The Board Reshape (JP Real World Wave 74 litres)

  1. The Board Reshape (JP Real World Wave 74 litres)

Unmodified JP board

I originally bought this board, made by JP in 2006, for £50 in 2019. It had allready been modified with two extra fin boxes at the back (the small white fins showing in the photo above) and had also already had the nose reshaped previously.

Reshaped nose

However, after just my first sail on the board, I managed to break the nose in a collision. This meant that water managed to get into the EPS (Expanded PolyStyrene ) foam core and structurally weakened it. I had to remove the damaged area of foam and decided to reshape the board. Carbon Kevlar Applied to nose

I chose to imitate the popular Fanatic Stubby in the new nose design because of the brand’s claims of improved maneuverability in Ariel moves” and because I like the way that it looks. In the photo above you can see the carbon Kevlar weave that I laminated over the nose area for strength. This 200 gsm carbon Kevlar layer is laid on top of two layers of 100 gsm chopped strand fiberglass.

Homemade Bag Press

In order to laminate the layers together effectively, I tried to make my own cheap alternative to a vacuum bag machine. I had an air mattress pump lying around so I attached a a pipe to the inflow and the tried to seal a carrier bag around the nose. This did work to provide some pressure, however, The pump could run for long periods of time without overheating, and because of the inefficiency of my botched machine, the force produced wasnt that strong. Because of this, I decided to go without this for the rest of the lamination.

board with primer on rough areas

Next I sanded all the exposed areas and used a can of spray filler primer to fill the areas that were too rough. For this process I masked off all the areas I didn’t want to get paint on: The foot pads and the mast track etc.

Painted Board

I then Applied Paint to the board. I did this in 3 sections using masking tape again to make sure that i got a  clean line between the different colors. Finally I applied one last coat of epoxy resin to waterproof everything and then sprinkled caster sugar over this whilst it was still drying to add a textured grippy surface.

 

I have since sailed the board twice and the nose repair has held up very well! However, there are definitely some areas for improvement:

  • The Sugar was too coarse and didn’t work very well as grip so I have since bought some surf wax to improve the grip.
  • The epoxy made the paint run a little so in future I will use a pigment Dye in the actual resin instead of paint.

 

 

 

Pictures of the board in use to follow soon!

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