The first float half foam planking

We finished the foam planking for the first float half on Friday.  Dawna tried her hand at form and fitting the planks as well.  So hopefully she will do the thermoforming and edge prep.  She didn't care for the gluing part, so I will do that.  Combined, it should make for a pretty efficient production process.  Even with the learning curve on the first half, it only took about a week, with about two full days of actual work.

After some additional trials with the toaster oven, we reduced the heating time to 5 minutes.  The planks deform some around the edges, and also have a tendency to "scallop" which makes for a less fair surface.  We reduced the time to try to reduce these effects.  The planks still bend pretty easily, though with less time available for mucking around.

In the photo you can see the fully planked half.  We also sanded the glue seams and overall inner surface after trimming the edges to the forms.  The glue seams tended to form ridges of urethane foam which had to be faired.  I also wanted to minimize the urethane glue surface area so the epoxy could primarily bond with the foam.  The foam sands very easily, but the glue tends to be somewhat flexible, so there was some trials and errors (mostly errors) in figuring out how to clean up the glue seams without gouging out the foam.  We haven't yet tried out the "real" fairing techniques with longboard, we just used a random orbit sander and hand work.  Unfortunately, while developing a feel for the sander I made a somewhat lumpy section near the stern in the concave bend.  After backing off on the effort, we found a good balance that left a satisfactory surface condition.  Since this is the inner surface that will not generally be visible, the fairness is not critical, but I look forward to improving my abilities on the next half.

Here you can see the template we made to mark the stern shape.  I added spacers that straddle the form frames to ensure I have the proper placement.  Ian Farrier's plans include the full size drawing of the stern shape, as well as all the other key forms.  I transfered the shape to the curved hull surface by marking points every inch or so with an adjustable woodworker's square.  Then I connected the dots and cut the foam to shape with a sharp knife.