From planks to blank...

A few things have happened since the last post.

I glued rail strips up the side of the board and then planed them flat with the frame.

The previous step was to glue the frame to the bottom planking. This step is building up the rails for shaping later. The first part is to put in a chine log - each of the frames have a 5/16"x1/4" notch in the corners. What we do there is clean up all the notches so a 5/16" x 1/4" strip will fit in there snugly and then glue it in place. After that strip has been glued, we glue in the bead/cove strips to create the rail. The thing to remember here is that the strips follow the rail exactly. So when gluing each strip, it is important to make sure that the strips compliment each other and are glued to the previous strip AND to each frame. It is helpful to do a dry clamp down for each one so you know where the twists are and if you have to clean up any glue, etc.

When the rail strips have been built up to the point where they can be planed flat to the internal frame, we take the magic surform and make a nice flat surface that is blended into the frames.

Finished stripping / planing:


Next, I glued to deck on to the planed strips and frames.
This is one of the more stressful parts as you have to get glue out on all the frames AND the newly created flat spot around the rails quickly and then clamp the deck planking down.
In this step, we use two different glues, we use 5200 marine adhesive for gluing the frames to the top decking and then we use titebond for gluing the rails to the decking.
The process here is: Do a dry run with no glue so you know exactly what clamps need to go where and make sure that when you unclamp everything they are easily accessible at the time you do the gluing -- also they need to be OUT OF THE WAY.

Anyway - after gluing and clamping - the planks, railstrips and internal frame have been combined to form a surfboard blank!