Some answers:

1. What do you mean by "resin infused"?
2. The lighter the better - your choice of styrene or something other will depend on what you can actually get your hands on, and whether you are using polyester or epoxy resins (ie: you cant use polyester on styrene as it melts).
3. nope - you cant easily cut it as it will blunt your scissors within a few feet of cutting.
4. Using carbon is a good idea, but it is expensive if it is your first time. Trying to make an outer core of foam is even harder.
5. Overlap the laminate if you know before glasssing, where you want the footstraps to go. If you go multiple layers, you can: glass the first layer - drill/insert plugs - glass second layer plus some extra plug glass-patches.
6. You will mostly likely _HAVE_ to have a centerline stringer of some sort -> there is just too much length-ways flex without it. Some foam molds already come with wood stringers.

Foam/shaping:
- if you make a big hole in your foam, use some of the "self expanding foam in a can" to fill the hole - looks ugly but works well.
- a steel file does wonders on hard spots (eg: filing stringers - sanding tools tend to take off the foam and leave the stringers)
- wood (cardboard) templates make shaping the outline far easier.
- get a straight-edge (eg: straight piece of wood) for checking rocker / concaves / vee.
- you need a planer or wood-rasp.
- some foam is "closed cell" (no water ingress, heavier), others are "open cell" (water leaks are bad, lighter)
- dont paint the board as is stops the resin sticking.

Inserts:
- fin boxes are not friendly, you need to fit the finbox so that it is flush with the bottom of the board once you have finished glassing. This means either:
a) put the finbox in after glassing (not as strong, but easier to be accurate).
b) make the finbox protrude from the bottom (stronger, but hard to approximate correct depth).
- fin boxes are alinged in 3 dimensions - think about how to support the fin box while you are pouring resin around it.
- fin boxes on wave boards are a little less critical than for boards designed to go fast (slalom / speed)
- mast tracks are relatively easy - buy a $50 router, route hole, put some resin in hole, put in box, add layers of glass over the top with more resin.
- see Q5 above.

Glass:
- styrene and polyester dont mix.
- styrene melts if your resin gets too hot.
- bluetack is your best buddy for filling holes so that resin doesn't get in them (also good for filling big holes: plastic bags, cling wrap).
- get a $5 plastic sheet from the paint store - save years of removing resin from concrete.
- vacuum bagging is hard work.... especially if you are only going to build one or two boards.
- put smaller glass/carbon patches under bigger patches... the bigger the piece of cloth, the less it moves.
- use a soft rubber squeezer thingy to squeeze the air out / push resin through the cloth.
- you can use masking tape to mask to stop the cloth moving (but dont put resin over the tape... :)

Resin tips:
- polyester resin is runny for quite a while (eg: 20 mins) then turns from a liquid into a gel-like-solid within about 2 minutes.
- epoxy wont set at all below 15 degres C (polyester is a little better) - get a $25 heater from the supermarket.
- gravity makes resin go where you dont want it to - masking tape helps.
- mix a "test batch" of resin for your first go... you dont want to be half way through a job when it goes solid.
- when doing big areas (eg: the bottom), mix half the resin and apply to the first half of the board, squeazing out the bubbles. Before it starts to gel, mix a second batch for the second half of the board. This allows you to spend a bit more time squeezing out the bubbles in that half.
- bluetack can be used around the underside of the fin box so that resin and gravity dont conspire against you.
- polyester resin needs about 1% hardner or less to make it go hard - less in summer - get a syringe or two from the chemist (minus the needle). Measure reasonably accurately. eg: 200ml of resin requires less than 2ml of hardner (Melbourne winter in garage + electric heater).
- epoxy requires more exacting measurement of volumes than polyester. Strictly speaking you are meant to "determine the amount of resin by weight of cloth" - but that is just funky...
- put excess resin onto old plastic bags - when it goes hard, you will know the board is set (stops you from putting finger prints onto the board).
- one litre of resin should be enough to cover the deck (or bottom) + some left over.

Sanding:
- belt sanders are great, but dont over-do it
- power sanders are good.
- hand sanding is used sparingly...
- sanding the non-filler coats, results in clogged sandpaper/file (a sharp knife helps unclog the paper/file)
- sanding filler coats is susceptible to sanding through the filler coating (bad - you then have to put on another filler coat).

Filler (deck/bottom) coat:
- use a paint brush to apply the filler coat.
- use very-long strokes for entire length of the board to ensure a consistant dispersion of coating.
- on the deck you will need some grip - get some foam grip for the footstrap areas - if you are cheap (like me) dont.
- grip -> mask off the area where you want the grip, you need some suger (plus your mother's sifting thingy), paint the filler coat into the masked area, sift some suger, let it set, then wash off excess suger.
- use masking tape on edges to make them sharp - pour filler onto surface - brush (long strokes) along board and tape - about 1 hour after the resin turns into a gel (ie: before it goes rock solid), you will be able to _carefully_ pull the masking tape off.

