Board is finished

So here is the finished board. Lots of mistakes. Poor advice taken and lots of lessons learned for the next one. Her she is waxed up and waiting to hit the water...

Of all the posts that board builders put up about building a board and catching the first wave was so satisfying, that wasn't what did it for me. It was paddling out to the line up and creating a board that was such an easy paddle. It has turned out (appart from all the blemishes) exactly like I wanted it to. Easy paddle. Very fast and responsive, and gets you into the waves early... I love it...

The Deck

The laminate coat on the deck turned out very well. Mistakes which I had made on the bottom of the board, including jagged cut cloth which made the laps pretty untidy looking all turned out much better. I have since hot coated the deck and it turned out very well. I am well impressed.

I also fitted the twin fins. I created my own jig and bought a cheap router but didn't have the right bits so ended up doing it by hand with a scalpel. For my first time ever using Lokbox it wasn't too bad I suppose but I could have been a bit more tidy to be honest.

The hot coat on the bottom could have been a lot better. I don't know whether it was the tacky Laminate coat that caused all the problems, but I ended up with loads of small holes in the hot coat. Some of which I managed to sand out but I felt I was getting too close to the weave. So Instead I mixed up another small batch of hot coat with a bit of extra styrene and tried squeegeein' it into the holes. It seemed to have worked still one or two small "pores" in the board, but nuttin major.

Picture shows the board after the first hot coat on the bottom with all the holes..