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Waterlog Surfboard, Part 4

My Grain Surfboards "Waterlog" 10' surfboard is almost ready for fiberglassing. 

I've been working on a number of final details before glassing though. 

Shaping was harder than I thought it would be. I mostly used my block plane and it took a long time. I never perfectly matched the rail templates that Grain Surfboards supplies but I think I'm close enough for my first surfboard. 

 

Overall I think the shape looks good, and I don't think I got anywhere near taking too much off. To better match the templates I should have kept going. 

The nose and tail also look good but don't perfectly match the templates either. Oh well. It'll float. 

I cut the tail off and added a laminated block of Peruvian walnut (to match the pinstripes) and white cedar from one of the cutoffs. I didn't want to put in too many colors like some people do and end up with a rainbow of colors. This is pretty classy and not tooooo busy I hope.  



Here's the final look after shaping the tail. 

I also added the logos. I do that before fiberglassing so that I can get them aligned as best as possible and so that I don't have to worry about them shifting while squeegeeing the fiberglass. 

I also use rice paper instead of the acetate that Grain sends. Rice paper pretty much disappears under epoxy and doesn't have a potential for de-laminating like acetate does. The "Stix of Wood" logo is mine. 

This is the bottom logo. I forgot to lay plastic on top of it and am worried that the edge of the Grain logo might show under the fiberglass, but it shouldn't be too noticeable.  (Update: Yes, the edges are noticeable. You can see a ghost outline of the rice paper). 

By the way, if you really want to explore using rice paper in a very artistic way, you should check out Boardlams.com.  They use a very nice rice paper that almost entirely disappears. Look at my "Stix of Wood" logo below. It's from a sheet that I had Boardlams print several years ago. The Grain logo is from high quality rice paper from Japan. But even that high quality Japanese paper doesn't disappear as well as what Boardlams can do for you. I sent them a file with several things on it and they sent me a roll of printed rice paper. I just cut out a logo and use it. 

 

Here is the top deck logo. I used some plastic sheet on top of the logo so that I could squeegee out the excess epoxy. The plastic sheet will easily come off when the epoxy is cured leaving a smooth logo. Doing the plastic and squeegeeing it helped it to disappear much better than the bottom logo. They are on the same rice paper that I printed using my inkjet. But this paper disappeared much better due to the plastic and squeegee job. 


 

 Next it's time for fiberglassing!

 

Aloha!

 

 

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