Bmac

Quick update on the SUP. Last post of progress was on Tues, and I haven't moved as fast as I was hoping. Partly because we've had some nice weather and work on my garden/yard/house pulled me out of the shop. But that's ok, I'm still moving forward and the amount of glueups has been tedious. 

After finishing the top decking I began prep for adding the lower decking and for "closing" up the board. I have a few things that need to be done internally before adding the bottom deck. First is added glue strips to the plywood framework, a real long process. Here are my strips prior to sizing, and in the end I used all these;

Gluing up to the plywood framework, glue to the center and to the cross pieces;

Next I need to make sure that all the chambers of the board are connected for even air pressure. Some simply holes placed in the center support;

And some notches in the cross pieces. These notches allow not only air flow but also can act as drain knotches in case water gets in the board, not that I plan that to happen;

And here's the board woth the ribs glued on and all ready for the deck;

Couple other things to point out. Blocking for leash cup and air vent. I'll be using an combination device fitted with a goretex membrane. This membrane prevents water for coming in but allows air to escape. The hole in the block will be centered at the bottom of the larger hole I'll drill into the top of the board to insert the leash cup/vent;

Next, I prepped the back and front of the board for blocking the will form the nose and tail. Here's the tail;

Here's the nose;

Finally, got the fin finallized, First cut out;

Next mark the midline;

Then shaped/feathered both edges down to that line, this is called the foil for the fin;

So the next steps will be leveling the supports, alittle work on blocks for the nose, and the adding the bottom deck. 

Thanks for looking!

2 hours ago, davewyo said:

It's coming right along.

 

Are you following a plan of some sort?

Yes, I purchased a plan from WoodSurfboardPlans.com. They send you a link to print out the patterns and the instructions. I've made other surf boards from this site, so I've learned a lot through that process. This build is much easier because of those other builds.

Here are the pics of the other boards I did;

Long Board;

Short Fish with deep swallow tail;

Chugging along. My last post I outlined I needed to level the frame and ribs. Well I started doing that with some selective rasping and then made a sanding board. Simply a piece of poplar with 120 adhesive paper adde to it;

That did the trick fairly quickly. Next I started adding the top deck. As I told @Coop in another post, since the SUP is 11' long, I don't have stock that long. So where I need to join two pieces I did a simple butt joint with a reinforcing piece glued to the underside;

After multiple tedious glueups I could finally see some progress. Herre's one of my glue ups, looks like a clamp party;

While I was waiting for glue to dry, I glued up a panel for my fin;

And after what seemed like endless glueups here's the top deck;

Still need to clean up the sides, but I'll likely do that after the bottom deck is added;

I'll clean up the top and then flip it over and start my bottom deck glueup. Things are going well and so far so good.

Thanks for looking!

9 hours ago, Coop said:

This is looking really cool! Couple of questions. How wide/thick will the edges be? As the paulownia is 11’ long and so is your board, will you be attempting to resaw it at 11’ or cut it into more manageable pieces? I have a feeling that will be answered in the next episode? 

Coop, I actually do not have stock that long, I do have a few boards almost long enough, about 10'. I reconfigured the position of some of the machines in my shop to clean up and resaw those boards, but in the end I wondered why I bothered, I can make this SUP just as easily with shorter boards and I'll show how I do that. 

At it's thickest point, the cross members are about 4" thick, and with the top deck and the bottom deck and it will end up being about 4.5" thick. 

One interesting point I meant to bring up is when surfacing these boards I'm not worring too much about getting my boards flat. They all are pretty flay to begin with, but I'm just running them thru the planer. You may then wonder, well that will be a problem, right? Not really. I think getting a 10' board flat is pretty hard without a super long jointer bed, and secondly since I'm resawing things to 5/16 and bending it onto the frame as I glue it, flatness is not that critical. Also, as I glue things up onto the board, I'm able to pull pieces together and glue in place. The pieces are pretty forgiving because they are so thin. 

More to follow, I hope to get the top deck finished today. 

Thanks for looking!

I’m not sure about a sail but I would assume it could be.

