My Nine Lights 5'5" Quad has been done for nearly a couple weeks and I'm just now getting the photos of Jeff finishing it posted.
.
In the last post on this subject, In the works #2, Jeff had yet to add the balsa rails. Here they've been added and the turning begins.
.
.Below, one of the spiraling beauties of turning wood rails.
.
.Rails turned, bottom and deck foils sanded.
.
.Though not as a strict rule, more often than not, Jeff glasses and sands the boards, and makes the fins himself.
.
.Hand foiled birch wood core fins...
.
....of which he took the extra time to "vector foil" the inner panels of the single foil leading fins. The rear fins are foiled 60/40.
.
.The colors of the wood grain really pop once glassed. The gray and black grains of the balsa are always welcomed.
.
.In a spontaneous moment, during the shaping, we decided to try and give the board just a tad of increased flex in the tail by ending the wood portion of the rail at the wing behind the front fins (The next board Jeff shapes for me we'll do the same, but end the wood portion of the rails before the leading edge of the front fins for a more pronounced result/experiment). Due to this, the inner 1lb. eps foam core is visible in this area of the tail rails. We decided not to try and "hide" the white of the exposed foam, but rather embrace the visibility of it as a prototype.
.
.The board goes great! For those interested, a few photos from one wave of my first session on it can be seen in the Mean Little Seed post at Cabinessence (pay no mind to my and Kaser_One's juvenile banter in the comments— as Jeff can attest after spending hours with me in his shaping bay... my humor falls easily into the gutter at times).
.
.
6 comments:
Board looks great. I've wanted to try a shape similar to that for quite some time. Thanks for sharing the whole process.
thanks brownfish. hope the captions to the photos aren't too academic.
That is a truly amazing looking board. Love the dark grain that runs between the fins...
Stoked on the dark grain too! it inspired the choice of fin color.
*Killer* shape! A short diamond tail quad, right up my alley. How has that flex tail aspect of it worked out for you?
thanks e.h.o.,
it's hard for me to tell just how much the "flex" portion of this tail is doing for me. by the nature of how the increased potential for "flex" was worked into the board we thought of it not as a full on flex tail, but more as a way to possibly add a "bit" of flex to it. it was a fun, spur of the moment decision to end the wood of the rail at the wing, and since the wing is set at the trailing edge of the front fins the "flex" point ends up being far enough to the rear that we figured it's effects would probably end up being subtle... but we went with a, "what the hell, let's try it anyway!", attitude on the notion that it could possibly end up doing something good for the ride of the board even if i wasn't able to humanly measure/feel its subtleties while riding it.
Jeff's working on another board for me right now that should prove to have more pronounced/noticable flex characteristics: stringerless foam blank, wood rails that end in a taper at the leading edge of the front fins, with wood layer on deck only— no wood layer at all on the bottom of the board. i'll post photos when it's done.
Post a Comment