And the board out of the press... not finished. Probably a good time to sum up all the issues we ran into...so many...soo soo many...
1. We mixed our epoxy into a couple solo cups. We were really careful with the mixing ratio using a scale to measure the mass, but then it took us a while to figure out what the heck we were doing and the cups melted down and almost set a few things on fire... we noticed the smoke, and took it outside and threw it in a bucket of ice water. So that was spooky.
2. We'd also tried to position our base on the mold and hold it down with spray adhesive. We moved it around a little to fix alignment (too late and we accidentally peeled it off of the protective layer. So the end result was epoxy getting all up in our base where it came off the masking.
3. We glued two inserts to the base to help us align the core during the layup... but in the end the inserts didn't come up all the way into the core and we have two bumps in the base where the inserts push it down.
4. Earlier on, we'd realized that the templates we made were printed 1:1 scale...actually were not 1:1. We traced the issue to a pdf printer I'd used to share the files from CAD to other machines. But of course, we had a friend make the base template with a shop bot, so the mold ribs and core were scaled about 2% smaller than the base. We ran with it... the tip spacers just occupy a lot more space than we wanted. Also the board has some funny corners on the tips and tails where the oversized tip spacers didn't fit perfectly with the core.
5. Design whoops. I did a lot of research. Like a lot of research. But somehow i got the idea in my head that the board would come out too flexy, so we went with a 22oz triax with CF and a 6.5mm thick core. Man...this thing came out like a piece of a military tank. It has some flex but it is way too stiff. I also expected the glass to compress more but we didn't really get much compression. The glass is about 1mm thick on each layer.
6. Wrinkles. DAMMIT the wrinkles. I missed this somewhere, but apparently this is a common problem? It seems that if you attach the edges to the base and its not perfectly flat, the base gets overconstrained when its pressed and it wrinkles. At least that's what i think i learned from here:
http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1277
Either way, we're going to give this nice bevel down the edge, a quick tune up, and hit the slopes this weekend to have some fun with our not so perfect first article.
Unfinished board and press
Unfinished board...that natural top sheet we ordered from action sports is sure shiny. Loved that. Expensive but it comes with its own protective sticky layer.
base side...note the extra sharp bend where the core meets the tip spacer halfway up the nose
wrinkles and epoxy on our base... i heard beer is the instant fix for this failure mode.
). But they're still hanging on the wall above my press as a reminder and inspiration.