Photos Of Finished Board

Term 4 Week 5

This week I am finishing up for the year both with longboard and my blog. On Monday I put my griptape on my board. It had a lot of air bubbles in the griptape so I got a roller and spent the rest of the lesson rolling my griptape to get the bubbles out. On Wednesday (today) I am updating my blog and calender. I am posting reflections and pictures to finish off my checklist. Today is the last day of school so I will soon have my exams and then the holidays after that. On Thursday I came into school to finish my board. I trimmed the griptape to fit my board.

Term 4 Week 4

This week I have been doing a lot painting. On Monday I continued to paint on my board artwork. I masked down a few more shapes then painted. I then pulled off the tape and left my board to dry. The tape tore up the paint slightly so I used a small brush to touch up the artwork. On Wednesday I had 3 periods of Dtm. This is because I was able to leave PE and Graphics to go finish my paint job. I spent two of these periods finishing off my artwork. I used the same method of masking, painting and then touching up. With the third period I was in the computer labs updating my blog and calender. I did things like posted the board engineering drawing i created and posted new pictures. I have been working hard to complete the checklist of all the things we must post to gain our credits. I believe I should be finished if we have a little more time in the computer labs. On Thursday I painted a clear coat of lacquer onto the underside of my board. A lacquer coat will make my board stronger and will hopefully make it look better as it will be quite glossy when it has dried. The lacquer got some dust and small hairs stuck in it so I believe it will make the coat slightly rough. Next week I am hoping to have all my checklist finished so I can get the credits. I am also hoping to finish my board. I still have to put on the griptape and drill the holes for the trucks.

PHOTOS OF GRIPTAPE

Term 4 Week 3

This week has involved a lot of painting and also computer work. On Monday it was Labor Day so I did not have DTM. Instead on Monday I was snowboarding at Turoa ski field with Sam and Anand. On Wednesday I was in the computer labs updating my blog and working to complete my checklist. I posted new photos of my longboard progress. I made a solidworks engineering drawing to post on my blog. I updated my calender and added a weeks reflections. On Thursday I started to paint my longboard artwork. Before painting on the different colours onto my board I first had to draw out my design in pencil and then had to use masking tape to mask out my design. Using masking tape will hopefully make the edges of my artwork very crisp and clean. Laying down the masking tape took quite a long time so I only got about a 1/5 of my artwork done which is not what I was hoping to accomplish. Next week I am really hoping to get my artwork done and also paint on a clear coat of lacquer to harden and protect my board. I am also hoping to have completed my checklist, including my evaluation for this project.

EVALUATION - PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

Over the year during this project of making a longboard I have encountered many problems. In 11DTM my design project was based on designing and creating a longboard. The brief given to me was 'Post a picture of you and your final design (skateboard) in a location in Wellington that is perfect for skating in/around'. The first problem I encountered during the project was the fact that I had decided to have two curves in my board. The two curves I wanted contradicted each other. I had to make a slightly different mould for my board. It took me a little long to work out the dimensions and shapes for each of my mould pieces. The next problem was that the board ,once out of its mould, did not get the strong curves I wanted. To get the curves I wanted I should of exaggerated some of the curves in my mould to get stronger curves in the board. Researching the materials for my board was tricky. This is because the materials were quite uncommon so did not have much information on the internet to gain research from. A large problem encountered was working with flax. Initially Terry had thought to use flax as the stringer for the longboards so we collected flax from around the school grounds and started to strip it down. After a few weeks of stripping flax down to thin pieces we started to realize that using flax would take too long. To use flax we would have to strip the flax down to extremely fine strands to make it work. Also the flax started to mould just from being store away for a few days. Mould on flax would of made the stringer weak so it would be more likely to break. To make the flax work we would have to work much faster and strip down the flax finely then immediately get it into our boards before it moulds. Clamping the board to my mould was reasonably hard as we only were able to use 4 clamps each. The board materials would slide around as you were clamping them down but I got 3 others to help me so I got it done. Next time I could use more clamps to fix the materials down better to make it easier and also to gain stronger curves in my board. The base coat paint didn't work out as planned. The spray gun made a very bumpy coat of black on board. The rough coat did turn out with a interesting effect but it made all the sanding I had been doing to made my board really smooth before painting. I should of just used spray paint cans instead to make the coat very smooth and consistent. The artwork painting also did not turn out as expected. I had to mask down tape to stencil out my artwork which took a while. This meant I did not have enough time to spray down each colour for my artwork, instead I had to just paint it down with a paint brush. Using a brush made the artwork roughly textured. I should of made more time so I would be able to spray each colour to give my board a really smooth look. When I had to pull off the masking tape after painting the artwork some paint ripped and it made a bumpy edge to a lot of my artwork. To fix it I just used a small brush and touched up the edges by hand. This made the edges better but not as good as i was expecting. Next time I should use proper paint masking tape that would give a crisper edge. The lacquer came out quite good except for some dust and hairs that had fallen in and dried. I could of put my board in a dust free room to dry, that would leave my board with a smooth clear coat. Overall I am happy with how my board turned out but will probably not actually use it as I believe it will not be strong enough. I will probably use it as some wall art instead. Using more layers of ply would of probably made it stronger and more usable.

