Have you considered cutting a hole straight through the board from base to deck, fill the hole with high density pouring foam then routing out 2 finboxes or foil tracks in it. will be alot stronger then pre made foil track box
That’s how I did my last wing board.
The 2 pieces of wood are around 6mm thick balsa, with a layers of 200g fiberglass below.
I routed the holes for the cheap regular finbox after and glued them in with a layer of fiberglass under and on the side (hopefully connecting with the glass under the wood)
Once glued, I vacuumed 3 staggered layer of 200g fiber on top of box / handle and finally 1 layer of 200g to laminated the whole bottom.
stringer shaped yes, but material I’m not sure, I wouldn’t do a regular stringer out of balsa… well, to be honest I didn’t put a stringer in a board in a long time and yes, as long as it’s not too thick the balsa will bend easily. I just had some clamps to hold them while the bottom was curing.
The handle is home made too, L shaped piece of XPS with the right corners rounded and glassed under vacuum with 4 layers of 6oz. at the same time I prepared a plate of 4x6oz. then the L shaped gets cut to length placed face to face, the plate cut to close 3 sides, and everything glued with epoxy silica microsphere…
for the board I need to make more picture, but here’s an idea:
vacuuming of the glass patches on the bottom:
bag is some PVC table cloth folder and glued on 2 side, the pump is the cheap clothe vacuum storage thing… reusable, cheap and no risk to pull too much vacuum.
you can get an idea of the rocker (very “soft”), rails are vertical on top half and almost vertical on bottom half, with quite sharp edges on the bottom to release water. the goal on this board was really to maximize the bottom surface and let water flow as freely as possible to get as much speed as possible (in a 5ft board) in light wind.
below is what the handle and boxes look like after re-opening them. it’s much cleaner to just glass over everything and open with a router at the end… as long as you can find the boxes
Posted in the other thread on installation. For parts, the high density boxes from the name manufacturers will all be good. The blue planet one is bomb proof but quite heavy. I wouldn’t trust the aliexpress ones…save a few bucks and potentially break the most important part in your whole board. Lots of stories of foils on the ocean bottom from poor parts or installation.
Same for fin boxes. DO NOT buy the cheap no names. Chinook is best quality, has fibreglass strands embedded in the plastic. Futures strong box next. I hear lots of people using US fin boxes. Beyond that…be careful about saving $5 to jeopardize for $1000+ project!
The board looks awesome. A question if you don’t mind. I’m still getting my head around the track mount in balsa that you’ve shown. I wan’t to give this a go with my board. Is there anything under the balsa strip (I keep reading that it is best to have a high density ‘cassette’ from the bottom all the way through to the top of the board to create a bit of an “I beam”) ? Or did you just glass the underside of the balsa straight onto the EPS blank? Thanks in advance for any tips!
It doesn’t go until the desk, just the thickness of the balsa… so in the end, the box go deeper than the balsa.
There’s a layer of glass below the strip.
note that the EPS is a bit denser than usual… 30kg/m3 I think.
and yes, as long as it’s not too thick the balsa will bend easily. I just had some clamps to hold them while the bottom was curing.
