3) directions. The FG is just keeping wood in a 3D shape (rocker, concave).

One thing: all costs up to now are about AU$25-35. And that is a big, BIG, value for money

TBC

downunder wrote: ...

One thing: all costs up to now are about AU$25-35. And that is a big, BIG, value for money

TBC

Forget about the money ; that sense of Pride, for your workmanship, is
what it's all about ?

GOOD JOB !!!

Bille