MyPaipoBoards Forums

I cant grab my T-Belly for a week or so....I got bored and made "The Paipo Fish" to hold me over.

Unfinished, just needed a finish sand and clear coat. http://i1191.photobucket.com/albums/z47 ... 134640.jpg



Finished waxed and ridden once. http://i1191.photobucket.com/albums/z47 ... 123758.jpg

I used it in shoulder high plus waves at the Point, but I personaly had a bad session and the waves were not as good as the weekend before. The first time out with it was better than the first two boards Ive made and I ended up liking my last red board well enough. It is 1/2 birch 47.5" X 22.25

looks fun. is this your first attempt? it will work, everything works, just whether or not you like the way it works. roundy outlines turn quicker but dont hold the line as well. it'll be fun for sure. next time, make one with super parallel rails and compare. then make one with parallel rails and a square or round tail and compare. then make a roundy one with a square or round tail. then try moving the wide point back farther so you have a narrower nose, not to much or itll be hard to turn. look, i've already got you working over the next 4-6 weekends, so now you're to busy to surf. and thats only shaping boards for yourself! see what happens when you become a shaper?

Hahahahahah Thanks Soul. No It is my 3rd. My best looking so far. I moved the wide point on this one further up than the last two and went with 1/2" instead of 3/8" so I realy felt the thickness. It seemed to duckdive better than the last two and had a little bit tougher time catching waves. The waves werent great so the jury is still out on this one.

This morning I had it in small but fun waves with clean faces. The board did anything I wanted it to and more......got out of the water cold but happy and found that the nose had a chip in it and had delaminated several inches in.

cool. delambed? weird.

It looks like Baltic Birch plywood.
If it is, then delamination is almost guaranteed; unless it is completely well and truly sealed, especially the edges. Preferably epoxy.
Birch ply is not meant for exterior use and just doesn't do well with any water contact at all.
Even made with WP glue it'll eventually come apart. It's the wood.

What kinda birtch should I use? This birtch was $13 and change at Lowes for a 24"x48"x1/2" I also had a knothole problen when the sandinding started. Use my solar ding repair on them and sanded it. At the very least I will just copy this board on a better piece of wood and also try other shapes as Soul suggested.

You are better off not using birch ply at all. As stated above, it's the wood not the glue.

The wood they make that ply out of is like thick hard paper and it sucks up water like a towel.
None of it is exterior rated. And it comes from Russia.
What you want to look for is anything exterior rated, good old fir A/C plywood is a good choice and easy to find. And made here.

Here is all you should need to know.
This is from a boatbuilding site but it all applies

North American Marine-grade plywood is made entirely of Douglas-fir or Western Larch. The grade of all plies of veneer is B or better. B-grade veneer may have knots but no knotholes. A-grade veneer has no knots or knotholes. Both A and B grade may contain wood or synthetic patches. Panels are sanded on both faces or Medium Density Overlay (MDO) or High Density Overlay (HDO). The maximum core-gap size permitted is 1/8 inch. Its exposure durability rating is EXTERIOR and the glue used is a fully waterproof structural adhesive. It is considered a "premium" panel grade for use in situations where these characteristics are required. It is available in 4x8-foot sheets of 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8 and 3/4-inch thickness. Sheets up to 5x12-feet are also available. Available grades are A-A, A-B, B-B (face-back), MDO and HDO. MDO and HDO is marine ply with resin impregnated paper on one or both sides.

Other Exterior Plywood Grades

Plywood panels rated as EXTERIOR but not Marine, such as A-B, A-A or C-C EXTERIOR, may contain any other permissible species and contain C-grade veneer. Unless specially improved, C-grade veneer is permitted to contain knots and knotholes up to approximately 1-1/2 inches across, and the inner plies may have core gaps up to 1-inch wide.
There are more expensive marine plys that are all imported from asia or europe
http://www.glen-l.com/wood-plywood/okoume.html

Thanks for the info about the plywood Uncle, but now I'm confused. I used this piece of what looks like birch ply, from a local hardware store on O'ahu, to make a paipo when I stayed there for a month. The finished board is barely sealed with 2 coats of spray can varnish ( one coat was rained on before it was completely dry). That board saw a lot of water time and abuse - stuffed for long periods of time in back of a hot car, sometimes unrinsed -during the month with no signs of coming apart or taking on water. I also found this post from a kayak forum which talks about how Home Depot birch ply withstood a lot of water testing. http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Build ... ome-depot/
Sounds like there are different types/qualities of birch ply on the market??

