Starting all over

Got two boards on the go at the moment a 6′++ for grahame and a 5’11″ for me. Both are very much my own designs  - gaining more confidence.

A few before and after pics of Grahames board.

Foam before:

Foam after cutting:

Balsa before:Balsa after:

A note on using CNC machines. Shaping a compsand board is a multi-step process – you don’t just buy a blank and set about it with the planer for 30 minutes (if only it were that easy!) You cut a bit of foam, shape  a bit, vacuum bag a bit of wood on, shape a bit more, vacuum more wood and glass on, shape a bit more, cut the rails off, vacuum rails back on, shape a bit more, then blend everything together.

The earliest stage of shaping takes place when all the foam parts are flat, without rocker. Doing this by hand is inaccurate, no matter how careful you are. It’s almost impossible to imagine what the rockered board will look like and then shape a foil that matches – you’re basically shaping blind. This is where the CNC machine comes in.

The rectangular block of foam is machined down on an AKU to what is basically a very close tolerance blank. However this is not ‘shaped’ in the sense of a regular Polyurethane blank in a production line that needs only 15 minutes of fine tuning. During the next stage, the blank and bottom skins are vacced on a rocker bed and that is when the bottom contours are added (shaping the rocker bed is another matter entirely!) Then we have some rocker in the blank and can finish shape the deck with accuracy ready to vac the deck on.

An additional reason to use the CNC is that #1 or #3/4 eps is terrible terrible stuff to shape. You have very little control over where foam is coming off. It rips and tears in big chunks. The sanding block or planer often rides up on ball-bearing like beads of foam from previous passes and stops cutting. In short, the less I have to shape the EPS, the happier I am!

So, there’s my excuse for using a machine, haha!

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