Prepping the cores

Foam cores by nature have a little bit of melted foam on the surface. Like long strings of hardened crap.

I have a special sanding block for this job. It's a piece of 3/4" MDS board (can you tell I like that stuff?) about 12"x5-6" wide.

Attach a piece of standard sandpaper to it, about 220 grit. Just use 3M 77 contact spray....spray the block and paper. Just mist it, it doesn't take much.

One thing to make sure of is that you don't have any ragged edges or you will gouge the foam.

Now just sand all the cores until they are nice and smooth, and all the gloss is removed.

You'll note in the fin and the turtle deck cores that because of the taper, there is a little burn out at the small ends. Don't stress over this, just block sand it smooth and all is well. Be careful you do not change the shape, just make it uniformly flat.

Do this to all of the cores and we'll start sheeting with the tail.