The stuff you have in the photo looks to me like Arauco(good stuff) but it's hard to say.
You pay your money and you take your chances.

Whatever that wood was, it was cheap - less than $13 for a half sheet and didn't smell like regular fir tree plywood when cut. That's the only time I ever had to pay for wood for a paipo. I keep finding free pile / free Craigslist plywood locally, so there hasn't been the need to pay the hardware store or lumberyard.

Og, unk, klan. Ive used the birch from home depot and never delam'd. I used turp, clear acrylic, spar varn, wax/oil and paint to cover them. Its 13 for a 2.x4. Piece. I did start using the 4x8 sheets and them cut into four pieces and it cost 32 bucks. It worked to. I liked the flex and cost better than the marine grade mahogany but the mahog looks really bitchin as is bullet prood. 85 bucks a sheet tho.

I wonder if Im getting the "Plypo virus" becuase even though Im getting a realy cool belly board soon( and it is a bad$$ belly board!!) Seeing Ogz plywood with the outline drawn on it makes me want to run out and buy some plys and get cuttin' and sandin'.

yes.

yes yes yes

Uncle Grumpy wrote:You are better off not using birch ply at all. As stated above, it's the wood not the glue.

The wood they make that ply out of is like thick hard paper and it sucks up water like a towel.
None of it is exterior rated. And it comes from Russia.
What you want to look for is anything exterior rated, good old fir A/C plywood is a good choice and easy to find. And made here.

Just found this and called local HD. They said whatever they had in A/C plywood is NOT exterior grade, only have CDX in exterior grade.

So is the CDX the only thing really to use for a paipo, at least in my Home Depot context if using plywood? Does not seem to be marine grade available anywhere in the area, pretty far from coast...

Big Box stores suck big time and many of the employees don't know shite from shinola.
CDX is one step above OSB and pretty friggin' rough stuff with voids etc.
If you slop enough epoxy and/or paint on birch ply or supposedly non exterior rated A/C ply it will be okay until the seal is broken.
One way to make the lesser quality plys more water and rot resistant is to roll on a coat of epoxy and then warm it with a heat gun on low which allows it to really soak in. Top with paint or varnish.
See if you can buy a half or quarter sheet of what you think might work and then cut a small hunk off the corner and boil it for a few minutes, if if doesn't come apart, you are good to go.
Plywood is all marked on the edge and sometimes in lesser grades on the face.
The codes are pretty easy to decipher once you know what to look for.
Tons of info here.
http://www.glen-l.com/wood-plywood/wp-index.html

Thanks UG. I was a bit "on notice" in m mind about the crudeness of CDX as I have seen the voids etc. Could get very very lucky and unknowingly cut a paipo size piece that was sound but not too likely. You'd need some sort of high tech and expensive medical type scanner to do that on purpose

I can get 1/4 sheet of that Sandeply stuff so I guess I will test that and if it fails go w/ the epoxy-heat gun technique.

I wouldn't worry too much about using CDX grade ply. I've made a bunch of boards out of it over the past few years that see regular use/abuse. The majority have held up well, especially if they were epoxied as suggested. My old favorite, made out of recycled (epoxied) CDX held up for 2.5 years in waves up to DOH. It finally weakened / flexed out internally almost like a bodyboard, so it gets a little too wobbly in overhead + waves now. I've only completely snapped one (non-epoxied) CDX board. The biggest hassle of using CDX for me are all the surface defects. I'm not a perfectionist when I make paipos, but I still end up using lots of wood filler to get semi smooth surfaces. I've also noticed that when using common CDX fir ply, you have to orient the surface grain horizontally when cutting out the board to get the right amount of flex. The boards turn out way too stiff if cut the other way, at least with the 1/2" to 3/4" wood I've used. That hasn't been the case when I've used better grades of plywood. The fact that all my CDX wood has been free outweighs all the downsides to me. Also, some stain and a nice finish coat hides a lot of "sins" on a CDX paipo.

I have noticed that big difference in flex depending on how you orient the board on the stock.

Mostly dreaming I fear. Haven't decided to actually build yet. I have yet to test the "Osserman" clone I made awhile back in any sort of reasonable waves. Few and far between from where I live now but a trip is in the works, though a bit distant in time yet.