Garage Works - 8/3/2026

I took a rest day from the beach - and spent it in the garage.

I got the gorilla glue trimmed away from the track block.

And I got the top deck connection block trimmed away and the top deck faired in.  I made a slight depression in the top deck to mimic the ARC - but only subtly.

I started chasing ghosts again until I said enough.

Normally I would have stopped here and waited a day to get started on the next step, but I had sufficient daylight...

Laminating is definitely tricky to get right.  Weird air bubbles that want to pop up, having to mix multiple batches of epoxy, getting loose strands to sit down - in a nut shell no time for anything but babysitting the lamination while the epoxy is hardening.

Here's the bottom deck all trimmed up.

This is 4 ounce carbon nose to tail with three strips of carbon rail tape lining the tracks and spanning where my feet would be on the top deck.

Here's the rail tape underneath.  This is what ties in the boxes to the deck of the board.

And after 21 ounces of mixed epoxy (and losing maybe 3 ounces to fast summer time hardening), here is the bottom deck laminated.

I had to flatten a few bubbles that spontaneously formed well after the epoxy application.

Tomorrow evening I'll sand the burrs on the lap and setup the top deck laminate.

I'll use carbon and innegra weave patches where I expect to be on my knees, and a nose to tail cover.

That'll have me sanding and placing the first fill coat on Wednesday.

At this rate, I may be getting No.44 anointed this weekend!!!!

Garage Works - 1/20/2026

Got the laps from the bottom laminate sanded flush

I'll be pigmenting the fill coats so lap lines don't really matter

And I got the foot strap inserts epoxied in.

I took the scrap carbon I had from the last builds and placed patches down to stiffen up the areas expected to take the brunt of jumping.  I also placed innegra where my feet and heels will be spending the most time.

I had to cook dinner so I'll defer adding the top basalt cover laminate, trimming and laminating until tomorrow.

The loose "rectangle" pattern in carbon is to try and get the stiffness more or less symmetrical over the board.  Again - with pigmented fill coats, none of this frankenstein assembly will show - and it is a good way to make use of prior laminate excess to maximize material usage.

Garage Works - 6/25/2025

The wind was in that blah zone - too much for good Foil Drive-ing and not enough to wing.  Instead of dealing with it all - I went ahead and committed to sanding and getting No.41 over the finish line.

First up was sanding - I started with the plugs and worked over the rest of the board.

Then I wiped the board down and started the clear coat spraying.

Oh - and here is the signature block.  I don't know when this got smaller than 5'0"...

And as luck would have it, as I was trying to flip the board into this position, I dropped it onto the metal square that I was going to balance it on to get the remainder of the decks sprayed.

Yes there is a small ding - but that actually convinced me to go ahead and install foot strap inserts before I place the deck pads.  It'll only be my strong side (regular stance) and it'll primarily support using this board with the parawing and Foil Drive simultaneously.

With the footstrap inserts now going in - this will be a few more days before this gets in the water.

Garage Works - 6/22/2024 - Round 3

After dinner - I went ahead and got the top deck laid out and even laminated.

I used 4.8 ounce carbon fiber with an overlap where the glue seam is, and patches of residual basalt to provide near total coverage under the nose to tail basalt layer.

15 ounces of epoxy and I've got myself a laminated Foil Drive board.

Tomorrow I'll sand the laps and place a fill coat with pigment.  This one is getting close.

Garage Works Over the Past Several Days

I got these out of the garage - but I didn't document them since Nick was in town (too much winging...) and I also wanted to experiment with the Foil Drive Max (too much foiling...)

First up was the last leaking spot on Harris's Flying Dutchman.

I actually chased this one for a bit.

This was Kalani's stuff - his Spitfire 960 was banged up from when he came up at the far cabins at WPB (just like Duke the day before).

After a bunch of epoxy, solid paint marker and sanding, It came out half decent. 

And this is his Advance Ultrashort fuselage.  Drilled out and retapped the stabilizer bolt holes.

Then installed the new helicoils

All good again!

And last but not least, Ken's board.  It had three leakers and a crack on the top deck.  Two layers of carbon on the patches, two coats of epoxy, and more sanding.

I sanded to 320 and then used white spray paint to cover the carbon fiber.

Now - back to work on Matt's 6'6" Hybrid. 

Garage Works - 8/20/2023

This evening I got Ken's longboard back to him (whew) and I cleared using the Cabrinha H800 for a little longer provided I fix some of the scratches.

Then I waited for the sun to go down (while cooking dinner) and then sanded the laps on No.32

Through the sanding process, I found a few spots that needed to be addressed with epoxy.

This spot had an air bubble when the carbon was setting up.  I cut the fabric to get an approach to the loose area, chopped a few lengths of carbon fiber, then epoxied under the fabric and layered the carbon strands over it.

I had a couple of openings closer to the boxes.  A little epoxy and these should be resolved.

And lastly, I added some fill resin where the bottom deck logo sticker will go.  I'll sand it down a bit tomorrow, then apply the decal, and place the remainder of the fill coat then.

I think tomorrow's workload will include preparing the top deck laminate, and getting it in place with epoxy.  I'll have to cut out the deck patches and cover the foot strap inserts.

No.26 and No.27 All Done

I got the top deck sprayed this evening on both of these.

These are definitely on the low end of what I can probably ride (volume wise), but it will be fun experimenting with these.  No.26 (above) came out heavier than No.27 - even though it is smaller.  The difference (besides the size) is the cloth - a carbon and innegra weave, and the epoxy (pro epoxy).  I saw this between the WWFB and the Narrow one - the narrow one has both carbon and innegra on both sides and ended up heavier.

Tomorrow, I'll get them outfitted - deck pads, leash cords, drill out the vent holes and install the vents - then let the deck pads sit for 24 hours (or maybe I'll get the deck pads on tonight...)

Garage Works - 8/15/2022

I decided to truly take a break from surfing/foiling today - so I used the time to get these two prone boards advanced.

First I routed out the slots for the reinforcement blocks.  Then I cleaned up the edges so the blocks would fit in snug (not too tight - need room for the fabric).

These first pictures are the carbon layers added in.  I use offcuts from the bottom laminate from previous boards (this stuff is not cheap - I try and use all of it).

On these boards, I did something different than previous builds.  I broke up what would normally be a combined step into two separate ones.  In the single step version of getting the fabrics wetted out and then placing the reinforcement block immediately after, the top fabric usually pulls.  Even though this part of the board is never seen in the finished product, I still wanted to do it so the fabric doesn't pull.

This first of two separate steps was to wet out only the top part of the fabric that would stay above the routed out hole.  I placed saran wrap over the fabric, placed the blocks in place to hold the fabric in place and added soft weights to help keep the fabric down.  

The next step was to add some more fabric to the bottom - this is scrap innegra (even more expensive than carbon fiber), then I wetted out the bottom and sides of the hole, added a layer of epoxy thickened with Thiksil, and then placed the block in.

I filled the gap with some straight epoxy (flows into the gaps easier), then covered the blocks with saran wrap and placed the weights on the outer edges of the blocks.

The next step on these will be to rout out the finbox slots in these blocks.  Then I'll flip the boards and rout out a thin layer of foam on the top deck where my left heel goes - I'll press on a thin sheet of divynicell.

From there I'll laminate on the top deck fabric, then flip the board and epoxy in the finboxes and laminate the bottom deck.

There's more (a lot more), but these prone boards get done faster than the wing boards.