Fins Foiled

Have gone with Rich Pavel Speed Dialer fins for my board and have just finished foiling them from bamboo. I was fortunate enough to meet and have a quick chat with Rich at The Alley Fish Fry a few weeks back, stoked to meet the guy behind the design. The fins in the photo below are not yet attached. They will be attached during the glassing stage in a couple of weeks. Pretty soon Scott and I will actually be surfing these things!!




Also here is a look at the logo that I will put onto the board under the glass job.

fins are ready

I finished the third and fourth fin in bamboo and happy with the two tone effect. The two larger fins are red cedar. Hopefully they will all be strong enough to lay a carve into the face of the wave without snapping. I hope to get them glassed with 6 or 8 Ounce glass for extra strength. This will add thickness to them, but i dont want to sacrifice the strength. Almost ready to be sent off for glassing. Running my eyes over every edge of the board now to finish any imperfections.

rail shaping

updated shots of the rails starting to take shape

almost done!

Started sanding the rails this morning and it the fish is starting to reveal itself. Took the protective plastic off so i could admire it in all it its glory. Still got some finer sanding to complete the rails and then finish off the fins.

the tail taking shape

Made a start on the tail and its slowly starting to appear. The Journey in-wood is near its end. But got a lot of dust still to come...stay tuned

Rails are on!

So i finally got around to glueing the rails on. Have fallen a bit behind Duncan so needed to make a solid start on it over the weekend. So glued 4 strips to the tail and went with 3 strips for the rails. This will gve me aorund 21mm rails to work with. The router came in handy to trim off the excess pieces of cork (thanks Ben). Wont be ready for the Fish Fry on Sunday at Currumbin, but will head down to check out the various shapes to get some ideas for my next board.

portable shaping cradle

We came up with the idea of a portabe shaping cradle which could be clamped to any work bench. Duncs and i knocked it up with a bit of scrap and carpet underlay for padding. It will help in the shaping stage which i havent reached. Have the tail pieces glued on so far. Using 100% cork for the tail and rails

Finishing off and deciding on fins...

Still touching up the rails by hand, but also now need to make a decision between using 4 AB 1 templates for the fins or attempt to make a set of Rich Pavel Speed Dialer fins.. Any suggestions...??

Rail Shaping 101 - The board gets unwrapped

So the true shaping is well and truly underway now. Everyone will have their own technique for this stage. I sstarted using a belt sanded then went back to an orbital, then hand sanding with a block. The rails have come up pretty well so far. With the bending ply any errors in the curve are very noticeable but it also is quite an accurate guide for my curves because of the lines through it as you sand back. Below are a couple of shots of the board now that the protection of the deck has been taken off. Not far to go now.





You may notice on the second shot some glue up near the nose, this is just filling a small gap between the cork and the ply on the rail. It will then be sanded off when it dries. I didn't unwrap the board until I was ready to sand back the last millimeter or so onto the deck. The tape has protected the deck well, however there are a couple of marks that I will have to try and sand out (hopefully only I notice them)

Below are some plan shots of what the rails are meant to look like. I think I'm close but still want to do a bit more handsanding to get them perfect.

And so the shaping begins...

Now that the rails are on it is now time to shape the curve into them. This is not as easy as it may first appear and requires extra care as everything will be visible in the final product. Here are a couple of shots so far. I am shaping the top side first and then curving the underneath up to it. The shape of the rail is a rough take on one of my other boards (5'10" DVS fish). Care is of the essence now. More photos to come when it all starts to take shape. Almost complete.... Yeeeew!!!

Rails on....

So I went with cork and bending ply for the rails and just cork for the tail. Had to be really particular with the order that things went on and that all my ply strips had the correct rocker cut into them. Now to begin the shaping process, grinding the rails back to form a reasonable curve.

A bit of tail and rail

Have begun gluing on the vertical strips to eventually sand back to form the final rail and tail shape. The tail of my board will be all cork. I am still tossing up whether or not to use some other timber strips in the rails for an enhanced visual effect at the end... More work but I think its worth it. Just means I have to source more timber... Perhaps bending ply or even Paulonia. Anyway here is a couple of pics of where I'm at so far.

fin trifecta

so i compeleted the trifecta of fins this afternoon. I love the smell of Cedar dust....the middle fin was taken from a smaller template and still needs a bit of meat taken off it, but i'm stoked with the other two fins. Almost identical and foiled almost to perfection....

Fins!

Started on the fins today and happy with my first attempt at shaping these. I used a snapped FCS G5 as the template and Western Red Cedar cladding board which is soft enough to work with and gives a beautiful contrasting color to the Plywood decks we have been using. The color in the wood will stand out nicely after being glassed. The inside edge needs a bit of work, but i'm happy with first attempt. The hardest part will be shaping one more exactly like it. Stay tuned...