Today I did the deck grip, this is just the way I do it, I'm sure there are other ways this gives a good grip and usually lasts 5 years plus.
This above pic Yuppy is what I use except that the UV resistant clear epoxy resin is not in the pic.
I masking tape up the outer edge on the rails and tape around the pads.
I mix up 45ml of resin any more and the resin swells up the sugar grains into blobs unless I use extra sugar. The sugar I use is caster sugar it is the size of table salt ( which I've also used). To kick start the resin so it sets quicker I microwave it for 5 seconds before I apply it.
45 ml of resin, 4" roller from bunnings cup of caster sugar in a shaker I got from Woolworths its got a metal sieve as a lid.
Wet resin rolled on the board.
Sugar being shaken and sprinkled onto board, I like how you can see the sugar falling.
I hold the straps roll the board onto it's rails and give it a few taps to get rid of the excess sugar, then remove the masking tape.
When dry I will hose of any excess sugar or go for a sail and it will wash off.
That's a very good technique, done it several times, but you have to get the remaining sugar off of it.
One time I didn't do a very good job at removing the excess sugar, took the board out of the van, placed it on the ground, went to do some other stuff, came back to the board, and it was covered with ants. I had to laugh.
A while ago I bought some Makani 10 cm fins which worked great with my 17cm center fins on my big board, but on my smaller board with 15cm center fins the board wanted to keep straightening up in the turns, my old 9cm side fins work fine with my 15's so today I decided to cut down and reshape my fins. I took one cm of the tip and about 8mm of the trailing edge. I forgot to take a before pic but the basically looked like this with a us base.
They're now a 9cm fin and look like this.
Center rocker line chosen
New bottom reshaped flush with external glass.
As I have to put a 5 mm thick PVC back in place I have set my router to 5mm deep and cut the foam yet still followed my new bottom shape.
Foam all smoothed out ready for PVC layer to be vacuumed in place
Select to expand quoteR1DER said...
A while ago I bought some Makani 10 cm fins which worked great with my 17cm center fins on my big board, but on my smaller board with 15cm center fins the board wanted to keep straightening up in the turns, my old 9cm side fins work fine with my 15's so today I decided to cut down and reshape my fins. I took one cm of the tip and about 8mm of the trailing edge. I forgot to take a before pic but the basically looked like this with a us base.
They're now a 9cm fin and look like this.
I got to try the newly shaped fins out on Saturday. They're awesome, I was so happy how the board turned that I've now reshaped another set of fins I wasn't happy with.
I bought some 9cm Black Project fins, but they felt so slow.and draggy, the board was slow to plane. They didn't suit my fin angles and set up. The leading edge was quite full compared to my other fins. They mght be great for big fast waves in n Hawaii. But I don't sail there.
I cut a bit of the tip and about 4mm of the trailing edge, then refoiled them with a flatter faster foil. Just have to wait for some more wind to try them out.
Before.
After
Back to the repair the PVC I'm using is an offcut that doesn't fit the shape.
I cut it up into sections to fit, this is the PVC in situ making sure it all fits.
One of the front boxes leaks, I also don't have any mini Tuttle box fins spare. So the front boxes are coming out. I'm not sure if I'll replace them or just have a twin fin. I'm putting in some old blue Styrofoam I had laying around. I cut the blue foam to fit and some corecell (PVC) to fit.
As this is an experimental modification. Instead of vacuuming the PVC on then doing another stage and vacuuming the outside glass layer on. I'm going to try and do it call in one go. So I'll resin in the blue foam blocks, wet out some 4 oz glass to cover all the white foam and blue fin blocks, then put the PVC in place, then wet out the outside layers of glass put it all in the vacuum bag and cross my fingers. Sounds like a plan, what could go wrong?
Mike it is hard to get the levels right like that as you never know how much it will vac down. I find you often are too high or low.
But not to say it won't work
What u gonna do with the MT boxes? Hint, hint
BTW I reckon now is the time to scalpel away the Kevlar fluff, you have a nice hard edge to glance the blade along, before the d'cell layer goes in
Hey Mark at the moment it all sits flush, yeah it may sink down but if I did it so it sat higher before bagging it and didn't sink down I'd have a ridge to try and cover. So I'll try low vacuum.
Re the boxes pm me your address and I'll post them to you, but ...... If you look at the above pic and enlarge it the one one the right and at the end on the right you'll see I ground into the box and there's only about a 2mm wall thickness at the rear of the box.
I hate working with Far King Kevlar!
OK I vac bagged all in one go a layer of 4 oz glass, a layer of 5mm core cell, a layer of 8oz glass . yes it all sank about 0.5mm, I'm OK with that. Here's some pics.
Wetting out the 4 oz glass
Putting corecell in position, the a bog mix to fill cracks.
The 8oz glass
Then wetting out the outside 8oz glass
In the vacuum bag
Out of the bag
Bugger! After I put the plugs in I discovered the board is soft under the area where your toes go for the front feet, I've drilled a series of holes and injected a mix of resin and qcell into the holes.
Some 4 oz capping patches over the plugs and the holes I injected resin into.
I also beefed up the nose with a couple of layers of carbon and a couple of layers of 4 oz glass
Filler coat applied.
Tail flyers ( gimmick ) bogged up.
I've been trying to decide for ages to keep the board as is a twin fin or put more time and effort in and $ for extra fins and boxes to make it a quad.
I'm going to make it a quad then I have both options.
