Murphy’s Law is alive and well in the surfboard laminating business….

If something can happen it will, and if something does happen to a surfboard during the lamination process the chances of something else happening to that same surfboard is more likely than not.

For instance. One of the problems we have is stringers gassing off, always on the deck lamination… not that big a deal on a clear lam if you catch it when the resin is still workable. But, if a stringer gases off under the label you’re pretty much stuck. And more times than not, a stringer will gas off under the label. Or, if a stringer is going to gas off it will be with a tinted or color lamination which are very hard to fix without a blemish.

Sometimes shaped blanks can get bumped before or during the lam process. Not that big a deal with a clear lamination. But, it usually happens with a board that gets a tinted lam which is next to impossible to fix without a blemish.

Ok, you have a regular customer that always get boards laminated the same way. Labels in the same place, fabric weights the same, finish the same. So, the one time you don’t look at the order card to make sure there are no changes and go ahead laminating the board like all the others.. you look at the order card after you’re done… the board was suppose to be different from the standard set up…. Oops.

There are supposed to be no oops. Oops is a bad word. A good laminator has no oops. At least most people think so. Reality, a good laminator is known not only for being a good laminator but also known for really well done cover ups too.

D.R.

I ran into Gene Cooper in a down town Ventura store some time ago and guess what we got to talking about? Surfboards…. Surprise.

During our conversation Gene asked me if I knew of any trade or craft that you could spend your whole life working at and after years and years of experience still be trying to figure things out…. Besides glassing surfboards?

The surfboard lamination process is basically simple. You stretch fiberglass fabric over a shaped surfboard blank, cut the cloth so it’s a little larger than the board, saturate the cloth with resin, neatly tuck the cloth over the rails of the board, make sure there is no air trapped anywhere in the lamination and let the resin dry. When the resin has cured you flip the board over and do the same thing to the other side.

After the board is laminated you put a coat of resin over both sides, one side at a time of course. Let it cure, then sand the board smooth and put a final coat of resin on both side again, sand the board again and sometimes polish the board at the end of all that.

Yeah, a simple performance based endeavor that has a ton of variables let alone just having a bad day. Over look something and you can have problems. Like when you get started in the morning your room may be about 65 degrees, but later it could be 80 degrees. So what happens when you catalyze you bucket of resin for the colder temp instead of the warmer temp… and you don’t realize that’s what’s happened until the resin in the bucket starts to gel half way through your 15 minute lamination window?

There are many things to deal with in a short working time with clear resin. Add colors or tints and you increase the “deal with” factor by 2 or 3 times. Come up with a couple cosmetic issues that a customer says are unacceptable and … well, you can become a questionable character over night.

Basically there are a couple of glass shop types. The regular production shop that does mostly clear sand only short boards and the middle to high end type shops that do color spray jobs and color lams on any type of surfboard that comes through the door… though they do more high end stuff they are still a production shop.

Most local shapers sends boards to a production shop for glass work. So the production shop pricing schedule is set for guys that don’t do their own glassing and must be affordable to stay in business. Which basically means that they can only spend a certain amount of time with each surfboard that goes through their shop. The over all cosmetics may be very good but there may be a small percentage of boards that the cosmetics are not that good. And prices being what they are set at means some times a board will be finished with a couple zits.

There are a few guys that build boards from start to finish in house, and the only boards they do are their own. They set their prices high enough to accommodate any and all issues that may or may not come up during the laminating process. So when their boards are finished cosmetically they look flawless or so close you’d say ‘wow, that looks flawless’.

Some of the production shops do very good work but because of financial reasons and market demands it’s not a good idea to compare a production shops work with that of the all in house builder that prices their work to accommodate all their time and effort no matter what happens in the building process.

D.R.

It’s really amazing that virtually every surfboard model has it’s own detail. Hundreds and hundreds of surfboard shapers and each shaper has their own details.

When you ghost shape you get to know what details are important to the designer that you are ghost shaping for. They can get very particular with how they want the tails and or noses of their boards to look. How the over all foil blends into the ends of the board. How much rails are tucked . Exactly how far up a vee will go from the tail on a certail size board. How deep to cut concaves… etc, etc.

I’ve ghost shaped for a number of guys but, I’ve never had anyone ghost shape for me. Just like others have told me exactly how they’d like certain things to look on their boards, I know exactly how I like my boards to look. From nose detail to tail detail and everything in between. With each model or shape comes all the corresponding details and they all need to look just right.

D.R.