new board, new press, new stoke :)

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:11 am

Finallllllly we have the press together and operational, built a test board 159 today. Here's the link, if anyone has problems seeing it let me know:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2 ... d=54900320

You'll notice it looks identical to a board I built previously.
Anyway so there was good and bad, but everything is correctable:

1: We pressed a sidewall board, and decided to try to press without the cat-track, since we'll have to have some plates/shims built to increase the press cavity to fit the cat track. Anyway the ginormous air bladder decided it wanted it to be a capped board, fine. But when it pinched over the ends of the sidewalls it kinda lifted on the inside portion of the sidewall. So we definitely need to use the cattrack and a cassette system. No problem it will just take more time.

2. Alignment issues. We used two inserts as dowels and tacked them to the base. This worked ok but we really did a bad job drilling the alignment holes and glueing the inserts down to the base. So, it still came out a little off, but not by much.

3. The sidewalls are too narrow for my taste. They also seem thicker than the core and are really pronounced through the topsheet.

4. The inserts were too tall for the core thickness, so you could see them as lumps on the topsheet, no problem after tapping but if we had in fact used a top plate/cat track, the high inserts would have caused voids and wrinkles.

5. we snipped one of the edges a couple mm too short

6. Dave got trigger happy and mis-drilled an insert

7. we completely forgot to put in the rubber vibration dampening stuff

8. we had lots of trouble loading everything into the press. The bottom mold with board laid up in it, plus the heater, top mold, and airbag, probably weighs a good 200 lbs, and it was a good struggle to get it from the table and into the press frame, so we're going to build some type of loading system with drawer sliders, etc.

9. its a 159 freeride/freestyle shape, stance centered but directional shape. Set back can be achieved by adjusting your bindings no problem. Just one layer of 21oz triax top and bottom, and a topsheet from 1995 from the old apocalypse factory . Our own tops are still in development.

ben_mtl · Post by **ben_mtl** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:58 am

Hi Doug,

I don't know if it's from my side but I can't access your gallery.
You should try Picasa photo galleries (Google), lots of space and really easy to share.

Can't wait to see your pics.

Ben

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:59 pm

base and core templates:

the shaping table:

me marking up the core:

core with sidewalls, shaped, with shaped base underneath:

core and base + sidewalls + tip fill:

the press frame, some molds underneath:

grindrite grinder and waxer:

the core with nose and tail bent, with sidewalls and tip fill attached:

first board laid up and in the press!

another view:

out of the press:

after cooling, it took dave about 5 minutes to get it to this, and it was his first board ever! :

checking the weight, and just being stoked on it

:

Wannabebuilder · Post by **Wannabebuilder** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:15 pm

Very impressive. Seems like the best thing about a cat track is that when the bladder is not inflated it keeps top mold and bladder and maybe heat blanket up out of the way so you can load your ski/board lighter and easier.
Sick work BTW.

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:34 am

Thanks, I cant claim the graphic work, that's a topsheet from the Apocalypse factory from Ellenville, NY, USA, from 1995. They made boards for a company called NOW for about a year.

Apocalypse was popular early on for a few years in the early 1990's when they had Regis Roland, Jimi Scott, and Terry Kidwell involved. Oh yea and Peter Line's first Division 23 pro model was a product of the Apocalypse factory. They made boards for a dozen companies including Joyride and Kemper. But then they picked up and moved to china. I've got some strange tops from stuff that never hit production. Wish I was able to get their press and some of their molds, but all that stuff was in a big pile of junk and I had no idea what I was looking at at the time.

I was able to get some edges, inserts, tops, base, and a few rolls of strange biax glass stuff from them

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 7:43 pm

Fired up the grindrite today. The on/off switch is stuck on, so we turn it on with the circuit breaker. Had to get a male plug from homedepot that would fit the receptacle on the wall, no problem. Fired right up we just need new belts.

I love having my own grindrite

checkin for glue spots:

still have to router the sidewalls and then hit it on the grinder again, then we're gonna build some mini's

G-man · Post by **G-man** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 8:12 pm

Nice machine.