EVALUATION - BOARD PROCESS

EVALUATION

This year in 11DTM my design project was based on designing and creating a longboard. The brief given to me was 'Post a picture of you and your final design (skateboard) in a location in Wellington that is perfect for skating in/around'. After given the brief, I researched some pre-existing longboards and found the pros and cons of each one. I then made some concepts for my own longboard keeping in mind each of the pros and cons from my research. I initially decided to make a simple oval shaped longboard with the length of 800 mm. I then decided to change my shape to a more abnormal type of oval but still very symmetrical. Once I had my board shape decided I worked out what curvature i wanted in my board. I decided to have two curves going through my board. One making the board bouncy when stood on and one to give the board control and handibility. Once I had an idea of what i wanted my board to look like I then researched the materials. I originally was going to use plywood, epoxy resin and flax. I started with the flax by stripping it down to thin pieces. The flax was going to be used as the stringer for my board to make it flexible and strong. After working on my flax stringer for four weeks my teacher realized that it would just take too long to make a reasonable flax stringer so we decided to just use fiberglass instead. I then had to make my mould for my longboard. I used 7 pieces of 18 mm MDF. 1 piece to hold the mould together and the other 6 to form the shape and curves i wanted. I first drew out the shapes of each piece, then cut out each piece, then sanded down each piece. To put the pieces together I used several screws and an electric screwdriver. My mould was then ready to have my board laid onto it. Once I had collected 2 pieces of ply, r180 epoxy resin and a fiberglass sheet I laid my board down. Firstly I got 3 others to help me as it takes quite a few hands. Next I lay one sheet of plywood onto my mould. Then I spread a layer of epoxy resin onto the topside of the plywood. Then put down the fiberglass sheet onto the resin. Then spread the remaining epoxy resin on the fiberglass before putting the second plywood piece on top. Lastly I clamped down my board to my mould with 6 clamps. This made sure my intended curves would be moulded into my board. I then left my bard clamped for 2 full days then took out my board. At this stage my board was a rectangular shape so I then drew out my abnormal oval shape onto my board, ready to be cut. Then I used the bandsaw to cut out the shape of my longboard. Once cut I then sanded down my board in a sequence using coarse sand paper to very fine sand paper. This made my board smooth. I got my teacher to bog up some small holes in my board to simply make it look better. I then went on to priming my board. I used a white undercoat primer. I did one layer of primer then let it dry before sanding it down. I then painted on a second layer of primer and sanded it too. Next I got the teacher to spray down the base coat onto my board. I chose a black base coat to contrast with my bright artwork. Once the base coat had dried I was ready to paint on my artwork. I had previously designed a rasta type of design which I decided to go through with. We bought test-pots of paint for our artwork from Resene. I got a red, green and a yellow. I drew out my artwork onto the underside of my board using pencil. Then I masked down one part of my artwork using making tape. Using masking tape makes the edges of the artwork more crisp than just using a paint brush. I used a paint brush and painted each coloured within the tape. I used a small paint brush to do some slight touch ups on the paint later on. Once i had finished my artwork I painted on a layer of lacquer to harden and protect my board. I then put on my clear griptape to finish my board. I laid it down, rolled it down and then trimmed the excess griptape from the board.