Yes, paulownia is crazy light, like balsa but much stronger. I’m carrying around 7/4, 10’ boards, 11” wide like they are nothing

It will end up being hollow, no need to fill it. It will really get water proofed with the glassing and epoxy coat 

So for the second installment of this build I've done a ton of prep work and glue ups. I'm preparing the frame for the glue up of the deck, or "skin". Things needed to be completed were first notching the corners of the cross pieces. The notch is 3/8" x3/8" and a rib will be glued into this notch. Also I'm gluing small paulownia strips to the plywood frame to help with the glue up of the ribs and the skin. Here's what those 2 steps look like;

Next I placed some blocking pieces to support the handle. Again, using paulownia;

Once those steps were done, I milled some 3/8 x 3/8 paulownia strips to use for the ribs. Glue up took 2 rounds, 1 round per side. Now things are starting to take shape;

Since this board is 11' long, I did not have stock that long, so i joined 2 strips at a place were the rib is fairly straight;

Also, some small kerf cuts were placed in the rib to help with bending. Paulownia bends very nicely and is remarkably strong. I could have made this bend with out the kerfs, but without the kerfs there was a lot of torque and pressure on the frame. The frame becomes much more stable once the ribs are glued on so the kerfs help the unstable frame maintain it's proper shape;

While the glue was drying, i started milling up my paulownia. This wood was milled from trees on my property and air dried by me. It looks pretty ugly in rough form;

But cleans up nicely;

So what's on tap today is to sand and level the frame. You can see in this pic that not everything is perfectly flush. Some sanding/rasping/ and shaping will fix this;

So once the frame and all it's pieces are flush I'll start adding the skin. I'll be using paulownia and red cedar, milled to 5/16" thick. Also, because I'm sure you may be wondering, I'm using TB III for the glue up.

Thanks for looking.

Went to the upholstery shop today and it was a happy day for me. Very pleased with how it came out, but there are a few tweaks I'd likely do, I touch on those at the end. First the good stuff. My upholstery guy loved the chair and really liked the way it sat. He said it was a pleasure to do and is excited to do more work for me. I decided on a textured fabric that was a lighter green, super happy how that looks. I always have thought green goes well with walnut. 

So here are the pics;

Here's the chair with a side table I built to go with it;

Here are a few pics of the side table;

The side table was also a fun little project I found from a picture in a Danish Modern Furniture book. My wife thinks it looks like a spider.

So a recap.

First, I too think the chair sits well, but with my wife, the height of the chair and the depth of the seat make it hard for her to touch the ground with her feet. So I think it could actually be shorter in the legs. The seat was only 16.5 inches off the ground but the thick cushioning elevates it considerably. 

Second, I would like the angle of the seat to the floor to be increased slightly, it's nice now but I'd still increase it and I think it would make it even more comfortable.

Thirdly, I'd like the back rest to be about 4 inches higher, doing the 2 things above and keeping the overall height of the chair as is would naturally make a longer back rest, and from there I'd probably need to add another inch or two.

So overall I'm happy with it and love the way it turned out, but I would like to tweak the next one.

Thanks for looking!

OK, I love project journals, and now that I've  had to close my dental office for the unforseen future, I'd thought I'd contribute to the forum again with a build. This has been a build on my list for a while. Sort of been putting it off since it's a big build, over 11 feet long. Had to build a plywood benchtop to go over my work bench and a lot of prep work needed to get the frame correct. Hopefully when this whole thing is over I'll get a chance to enjoy this build. 

I'll be using red cedar and paulownia for this build. The frame is made from 1/4" ply. I've had the pattern printed for a while. 

Started with the frame cut out. Feet were included in the pattern to suport the skeleton until the top deck is glued on. Here's a pick of the frame without the cross pieces, all the vertical lines on the pattern are where the cross pieces will be placed;

Cross pieces cut and fitted to the spline;

This build should go pretty quickly since I'm sequestered at home and can really focus. Next steps are to cut notches into the corners of the cross members and add strips to the frame for added gluing surface. 

Thanks for looking.