This post will be my visual journal while I am working on making my first foam and fibreglass surfboard. I’m going to be posting everything in here, including my production process, any inevitable mistakes I make and any things I learn from the experience. I’m hoping I can make a cool board if I do everything right.
The first step was to design the board on Shape3DX to get accurate dimensions and measurements for the rocker, thickness and finbox locations.
The finished board in imperial measurement. I think if I can follow this guide properly then the board should come out pretty good.
The round squash performer but this time in metric measurement, which I’ll be using most of the time.
This is another helpful summary, giving me length, width, thickness and volume. The board should hopefully come out a little less than 28.5L.
This view shows the bottom contours and vee.
What the board will hopefully look like when finished.
The underside.
Rails.
A wooden mal I made. Hopefully making this board gives me an advantage for this foam one.
The blank I’ll be using from surfblanks australia.
The template I’ll be cuting out onto mdf and then tracing onto the blank.
The template cut out.
Starting to hack away at it.
The tail.
Kinda fucked this bit up. The tail isn’t straight.
One half of the board done.
Simple tool I made for making sure the rails are square.
Mostly all done now. I just have to fix the tail up.
Not for removing all the crap off the top of the blank.
Done! The foam under the top layer was much softer.
Some strange rocker I’ve created.
Next up is an important paprt of the shaping process; making railbands. Because I’d already fluked enough of the board, I decided I wanted to try do the railbands properly. I printed out of the outline of the board with the railband dimensions based roughly off Greenlight Surf Supply’s guidelines. Now to figure out how to apply these to the board. Also, I think that the board I’ve made has gone slightly skinnier in width than the original outline, which might be a problem when trying to copy the lines onto the board.
Railbands.