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.