As it's been ages since I've posted anything it feels like a good time to go through the whole process. At this point I can't talk about the finished board, but I've definitely learnt loads in the past week just by building the press and from laying up the first blank. I'm really excited to get it out of the press and to start shaping my first board.
Seeing as this was my first time building a board, I decided to keep things simple with the press, mainly because that meant I could easily change parts of the press design without having to build a whole new one. This philosophy has already paid off as I had to take a plane to the outer rails to reduce the amount of concave (I shaved .25" off so the outer rails ended up at 1") as I had erred on the side of caution a bit too much.
I made a very simple rail press, with angled outer rails on the top of the press to ensure there was enough pressure on the blank to ensure everything bonded well.
Once I've learnt more about building boards I'll build a more refined press, but for the prototypes this is more than sufficient…well in my eyes it is.
Building the press was the easy bit, at least you can un-screw it if you put something together slightly wonkey…gluing up the veneers and sticking them in the press is certainly more scary as there is no going back. Construction for this board is 8 plys of ash and maple, with two of those plys cross grain and two layers of kevlar for extra stiffness, dampening, goddess knows what (The kevlar is an experiment that I will have know idea if it worked until everything comes out of the press). I'm hoping that the resulting blank will have minimal flex and bugger all torsional flex…the final board is going to be a top mount speed board after all.
laying up…use plenty of glue
The main thing I learnt pressing my first blank is that you need to make sure that you use enough glue, especially if you're using wood veneers rather than plywood as the wood soaks up a lot of glue. I was a bit frugal on my first couple of veneers and had to re-glue them…no real harm done.
Also if you are going to use composite materials like kevlar, fibreglass or fabric, make sure you get all the air bubbles out…I used a handy little roller for this.
Kevlar layer…pressing out the air bubbles
Once all the layers were glued up the whole thing went in the press and was cranked down hard…now it's just a waiting came waiting for the glue to set and then wait another week letting everything cure somewhere warm. Yes this may well come under the heading of overkill, but I've invested a lot of time and effort in this little project so far so I'd rather do it right, rather than rush and get something substandard out of the press.
Okay, that's it for the time being, I shall report back in a week when I have a finished blank in my hands and I'll get to see how much everything has relaxed once it comes out of the press, in the mean time do a motherfucking skate!
