The Glasspocalypse

 With the shaping out of they way it’s time to start glassing. This is when it really starts to come together and transform from a piece of foam into a surfboard. After taking the time to change the stands over for glassing and setting up the work space it was time to get busy. The board had been finished off with spackle and sanded the night before, so a quick dusting off was in order. Once the board was dust free it was time lay down a layer of 4oz cloth on the bottom. 

  Time for my 1st pour of resin. This is obviously nerve racking the 1st time you do it. You don’t want to end up not having enough resin to do the job properly. You don’t to get the wrong ratio of resin to catalyst, and you want make sure to get a good bond between the glass cloth and the foam. The bottom lamination came out way better than I expected. It looked like the spackle that was applied to fill in the micro gaps between the beads was coming up as a milky mix of resin and spackle with each pass on the squeegee. This had me stressed out, but I just kept pulling it out until the resin was clear. Next time I’ll skip the spackle and laminate the glass directly to the foam. I was also pleased with the laps. The first lamination was a success! The deck lamination was a piece of cake. I’m starting to get a little cocky at this point. I got this. I honestly thought I would have this board in the water in a few days. How wrong I was....

I’m going to skip to the disaster, no point in dragging it out, just to put it out there the hot coat on the deck came out great. Installing the fins, that’s where things went to hell. I had purchased a kit to build the board, the issue with the kit is it’s the bare minimum to build a board, so when it came to getting fins on properly you need to do your research. I didn’t, I went in router and hole saw blazing and paid a heavy price. 

Diving in headfirst wasn’t what led to the boards ultimate demise. It was a lack of attention mixing up the epoxy resin & not doing more research on how to set the plugs and the center fin box.

Problem number one, I mixed up my resin and catalyst. You heard it right. I tried to set the fin box and FCS plugs with resin that wouldn’t cure. I had a sticky mess on my hands that couldn’t be cleaned up with acetone. Acetone melts EPS foam so I was screwed. 

Problem number two, I jumped the gun on the fin install. I should have been doing this after the hot coat was applied to the bottom of the board, not before. 

Problem number three, I should have made a proper jig to route out the fin box. The fin box hole was way to wide and sloppy. 

So the 1st board was flop, but I learned some important lessons I will take into the next build.