Monday, January 5, 2015

Biggest board to date underway, 11 foot glider

 EPS core hot wired out and then cut on APS 3000 machine with Shape 3D software.
 3mm Paulownia parabolic rail band added immediately stiffens things up
 Nose and tail overlap trimmed off
All ready to hand plane the 3mm rail band down to the foam and tidy it all up. Also waiting for the 12 foot .7mm PVC bag to be made up to use on this.
A couple od hand weights help keep the board on the rack while I hand plane the 3mm rail bands down to the foil of the foam.
Plenty of meat but still not a bad foil
Single concave and the start if the rail chine
Into a double concave in the single concave and a slight more angle on the chine
 Double concave
Chine fades out as it goes into a straight double concave
Double becomes a V
V out through the tail
 Long and slender at 24" wide finished

The 9 foot x 22" log gets a start.

 EPS cut on the AKU machine with thew rails included , just thinned out
 Scribe the 18mm all round to be cut off
 Good looking little board
Nice template / outline
Cut the 18mm off the shaped railsas this will be replaced by Paulownia
 Clean up the outline with the surf form
 Cut out the 3mm rail band
Glue and tape them on
Wood all round and trimmed down to the foil of the board
Ready to add the top and bottom skins
First up I need to set up the rocker table and get the right blocks at each end of the board

Looking good

 Pour out the " Fix It Mate " Polyurethane glue
 I use a plastic squeegee
With the humidity at about 80% this time of year and the glue reacting with moisture, it doesn't take long for it to start foaming and expanding and you can tell that as it changes colour as well.
Glue on , then postion and tape the skins top and bottom.
 Slide and postion in the bag over the blocks screwed down to the table
 Seal up the end with masking tape and turn the pump on for 2 hours.

 Laminating the rails on 5mm at a time
 You can pull a lot of pressure with just good quality masking tape
 Sharpen the hand plane and tidy up the rails top and bottom
A heavy weight is great for holding things in place while I put my back into a few good sessions of hand planing
Looks good as it cleans up
Thats better

Tail block on to finish things off.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Genki's visit

About 10 days out from Christmas I got an email from Genki Terauchi from Japan.He is a friend of Nobby's and did Paul Jensen's board building class in Japan last year.He and his wife and 3 kids were looking for a camper van and hoping to book some camp sites for their trip.I made him aware that this was the busiest time of year and to have not booked something by now was going to be making things pretty hard.First up they lost a day by being stuck in Taipei , they did find a camper in Brisbane but lost their site booking at Noosa so went to Broken Head. While there the camper broke down and being Christmas by now they had to wait 3 days for a mechanic to come back to work.When I got back from Sydney he called and was heading for the Gold Coast. They couldn't find a site anywhere here and so spent the night with us.
We had a great time and he speaks very good english. It was 80% plus humidity and 30c + even at 8pm. So they were glad to have a shower and a bed as a break from the little camper van.He is a great guy and very passionate about his wooden board building.
Genki and I with the board he built in Paul's class.

If you are going to Japan, he woulkd be a very good contact.

Genki Terauchi  -  Genki <genki007@gmail.com
Uwadana HO76, Kahoku-city, Ishikawa prefecture 929-1102, Japan
Phone: +81-90-6178-8842, SKYPE: genkinaotoko
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GreenTreeWoodworx