Working out where to put the boxes
Made up a jig so the boxes have the precise angles I want in relation to the rear fins.
^^^^ thanks I often wonder are people interested
Holes routed
Dry test run
Resin and qcell mix poured into holes boxes squished in
Extra resin cleaned up.
Any excess resin sanded then wet and dry sanded
Some 4oz glass and capping patches over the boxes and another 4oz over boxes and whole tail to cover up the Kevlar I sanded into that then all fuzzed up.
Filler coat applied
I sanded the filler coat staring with 120 grit then 240 then 360, but forgot to take a pic before I applied a grey primer coat
I mix by volume 1 part epoxy resin to 1.5 parts qcell which is a light weight filler eg 1 cup resin and one and a half cups qcell mix up to yogurt consistency. Paint or squeegee or spread on the board.
shapers.com.au/q-cells/
R1DER: "^^^^ thanks I often wonder are people interested"
No need to worry about that, just look at the number of views, over 5000!
Keep up the good work and the pics.
R1DER, how did you work out the toe of the outside quad fins?
Did you just match up with the toe of the twin boxes?
Also do you set a specific camber on the boxes or are they pretty much a vertical fin with negative toe?
Select to expand quoteMastbender said...
R1DER: "^^^^ thanks I often wonder are people interested"
No need to worry about that, just look at the number of views, over 5000!
Keep up the good work and the pics.
I only use a mobile device to read and post in sb and it doesn't show how many views, I think that can only be seen when viewed on a pc , but good to know, thanks
Select to expand quoteStuthepirate said...
R1DER, how did you work out the toe of the outside quad fins?
Did you just match up with the toe of the twin boxes?
Also do you set a specific camber on the boxes or are they pretty much a vertical fin with negative toe?
Stu T P The rear boxes are parallel and so are the front. No camber. I tried camber on other boards and I personally couldn't feel any difference. I've only experimented with toe on quads. All parallel is the second best option, for this board later on I will adjust the base of the fins in this board to give the fins some toe. I wrote some stuff on another forum as my findings didn't agree with what was being said on there by other backyard tinkerers, I'll find it and cut and paste the info.
This is some of a post of mine from another forum where a person believes decent toe in angles on quad boards works best I disagree, he's happy with his set up, I'm happy with mine.
"This topic only applies to waveboards that have four fins two large and two small fins, call it what you like, I'm calling them quad sailboards. In the early 90s I shaped sailboards with 3 even sized fins, the front fins had toe in and 80/20 asymmetrical foils, they worked great. I believe toe in for thrusters works great!
After reading stuff on here about toe in I made a quad board with toe in using angles suggested here, probably the worst performing board I've ever made, I then decided to do my own toe in testing and my findings are very different to what has been written on these forums over the last five years.
For my experiments I used all symmetrical fins custom made on Maui 15cm rears 10cm fronts, I used various front and back fin toe in combinations, I varied the toe in and out angles by variations or .4 degree's eg .4 one time then .8 next time then 1.2, 1.6 and so on up to 3.2.
I basically got my fins angles ready in the morning (building up with resin and then grinding the fin bases) went wavesailing in the afternoon, then did the same the next day and the next and so on ( this process took ages). I took a spare board to swap to when a fin combo was awful, I didnt want to ruin a good afternoons sailing.
My findings.
In cross onshore and sideshore.
The greater the toe in and the more fins with toe in the slower the board is to get on the plane.
With back fins parallel the greater the front fin toe in the worse the turn.
All four fins toed in at large angles, awful feeling turns.
All four fins parallel, nice turns good allround performance.
I have found a great combination of fin angles that I'm really happy with. Unfortunately I'm not sharing this info as all that hard work, time and effort it will only be plagiarised, used by a big brand who will profit from it.
I'm not here to say look at me look at me I'm so right all the time, I'm not here to promote a product. I'm just fed up seeing threads hijacked with what I believe is information that if followed would lead to people missing out on better wavesailing."
I dont think people would be getting the optimal performance out of some of these boards that have a quad and thruster option in the one board, as toe angles for the different set ups would/should be different.
Back to the rebuild I sprayed the deck with some left over blue that I had, left the rails primer grey and sprayed the bottom white, sorry didn't take any pics of that part.
I found some old pads I had taken off a board years ago and stuck them on with contact adhesive.
The below pic is board taped up ready for deck grip, same process as for starboard I gripped earlier in this thread.
RIDER - Your 1 cup resin to 1.5 cup q cell mix, is that how much you used to filler coat the bottom ?
I have a repair to do so trying to get an idea of how much to mix up
Select to expand quotecol5555 said..
RIDER - Your 1 cup resin to 1.5 cup q cell mix, is that how much you used to filler coat the bottom ?
I have a repair to do so trying to get an idea of how much to mix up
Have you ever made dough? well that's a tad too much qcell, it doesn't stick real well, you still need some free resin to stick to the board.
A lot depends on what you're doing with it. If you're filling a big hole, then the more qcell the lighter it will be. If you want to spread it fairly thin then it needs to be more runny. If it needs a bit of strength then it also needs to be more runny, or have some microfibers in the mix.
So toothpaste consistency isn't a bad average mix.
Thanks decrepit. Only for pizzas 
I was after a guide to qantity. Hate wasting resin. Anways I mixed up 100 grams of resin and that covered appx 1/4 of the board at around 1 - 2 mm thick on a 70cm wide board. Still wasted appx 30 grams though 