Biggest tips:
- buy a box of 100 powder-less gloves from the super market -> resin gets on everything...
- practise on some small samples _before_ testing on your main work -> you dont want to be half-way through puring resin on your work, to have the resin go hard. Same goes with shaping the foam.
- Get some face/breather masks - dust goes everywhere and is bad for you. Goggles too when sanding.
- Lock the garage so that someone cant stick their fingers in the wet resin / soft foam.
- Its harder than it looks....

Hey, just about my favourite subject.
1 can't help with this never tried, but I thought the infusion process helped get the best fibre to resin ratio.

1a I use 20 kg/m2 for my wave boards. not really sure it's really necessary, but I've seen slalom boards with sunken cores, so I wonted to be on the safe side.
We built Hardy's low wind ocean board with 13Kg foam but we used 200gm/m2 carbon both sides of the sandwich to distribute the load, so far even with hardy's weight it's still OK, (but I don't think he jumps it much)

2 I use 5mm 80kg, herex on the bottom and if I can get hold of it, airex on the top, (it bends round the rails sooo much easier, and withstands impacts much better.

3 Kevla's got great impact resistance, but as mentioned is very hard to cut, I use my wife's sera ? scissors, they are serrated one side, and stop the fibres sliding away. Its also almost impossible to sand, so it's best to have a layer of something else on top of it. I use patches of it on the nose and tail, where the mast/boom is likely to hit, and around the mast base, where a busted uni bolt is likely to punch a hole in the deck. I like my boards to last, and don't mind putting up with a few extra grams.

4 Carbon is very stiff, and really stifens up the sandwich, I use a triangle, cut on the bias, between back of board and mast base top and bottom underneath the sandwich. (The idea behind this is that the sandwich will protect the carbon from impact damage, the board may dent but it won't break)
What ever you do with carbon don't have a square cut across the board, it will throw very strong loads at that point and increase dramatically the chance of breaking the board. I also have patches of it under the footpad areas on top of the sandwich, to spread jumping loads.

5 I finish them flush, epoxy doesn't stick all that well to the inserts, it can delaminate from it and start sucking water without being noticed, overlapping it does very little to hold the inserts in, but if they do come out you rip a pile of cloth off. Instead I set them in with cloth so that the cloth overlaps onto the deck, especially the mast track and fin box, this stops them getting pushed in! If something does come loose, you see the crack right away

6 Stringers are a waste of time, not bad as a shaping aid, but apart from that they just add weight, it's much better having that extra weight in the sandwich where it'll do some good. But you do have to be a bit more carefull with vacuum distortion. The easiest way is to use the foam that you hot wired the board from to vacuum on top off, with little wedges under any "v" to stop twist.

And to answer Mark, buiding your own board is only partly an economic.
There's nothing like smacking a big lip on something you've built yourself, and being very pleased with the way it handles. Not to mention being able to try out your own ideas and experiment with building techniques and design.

Damm I can't help myself on this one !
1. No
1. 12.5kg sl grade
2. 80kg 5mm
3. No waste of money has poor compression qualities (a gimmick in production boards)
4. 2 layers 200gm 150mm x 150mm squares ONLY under the heels
5. over
6. No would be overkill

Addit.4oz under sandwich 2x 4oz over sandwhich and carbon in heel areas over sandwich. Vac bagging is easy made 1st board with a vacuum cleaner!
GO FOR IT ! Don't use a belt sander use 3000rpm sander/polisher or elbow grease. Heaps of info at swaylocks.com

Rys.
As well as cutting the carbon at an angle to stop point loading, I also have the weave at 45deg that allows all the fibres to share the logitudinal stress.
I'm using a similar lay up to juice 1 x 4oz underneath sandwich 2 x 4oz on top. the underneath one is surfboard style asymetric with 60% of the weave up and down the board and 40% across. The 2 external layers I cut from 50/50 1m wide with the board diagonally across the cloth, but at diferent directions both times. Probably puts the cloth at an angle of about 10/15deg to board centerline. And I vacuum peelply etc this on.

Juice
You still haven't convinced me about kevlar, admitedlly I'm not using pure kevlar, but a carbon kevlar composite I picked up cheap.
I'm convinced it improves impact resistance significantly.
Are you just using the poor compression data to go by, or have you done any tests???
I'm not sure just how they measure compression, I have a feeling it's end on to a wet out fibre, this sort of load doesn't occur with impact, the load is across the fibre.
Guess I should find some kevlar and lay up some test samples on core material. Then I could compare glass, kevlar and carbon, for shattering I think carbon would be the worst (for high impact point loads), and kevlar the best. With glass denting the most.

Hey Bertie, do you have an opinion on the kevlar thing???

Bertie,

I would love a copy of the spreadsheet. I have sent you a private message with my email address. Not sure how it works, I guess you get an email from me.

does someone know of a blank maker that is on the east coast that will blow a blank for a sailboard??