Messages

31

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: September 04, 2018, 01:08:41 PM »

A few things have happened since last post.

I had a go at sup foiling and bloody hell its fun. That's what I want to build my setup to do. Was flying on the maliko 200 in about half a metre of surf.
Was also given an old windsurf board to hack up to try surf my foil with and it sure is gonna be a fugly but a more hacked up not build for the job type of fugly. Decided to flip the board and turn it around and cut the nose off it so I ended up with soft rails on the bottom and I also cut a bevel in the back edge.
The mast now has 3 layers of 200gm carbon unis down each side and I coated that with a layer of bog and also coated the glassed up bottom of the shortboard with bog.
Also have a wayy bigger wing in the pipeline.

32

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 27, 2018, 12:45:15 AM »

So this weekend I got to test out the foil. Pretty stoked. On friday I took it across to the beach to see if it would float because of the low volume shortboard it's mounted to. Turns out it floats easy peasy. I pushed it around in the shallows and it was pretty satisfying to see it scooting around and not just sinking.

Took it out on the boat on friday (40 foot wooden launch) and had a go at towing it. fucken stoked  took a few goes to get the right rope length and to get used to it and shimming the stab helped heaps. Mast is pretty wobbly and bendy so there aint much control over left and right and it twists heaps but thats nothing we cant fix. Nothing broke and the board held up good.

Had another go on sunday and it was way easier with the previous day's practice, like everyone says here the learning curve is really quick. I could get out of the wake and out the side pretty easily. looking forward to having a go in the surf but im pretty sure ill need a board with a bit more volume.

Also started working on the bendy mast problem. Gonna run some carbon uni's down either side and also wrap them round the bottom. I got out the grinder and started radiusing the fuz so the carbon will form to it more easily. Also gonna look way better like this.

33

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 21, 2018, 01:58:44 AM »

speaking of the ugly board, here it is

Plus I got the fuz glued up with the mast, plenty of glass reinforcement to laid around that to come.

34

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 21, 2018, 01:54:01 AM »

Still looking good. I wish you well but you should make one part of this ugly so the rest of us will feel better.  Haha.

Great work and smart to put that around the stringer. Probably way stronger.

oh dont worry there is an ugly fibreglass board job to see yet haha

35

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 19, 2018, 02:42:31 PM »

Got the cassette glued in the board. hopefully gonna test the foil and board this weekend
Still need to glue up the mast and fuselage but that's this afternoon's job

36

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 16, 2018, 06:25:18 PM »

Nice work. I'm surprised you got it out so easy. Those tapers are sticky. My friend Rod Parmenter got his GoFoil mast stuck in an aluminum Tuttle to plate adapter and tried to get it out by threading in some bolts and whacking them with a hammer. Bent the shit out of the bolt and I had an interesting time getting it out for him. Then I tried to press the mast out of the adapter with some steel pins--no joy. I had to make a special tool to get enough force on the Tuttle to get it to move. Yeah, I know, my TIG technique is a little sloppy. I'm working on it. Time to clean up the welding tables.

Did you try heating the shit out of the aluminium adapter. The tuttle head won't expand but the alu should've grown just enough to loosen it up a bit. Seems like u figured it out in the end tho, nice work

37

Foil SUP / Re: Fly the Wing - Take off the Stabilizer

« on: August 16, 2018, 06:07:20 PM »

After talking to the designer of the axis foils it seems the only foils which actually require the prefect stab is kite foiling. Apparently it's essential when flying at 40 knots  no surprise really. I think he mentioned something about windfoiling also need them for high speed flight but everything else just has them to make them easy to fly.

38

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 10, 2018, 03:10:19 AM »

Sanded the tuttle down ever so slightly and it fits snug and also drilled the holes for the bolts and barrel nuts (mine are 9mm diameter, aren't they usually 12mm?)
Bogged the mast to head transition.

39

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 10, 2018, 01:24:38 AM »

As far as getting a good finish on a wing with or without using a mold, try this.  After applying a fill coat of epoxy resin to the wing, and after it cures, obviously.  Use a cabinet scraper, well sharpened or finely tuned, to scrape off the high spots and brush strokes streaks.  do this until all fill coat is scraped and little or no unscraped areas remain.   Then wet sand in the direction of flow with 300-400 grit wet/dry sand paper.  Using a little dish soap in the water is helpful.  Its ready to surf at this stage, but if you want a deeper, darker, shinier look, here is the next step.  I call it the rub off.    Take the smallest amount of resin and a dry rag.  Rub a small amount of resin onto the wing with gloved fingers.  Very small amount!  Then rub it off with the dry rag. Do only small sections at a time.   The finish will look great, and function well.  The key to all this is the cabinet scraper.  no dusty sanding.  Just very fine epoxy shavings.

