Painting and Finishing

The shape of the skimboard is done, the edges are smooth and you are starting to get all excited! Now lets crack on and finish the board. Make sure you pay attention and create a great finish.

For Wood - If you want to paint your board now is the time. You can just use spray paint, airbrush it, or use something else waterproof. To varnish your board, use a marine spar urethane, and make sure the rails get varnished well. Very important, if not they'll start sucking up water because of the ply and then your board will suck because it's waterlogged. Again, about three coats per side and you're done.

For Foam - You can airbrush, but can't use spray paint because it'll melt the foam, so you might just want to leave it white. Glass the bottom with a 6" wide strip of 6oz glass down the stringer, and over that another layer of 6oz lapped three inches to the deck. Glass with epoxy so your board won't melt when you try and glass it.

On the deck, lay down another strip down the stringer of 6, and put a layer cut at about an inch from the rail over that, and on top of that get all your scraps and pile them where your feet are going to be on the board. This really helps with the pressure dings, just lay all the pieces out where your feet go, the edges will disappear so it doesn't matter if they look funny but it really does help.

I think on my current board it has six or seven layers under my feet, and the rest of the deck is only two layers thick. Lay another layer of cloth over that and cut it at the rail line and glass this too.

After your laminate, (do this before you glass the deck too), you really want to get a good new sharp sureform and take down any lumps or anything and then sand everything even ( the smaller bumps) and then hotcoat by adding just another coat of epoxy to fill in the little holes made by the cloth. When that's done, you can sand it, or leave it how it is and that's done too.

So there we have it, our dummies guide to making a skimboard. We hope that you find it useful and create some masterpieces. We'd love it if you would send us some pictures of any boards made using this guide - we'll post them with this article.
Here's a recap on anything you might have missed:

Making a skimboard
The skimboard template
Creating the rocker, edges and foil
Painting and finishing the skimboard

Many thanks to Deathfrog over on the forum who put this guide together.