Gluing the deck

I have started to glue the deck of the big surfboard.... and WTF again and again and again FYYFF. I can admit the wood may move with the time but I ordered 4 inches wide planks of balsa and none, absolutely none of them were at the right size!!!! I spent that much on precut balsa because I don't have a lot of tools, guess what, I had better order roughly cut lumbers of balsa and start to work with them! So I have try my best with the Dremel to adjust each plank but I end up with spaces of nearly 3 millimeters at some place... I just have to thank Gorilla Glue for expanding and I just have to prey that it will be strong enough to hold everything altogether!
Never mind I am here to learn and I learnt that some source are NOT reliable....ARRRRGHH so frustrating! Anyway, that was my pissed off moment let move on!
So in order to put all the planks as tight as possible, I taped them under pressure the plank adopted a light "u" shape. Then I flipped the all thing over, suspended it from the corner and put some weight over. The result is a "self clamping" force. It is not very strong but it's not bad either!
Here the pattern of the tape (after gluing):

almost done!

I worked quite a bit on my daughter surf:
rough cut of the rails and sanding...

gluing the rails and sanding again:

and screwing up the nose and tail:

so I've started to play with balsa blocks for the nose and the tail:

A few little jobs on my frame

Just finishing gluing the tail and nose of the frame and sanding the excess of foam from the Gorilla Glue.
And finally prep the frame to be "skinned" with the wood planks.

the complete picture:

gluing the deck part 2

Everything went well for the bottom deck! No cracks beside a good amount of pressure thanks to Windex for soften the plank while gluing!
24 hours after I remove the excess of foam inside the board with the Dremel and it is time to "seal the board" with the upper deck!

I didn't put any wood insert as I will use glass-on small fins and a glass integrated leash.
I damped the spine, ribs and rails with water. I sprayed a large amount of Windex directly on the external side of the upper deck waited for 30 minutes and glued all everything.

Gluing the deck part 1

I glued 3 planks of balsa together for the bottom and upper deck of Valentine surfboard. I did some experiments before to compare the strenght of 2 different glues. I have the Gorilla Glue (GG) and the Titebond III Ultimate Waterproof (TIII), on wood working forums there is some "fight" over which one is the best. I was really concern in choosing the best bond possible for the deck because when it will be glued to the frame the decks will be bend in a lot of directions at the same time resulting in a lot of stress on the joint between the plank!
Most of the guys are using TIII over GG claiming a stronger bond, since I have found this claim more than once I thought following everybody else on that would be the best thing to do... But just for fun I did my self the experiment: I compared the 2 glues. Turn out that GG was stronger than TIII!!!
I glued the same length of the same two pieces of plank that had the same thickness of what will have the deck. I put nearly the same amount of glue for each length and apply the same amount of pressure onto them. 24 hours after I cut in between the 2 different lengths and tried to break the joint. On the length bond with TIII half of it broke with a great amount of force at the join whereas for the other half of the length it's the wood who broke not the join! I was really impress by the strength I had to apply... Now for the length bond with GG I was never able to break the join each time (I have tried at least 3 times) the wood broke... And we have a winner! For me a possible explanation is that the GG require to damp the wood before application therefore limiting the infiltration of the glue into the balsa whereas TIII has been absorbed quite well by the wood diminishing the amount of the glue that will make the bond between the 2 planks.... well I guess!
Now it is time to put the bottom deck onto the frame. To put some pressure I used the cheapest lumbers I could find in my favorite Home Depot: 68 cts for 8 foot. I cut them in half and use them like bows.

I used as well some of the clamps I have made and I tried some cheap forceps (the green ones) turn out that they had too much strength and damaged the balsa...

Hehe looking good! 2

The frame of the big surf is near completion (for the gluing part of it...). I was able to bend the nose and despite some crack noises everything went ok. The cracks in the wood are not visible and because it is the "frame rail" I don't think it 's really important, well I hope so!

Gluing the rails.

The skeleton is almost complete I just need to put the rails on. Nothing very difficult here, one more time to bend the balsa I used the Windex method I damped a paper towel with Windex and wrapped it around the part I wanted to be softened. After an hour, the wood bent easily without any problem. One piece of the rail broke and that piece was not even to be bend at that time. Maybe some weaknesses in the wood... I glued back the piece and hope for the best!

Hey, look! It starting to resemble a surfboard!

The ribs are unevenly attached on the spin, I presumed that the points where I would put much of my weight needed an extra help. Maybe it is just an extra weight for the board, the time will tell.

In the middle of gluing… WTF!!!

When I glued the two spines part of my surf I have put extra pieces of balsa that reinforce the joint. But those pieces are now preventing one rib to set properly… Well when you lake of brain cells you have to use your muscle cells, so I sanded two of the extra pieces to be able to put the rib and I glue back two extra pieces of balsa…