Thanks suppeter
is this something you usually use over the top of laminated carbon or glass?
Planning on using black durapox and wetsanding but thanks for the advice 

40

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 10, 2018, 01:20:19 AM »

Popped the mast out of the foilmount plate adapter, the steps didn't end up being a problem, heated up the adapter so it grew a bit then hit it real hard. Popped right off, problem is it doesn't go back in now

Is the top edge of the tuttles usually radiused?

Also the photo of the front wing fillet, will beef it up later with a bit of glass but will be fine for now.

41

Foil SUP / Re: Slingshot Foils

« on: August 09, 2018, 02:11:28 AM »

As surfcowboy said they are sized more like the go foils now, seems like a pretty reasonable option.

42

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 05, 2018, 06:04:52 PM »

Got a little bit of work done this weekend but had school ball so that tied me up a lot, I added an epoxy fillet between the front wing and the fuz, thatll help a little with the twisting load, would've been better if i had laid some glass in there but if ill be able to see if it starts cracking under load and can grind it off and glass it up.

Decided to go with a chemical mold release instead of a wax. It was to hard to get in there and smooth out the wax or polish it. Coated it with three layers and let it dry. Poured the epoxy in there and gonna let it sit for 5 days to properly go hard then ill be able to heat up the foilmount do it grows a bit then hit it hard with a hammer, should pop right off fingers crossed 

Will post some photos at some point.

43

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: August 05, 2018, 05:55:29 PM »

super neat work kiwi! how much carbon are you putting on the fuselage? that little bit between the the back of the main wing and front of the mast needs to be pretty beefy, theres a hell of a lot of twisting load on it when you throw in some austin kalama carves. mine is about as low tech as it gets- 100% hand shaped by eye, wet laminated with no vacuum bagging and most of the time the wrong weight cloth cause im cheap and only use what i can get from off cut bins. a store bought one may perform slightly better but you cant beat the satisfaction of hand made man powered flight

thanks container
considering my front wing is only 700mm wide I think itll be fine for just a test, plan is to ride it in the boat wake and see if it actually works, planning on building a second one out of carbon with a larger wing for surfing after this one.

You know the saying;  "Why pay them the amount of money they're askin' when you can easily do it yourself for only twice the cost."

      Well, I'm going to tell you that some people can make these foils for 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of production foils and if you have a mind like an engineer, you can make them far stronger than production foils.  Overbuild, overbuild, overbuild, and you will not be disappointed.   CNC machines, 3D printers,  and even vacuum bagging is not required (though I find it extremely helpful).  I really think the cheapest way is to buy the least expensive aluminum mast and fuselage and then make your own wings that will adapt to those parts.   Just wondering.  I weigh 160 lbs and can stand on the wing tips of my main wing while the board upside down laying on the beach .  I only used 1 layer of 3K carbon twill on wings outer surface.  I've only ever seen one production foil (Naish) and have been wondering if these foils could undergo the same test.  Overbuilt?  Yes!  Would not have it any other way.

yeah the knowledge and experience is worth a bit surely, Theres no way ill be able to stand on the wing tips of mine, pretty weak really but if i get even a single flight out of it ill be happy, then when it breaks ill build version two and work on that.

44

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: July 29, 2018, 03:30:11 PM »

kiwi, I'm interested to know if you making your own foil is saving you money over just buying a premade one.  Doing it to save money, or just doing it for fun?

Yeah it is saving me a bit of money, didn't have 2k to just splash out and buy one so I thought I may as well have a crack at building one, also doing it for the skills and learning too because I don't have much composites building knowledge as I'm still in highschool lol.

I must say I'm a bit lucky to have the resources that I do, Dad is a boat builder and having the stuff laying round at home helps a lot. The cnc is the real time saver here, I can cut out a new wing in 6 hours instead of hand shaping it in a couple days and all I have to do is click start. It did cost me 1500 to build the cnc but it's worth it cus now I can save money and learn on so many other projects.

Kudos to surfcowboy for doing it all by hand, quite impressive to have stuck it out and done it all manually.

45

Foil SUP / Re: Diy foil nz

« on: July 29, 2018, 01:45:16 PM »

If you're going to eventually want to make more Tuttle heads you might want to rethink your mold idea. A two-piece mold would work better and would let you add detail, like the transition from head to mast. I also wonder why you want a Tuttle at all since you've set up your board for a plate. Why not just add a plate to your mast to start with?

If you're just going to make the basic Tuttle shape of your mast conform to the converter, then maybe don't use any mold release at all. With those machining steps and a single piece mold, there's a good chance it won't come out anyway. Maybe just shim it straight, fill it with bogged epoxy and done.

The reason I want to have the tuttle head and not just plate is because my friend has a board with a tuttle and we want to try my foil in that.

I think I might machine up a split mold so I can add the transition between tuttle and mast and make the tuttle marginally oversized so I can sand it down.
Thanks Pono