well its going to be a lot of fun, but a little stressful at times.

spend 357hrs reading swaylocks...before you make your first post!!!

watch shaping 101 and glassing 101 about 15 times and make notes!!!!

set up you work space nicely. take your time to hunt for all the bits and pieces and try and keep the area clean.
setup with some fluros so you have good shaping light. get a surform and a couple of the shapers pads. they make it pretty easy.
when shaping i used 80then 150 grit then glass. ( i dont feel there is any point doing 80, 120,180 on the blank)

Buy some P2 dust masks. get some safety glasses (foam dust is a bitch in your eye!)

you can buy a pretty good planer from supercheap auto for $60 (on special for 44 sometimes) that will do a great job with 2 mins modification.
make sure your shaping stands dont wobble and are padded adequately!

Count everything you do mentally to ensure you kee things symetrical!!!

use UV catalyst when glassing. gives you ages to do the lam so no stress (or much less).
The smell may piss you ur MRS and the neighbours.
use drop sheets to you dont ruin the garage!!!

get the 7" sanding pad from shapers and some 80(then maybe 150 and 240 (skip the 120, 180 maybe). I think ryobi do a cheap sander polisher. totally worth the money and saves a lot of time and effort!
sand the laps as level as you can before doing the next layer (or hot coat) to reduce the total amount of time you end up sanding. (i havent done a cut lap yet)
Swaylocks talk a lot about basting laps but i dont speak 'merican so dunno what they are on about. one day i'll learn

The fin install jigs for FCS are a must.

Dont buy a leash plug hole cutter from shapers (the one they sell you you can buy cheaper at bunnings and it will fark up your boards!) just get a holesaw from bunnings (29mm for small leash plug, 32mm for FCS) instead. Sutton is good.

Colin Earle has everything you need but you pay for convenience and you will save money if you turn up in a rusty POS car

and your welcome to check out my setup when i'm in Perth sometime. it aint fancy and i've still got a long way to go but i'm having a lot of fun doing it!

Anyone wanna buy some black pigment. i needed a little but colin only had 1L at the time. i'm happy to split it up.

And most of all take your time and enjoy the process!

I started with something simple and different as my first project. I shaped a paipo from paulownia wood supplied by surfinggreen.com.au/?product_cat=alaia-blanks Goes well, is a lot cheaper than a glass board and you learn a lot about refining a shape on an easy to work with media. I chose to go traditional and used only hand tools too. It's a good alternative way to pick up some skills and have a board you can refine and have a blast on. Or if you want to go larger, try an alaia. Rob Machado can't be wrong surely.

Ted the kiwi in the longboard room has made quite a few from what I have seen mate...check his posts and photos in the longboard room....he may be able to help you out.

I used a paint brush to squeeze the resin across the cloth, not a squeegee. A reasonably thick paint brush. It seems to flex easier than the squeegee but doesn't disrupt the cloth. Test the paint brush in your hand first, you want one that is reasonably solid so it can still squeeze excess resin out.

Bertie said..

PRAWNDOG said..
Thanks guys, just picked up the dvd's of shapers website so should be good, out of curiosity were did you get your blank foam/board from Bertie. Had a look at swaylocks so much information on there, is interesting everyone has there preferred methods especially when it comes to glassing

I got blanks from colin. I did buy a few on sale from surfblanks last year at a nice price.
glass some from colin, come from shapers (but they fold it up which can mess the weave up) and some I had from an old boat project 10 years ago.
only buy your resin when your ready to glass. I find if it sits around for a while it goes funny.

If you use UV catalyst you will have very few major dramas. It gives you an hour to get the lam right. the pros can do it in 10 min!!!!
use about 1g of catalyst to 1kg of resin. any more than that and it will yellow. also give it 10-15min to dissolve and stir regularly during that time.

Buy a squeegee. only use a brush for hot coats or touching up dry laps before you put it in the sun with UV.

I've used glass from shapers recently, came rolled back onto and old cardboard roll tube, no worries on the weave. With that said if you are just using normal S glass and polyester then just go see Col, only reason I went to shapers was for some innegra and a couple of different cloths I wanted to try, I'll be going back to S glass though.

On the UV stuff, it's great just don't use it anywhere that is in anyway opaque (i.e. just use it on your lam without any pigments or tints) otherwise it won't cure properly. If you want to use a fin system I'd go with the FCS fusion plug (really simple to install) or the new version (whatever that's called, but uses pretty much the same as the fusion system).

Only other tip is if you are like me it sometimes takes a few weeks to get through the whole process, if this is the case and getting to Col is easy then just buy the supplies you need for each stage and then go back, main reason for this is that filler doesn't last all that long in the plastic bottles on the shelf (as little as a couple of weeks) and if it deteriorates much your sanding job is going to be a nightmare (you'll have to wet sand everything).

Bertie said..

your not wrong blueprint.
I had a bottle of filler. did the first board no probs. 4 weeks later did the 2nd board and spent 2 days and 15m of 80 grit to get the crap off coz it would just clog the paper!!! now i'm stressing coz i bought a bottle and was planning to be ready to have glassed another board over christmas but i'm not ready!!! and it wont happen for another 6 weeks i'd guess with work and stuff. maye i'll go put it in my dads coolroom.

As for tints they work fine with the UV ,Pigments not so much.
Also you can use a little bit of MEKP like 0.25% instead of 1.5% in with your UV if the tint isnt completely see through. worked fine on my first board where i used mainly tint but put the tinyest little bit of white in to make the colour POP!.
if it hasnt fully cooked off coz it was too opaqe (or the sun was getting too low on the horizon, you can just do your hotcoat straight over the top with MEKP at like 2.5 to 3% and it will bake off the lam below.

If that's the case bertie then just get some additive (think it's styrene from memory) from col, add it and it'll be fine again as from what I remember what happens is the wax separates and just needs to be mixed back in but needs the styrene to dissolve or something like that

yep I'm no chemist but again from memory I think I put a couple of mils in a litre on my last board

Pro box are a good fin system or the FCS plugs of ebay are also OK if your on a budget

Looking to do an order from Surfblanks. Anyone want to share a roll of 4oz glass or need anything? or wanna buy some glass? should work out to about $3.50 /m off the roll.

hmmm i dunno.

CRF said..
I used UV powder for poly for the first time today, laminating the deck of a new board, ( after screwing the base because it kicked too quickly). have to say UV makes lapping, and colour work a whole lot less stressful. Have another board to glass in the next couple of days and will not go back to catalyst again. Where a bouts are you Bertie, I could do with some 4 ounce?

I'm in City beach. I still have ordered anything. Going to try and decide tonight.

Ted,
Nice boards mate, just done the lam, and not going to use the uv for the hot coat, as you say the hot coat should only take 5mins so using catalyst. I will have to jump on the other 'puter, my other boards were hollow wooden boards glassed using epoxy, so foam and poly is a nice new challenge. UV was great for the lam, will certainly use it from now on.
Bertie, I'm down in freo, if you get a roll of 4oz I could do with ~10m and can fix you up

Cheers gents!

CRF said..
Bertie, I'm down in freo, if you get a roll of 4oz I could do with ~10m and can fix you up

Ordered the roll yesterday, but it wont ship until tuesday, so i'm not sure if it will arrive before I go to bali. sing out if you will need some before 18th Feb, coz i've got 6 or 8m i bought last month i havent used yet.

Put the resin in the fridge so it goes off slower,but don't contaminate food