Sorry guys, but I can't help myself... where's the respiratory protection?

Grinding and routing on epoxy impregnated fiberglass without a really good mask is wicked bad on the lungs... as in permanent damage. I just really wish that someone had hounded me when I was younger. Save your healthy pink lung tissue. It's tough to ski or snowboard while packing an oxygen bottle.

Okay, I'm done preaching now. Keep up the good work.

G-man

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 8:23 pm

when I worked in the factory I wore that stuff all the time. Now that we can actually make boards, getting all the safety equipment is the next step. Yea its backwards i know, thanks for callin me out and makin me feel dumb

hahahaha. But hey it's my birthday, i'm allowed

.

ps i'm more concerned right now with quitting smoking than I am with one board's worth of dust. But all the fiberglass in my hands right now is a reminder of what just one board can do

G-man · Post by **G-man** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 9:59 pm

Hey, Happy Birthday!

Good point about the fiberglass in your hands being an indicator of how your lungs might be feeling. By the way, the best gloves I've found for working fiberglass are some purple (nitril?) gloves that I get from Harbor Freight. The come in a box of 50, and they last a long time (many skis worth) as long as you don't get them inside-out from one use to another. I never get skin itch when wearing those gloves, and I don't think I've ever had one tear.

My new shop is going to have a special grinding room that has an intermediate changing room (with exhaust fan and filters)between the grinding room and the main shop. All of the grinders, routers, and bandsaw that are used in the grinding room will stay in the grinding room (the tools and power cords really get covered with fiberglass dust). I hate fiberglass dust (can you tell?).

So, I'm not callin' anybody out

, I just don't want some of the newer folks to ski building to get an Idea that it's okay to grind skis without good respiratory protection.

G-man

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:14 pm

dont forget EYE PROTECTION

you do NOT want metal filings in your eye, let alone fiberglass or wood or plastic.

thanks for the bday wishes

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:16 pm

oh and you can always pick a good winner out of your nose, and check the color, a good indicator of what it's doing to your lungs

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 7:38 pm

added the cat track to the press configuration.
due to the size of the press cavity, had to try it without the top mold:

It didn't work well. I could point out a million things that went wrong.
We're going to get taller ibeam to raise the press cavity, hopefully a lot.
I want to allow the bag to inflate more so that it's not "spilling over" the ends, and let the cat track do its job at squeezing, or just get a thinner diameter bag.

We also need a cassette and I think we're going to go full bore with that so that we have a good layup, edge placement, and parts alignment system

We also need to draw the ends of the bag up somehow and away from the mold. When the bag inflates over the top of the ends of the mold, it fills there before the middle or the curved tips areas, and I think that was a huge issue with getting the right pressure down along the tips. Building molds with the surface at the tips extended farther will help too, our board's nose and tail were right up to maybe 1cm away from the very ends of the mold.

Anyway here she is, delammed tips and all

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 9:53 pm

routed the sidewalls today to 22degrees. Just used my angle bit with hand held router, with board upsidedown on the table. It was relatively easy to do and using routers is getting much easier. See the post about "simple router table" for more details and mishaps

finished first test board

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:15 am

rebuilt press, made a new board.

the qcm epoxy took longer to kick than expected, i pulled it out too early and topsheet was a wrinkled mess....put it right back in for another half hour and it came out great! only problem is a nice dent in the tail. The clamp we used to hold the cables on the cat track tight got pushed down into the board from the airbag somehow, somehow a pinch of the tail was sticking out there and got pinched. anyway this one came out really good so far, just a slight shift in the topsheet because we rushed.

knightsofnii · Post by **knightsofnii** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:17 am

ps dont give me any shit about ripping off kidwell...haha it's a topsheet from 1995, i have no intention of selling it.

oh and now our press cavity is, huge, we have to close it up some but that's hellofalot easier than opening it was

.

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new board, new press, new stoke :)

new board, new press, new stoke :)