Composite wakesurf board Kevlar deck

We’re still dragging a bit from that stupid virus. We’re pretty sure that Kleenex is feeling a surge in profits, this month, from our household alone! Getting back to our composite wakesurf board build, we had cut and laid out all of the materials for laminating the bottom and we’ve already shown you the results of that lamination process, so we chose to skip that part of this composite wakesurf board documentation. Which then brings us to the top side!

We use the same basic processes as documented with the bottom, we cut a Kevlar patch to just a shade under the outline dimensions. This picture shows the first layer of the Kevlar on the deck rough cut.

We didn’t do a great job of getting this picture, but what we hoped to document was showing the bias cuts on this second layer of Kevlar that is going on the deck. Oh! I guess we should mention that too, we are using two layers of Kevlar on the deck side.

The bias for that second layer is running -45/45 degrees from 0 at the nose. The other thing we have done is flip the roll over so that we are alternating the warp and fill bias off the roll. We didn’t do a good job of documenting that at the beginning and so had to refer to notes taped to the wall and on the roll of fabric! We’ll work on that more in the future if the effort seems to pan out on this test composite wakesurf board.  What would be better is a simple system associated with the roll of fabric so that a quick visual cue would tell us what the biases were on the last layer.  Alternatively, we could pre-plan each layer and then record that on the build notes.

We also topped the Kevlar layers with two layers of a 2 oz eglass. This is a super lightweight material to work with, but conforms well and we didn’t experience any problems with wet out, pulls or stray ends. We cut the first layer of the deck side eglass sort of like a really full deck patch.

The second layer of the eglass is cut with the bias described above -45 and the warp vs fill bias. This picture just shows us laying the second layer of fabric down and probably referring back to the notes as to which direction we needed to lay the fabric down. We’re sure you get the idea, each succeeding layer of reinforcement was on a bias from the previous layer.  Actually two differing biases. 

Then of course we do the same ritual with all of the consumable supplies, peel ply, breather and the stretchlon release film.

So that’s all for this post on our current composite wakesurf board. What we are focusing on in this wake surfer build is the differing reinforcement materials: carbon, kevlar and fiberglass and the differing bias arrangement 0/90 and -45/45 as well as warp and fill.

Thanks so much for following along!

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