After having to take a break for a week to due to sick kids, we were back at it with the Grain. This time the hot coat was on our list of items to tackle.
Once again, Kipp did his thing and guided us through this process.
Kipp leveled.
I taped.
I poured.
Kipp heated the resin so that the bubbles would come out.
A trick that all should know. I got the rookie tip that hot coat resin was just laminate resin with a surfacing agent added. You can buy it premixed (more expensive) or you can buy the additive and add it to your left over laminating resin (less expensive). Thanks to the guys at Encinitas Surfboards for hooking me up with that piece of knowledge.
The board was prepped and ready to go.
We didn't have a shooter so again, the hot coat was committed to memory. It was VERY quick. I let Kipp do the deck to watch how it was done. The resin kicked REALLY fast. It was a good choice.
Came out great. No problems.
Next up was pulling the tape.
A lot of the glassing processes is redundant. You do a lot of the same processes over again.
The bottom went smother yet and was done in no time. I set out to do the bottom myself but Kipp ended up diving in at the end as the resin yet again set really quick. We need to work on refining our catalyst ratio.
More tape pulling.
Done!
She is a beaut or what?
Now it's time to sand.
Sort of made me nervous to take a power sander to her.
I got the hang of it pretty quick.
Lots of dust. You sand and then you hunt for "Shinnies" as Kipp puts it. Anything shinny hasn't met the sander yet.
It took a bit to get it done.
After the deck was sanded we cleaned her up to see how she looked.
Then we started on the rails. You have to scrape the bead that is left from the bottom and top hot coats overlapping.
A razor works really good for this.
It took some work to do but it was fun and really worth it. More to do but looking forward to it.
Before this project I took myself for a "Likes to surf surfboards" guy over a "Likes to build surfboards" guy but I have to admit after taking a week off I really started to miss it. I'm going to have to find another project to do when I'm done. I'm thinking some fins. That would be cool.
Thanks to Kipp for taking some really great photos as well as telling me what to do!
