I've been working on dialing in a plyboard for about a little over a month now. all the boards i have made so far are 154's. The picture below shows the left to right progession of the boards.

The first board on the left is made from a solid piece of 5/8" mahogany marine ply. this one has no rocker. All the profiling was done with a belt sander and a fair amount of time.

the second board over is also 5/8" at its thickest point. This board started my process of laminating with epoxy resin. the base layer is 1/4", followed by 3 additional upper layers, (two are identical so it is hard to see them all). This board was really stiff, and heavy. Tip flex wasn't that great either. It rode much better than the first board, though. The 3/4" rocker I added to the tips made it much easier to keep above the water (I was out in really light winds on a Pu2 14).

The 3rd board has never been ridden. It is ridiculously thin and I just wanted to see what the material is capable of. the middle layer I opposed the majority of the grain in the ply (its a 3 layer plywood, so I oriented 2 direction laterally).. This was not a great idea, it doesnt need strength in that direction, and I think this might have been a keeper as far as thickness had I not done that.

The 4th board is 1/2" thick at the thickest point ( at the foot pad layer).. I oriented all layers with the majority of grain running longitudinally. this board is surprisingly stiff, but the redesign at the tips and staggering the footpad layer in maintains pretty good flex at the ends of the board while maintaining rigidity in the center. This board is not completed, but I am actually going to paint it up and send it off for some guys to try out and see what they think. Hopefully its deemed good. This weekend I spent a bunch of time trying to streamline how I make these things and got it so can sort of crank them out.


With the exception of the first board, they are all pressed together with a little rib style press I built. Eventually once I get all the quirks worked out i'd like to rig up an inexpensive vacuum system to get a more equal pressure across the entire board. All the boards are coated with West systems epoxy resin and a resin specific roller. if you ever work with resin i'd really recommend these rollers, they don't nap and leave debri, and it lets you get a really thin coat on the boards when laminating (reduces amount of squeezed out/wasted resin you have to sand off later)..

Here's a link to some more pictures of the boards. I didn't want to flood the board with them all. take a look at:

**EDIT** PICS ADDED FOR FINAL PAINTED BOARD
http://picasaweb.google.com/Steve141/Kiteboards#

Projects are good.

Those look great. What plywood did you use for the two on the right? How much do they weigh?

I'll get you a weight after work. I'd hate to overguess, but they aren't too bad.

I'm resurrecting this thread because It's looking like I'm gonna have to sell my beloved Door, but this thread and the link to the pictures gives me hope yet. How are you liking the board bigsteve? I'll be gathering materials soon if the Spleene door has to make an unwanted exit from the household.


Clint

look great looking to build a board myself (low on cash) I tip the scales pretty good (285) but used a Door for my lessons would these measure up

dude you gotta build me one of these this summer!

Reminds me of Zero Prestige
One of the MIT guys, Saul Griffith, went on to start Monkey Kites.