Wake surf board bias cut reinforcement

So where were we? It’s funny, because we are several steps ahead in the wake surf board build than what we post online, so we have to go back and refresh our memories! If you recall, we talked about the alignment of the reinforcement fabrics so that we had fabric running at different angles in relation to the orientation of the wake surfers length. The major forces are honestly compressive from the riders weight and then length wise in terms of engaging with the wake from the boat. There is also a force that wants to twist the board from the nose up forcing the tail on the opposite side down. So we’re trying to address those forces and also manage the deck side compressive forces as someone stands on the wake surf board.

So one of the angle that we talked about was running the warp and fill of the carbon fiber at a -45 degree angle. So on the deck side we’ll have one layer that has the warp and fill at 0 degree and 90 degrees and the second layer that has the warp and fill at -45 and +45 degrees.

Clear as mud? Ok, we understand that we probably didn’t do a good job with that explanation, so…thank goodness for pictures!

Can you see the yellow thread on teh end of the fabric and how it’s running down the length of the one edge, that’s the bias we are laying that layer up at.

This is a close up of that bias and the yellow thread as a reference

Can you see the bias? Probably not in this photo, but you get the idea, we’ve cut that piece roughly to shape.

Here is the second layer that will be closest to the interior foam. Now, we aren’t going to be lapping the rails with this piece, meaning we won’t tuck this piece under the bottom. The Carbon Fiber is really stiff and when we do 3 layers over the rails it makes the board a tad too stiff and it feels sort of dead. So, we’ll bring this layer down close to the rail, but not over and tucked under the bottom.

We have only done some limited testing on which layer should be biased. We couldn’t tell a difference, but very likely there is. We’ve chosen the make the underlayer a 0/90 and the top layer the -45/45. We’ll do some testing on this wake surf board to determine if there is any meaningful difference in which layer runs in what direction.

This picture is both layers of Carbon Fiber stacked up. It’s a little hard to see, but the pattern of the biases was interesting to look at.

Now it’s time to break out all of the consumables, you probably recognize them all by now, from the left the green stretchlon, the light blue peel ply and the white breather/bleeder.

Next we cut the consumables to the rough size, not the shape just yet because we have a hard time getting the peel ply exactly lined up so we leave it a large rectangle and then we it’s laid down over the wet laminate, we don’t have to try and move it, we just trim it to shape whereever it finally lands!

Bleeder/breather

Peel ply

Technorati Tags: wake surf board, wake surfers