Shaping Rails

[Beerfan]

Sweet ric, thanks mate, it will be a 2 + 1. Budget is low!!, i can get sandpaper at work for "free"! so i will just be using a lot of paper haha!. My mate reckons he's got a small plane, so, hopefully we wont have to buy one, but we will if we have to.

SAsurfers, hope you can use this info as well, as i kind of hijacked your thread, sorry

P.S after a morning surf today, we'll be cutting the outline out! cant wait!!!

[ric_vidal]

My mate reckons he's got a small plane, so, hopefully we wont have to buy one, but we will if we have to...

BF the SMALL plane I’m refering to is tiny, 90 x 30 mm, Stanley make one model no. 12-101. They are pretty cheap. They are more important on short boards especially areas up around the nose because the curvature doesn’t allow you get your tool flat, that’s the plane I’m talking about . You may also need to run the plane at an extreme angle for the same reason. Longer boards aren’t too bad as they have a much flatter rocker.

You’ll go OK with sandpaper, it may be better actually as you’ll be taking less off at a time. Just use a backing board for the heavy removal and a backing board with some flat foam rubber or similar under your finer sandpaper for blending.

The anticipation is killing me, good luck lads!

[SAsurfers]

SAsurfers, hope you can use this info as well, as i kind of hijacked your thread, sorry

Nah its fine every bit of information helps! I never thought about it but the blanks come with a rocker right?

[ric_vidal]

Nah its fine every bit of information helps! I never thought about it but the blanks come with a rocker right?

Certainly do SAS, some blank lengths will have 20 or more possible configurations and the difference can be fractions. You can also get your own rocker configured if you supply the manufacturer with a template for the deck curve. There is also a few different foam densities, usually about 3 for shortboards that most manufacturers will offer. The lighter the foam the softer it will be and the best glass job won’t stop them from pressure denting.

The idea behind this is if you have the deck line you want in a blank then you can take the minimum amount of foam from the deck thereby leaving a nice firm surface. The firmest foam in a blank is on the outside, so all thicknessing should be done from the bottom of the board.

Only the area around the nose of a (short) board tends to have a fair bit taken from the deck, but you’re not going to stand there so it isn’t an issue. The reason they keep the blanks fairly thick through the nose is so the blank can be bent to a rocker without snapping when they put the stringer in, but they still quite often snap just on one side of the blank, and also it is a bit of a general defensive mechanism for handling and of course for customising of a board.

Any snapped nose blanks become seconds and if you want to make something short with a flatish rocker they are fine to use, or you can make some hybrid type design. I made my latest quad fin (6'1") out of a 6'10" second blank.

Seen quite a few pre-shapes with partially snapped noses, like the stringer will have let go, but they usually get finished anyway for some poor unsuspecting person.

[Beerfan]

Ric, we will be doing a 2 + 1 setup, where should we place the fins??. Also, where does the "hard" rail start near the tail??. We are almost ready to start the rails ( made up a fred!! ), and we dont really know where to start the "hard" rail near the tail. http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j157/ ... /egg-2.gif.

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j157/ ... ping-3.gif

[ric_vidal]

Ric, we will be doing a 2 + 1 setup, where should we place the fins??. Also, where does the "hard" rail start near the tail??. We are almost ready to start the rails ( made up a fred!! ), and we dont really know where to start the "hard" rail near the tail.

Keep in mind BF it is a transition to the hard edge, but as an example on the 7'9" I shaped they are still pretty hard about 20" from the tail. Some longer boards even have the tucked under edge finishing at the tail, albeit a small tuck around the tail. So maybe start ‘fred’ at about 22" then when you blend it back toward the tail with screen or paper it will come back to about that point.

Fin position is a hard one. I still think put the start of your box 5-6" from the tail, assuming it is a 10" box. This gives you plenty of leeway to move it around.

Go through this, you my find an answer:

http://scsurfers.com/board/fins.html

[Beerfan]

Thanks ric. Does the tail rail need to be bevelled at all on the top side??. I know the bottom side needs to be sharpish, but what about the top, can i just bevel it down??. At the moment it is rectangular.

[ric_vidal]

Yerp, BF. Round it off when you do your top rails, it doesn’t need to be that much. When you do your deck rails just think of it as a continuation that gets less and less as you get to the tail. Just check out any other board you’ve got or can lay your hands on to see what I mean.

Before you glass the bottom it is a good idea to take the sharp edge off the bottom tail rails. You can use your thumb nail or very light sandpaper by just giving a score. The reason for doing this is to avoid getting air bubbles trapped when you wrap over the rail as fibreglass doesn’t really want to go at 90 degrees and by doing this to the edge it makes it just a bit easier.

The tail and nose rail areas are where you are most likely to see bubbles in glass jobs and need attention.

[Kalian]

I heard that if you want to copy a board the best way is to split the board into four equal length sections.
Once that is done measure the distance from the centre of the board to the rails.
Then you make a circle curve for the tail half of the board and an eliptical curve for the front half.

I don't know if this will work or if this is common practice, suggestions.