last night talking to my grandpa who is an avid woodworker, he recommended that he should come down and we should build a big work shed in my back yard, so im thrilled right…then he says “lets make a balsa one” i explained the toughness of it, and how its not a piece of cake. he blew it off like it was nothing my question for soem of u experienced wood craftsmen is… do u think its possible that with his knowledge of wood working, and mine of surfboard design…is it possible we could turn out a good solid balsa board? ive always wanted to do one, and have dreamed of buying one and riding it forever, but due to the price never could. so i would like to give it a shot, and wonder what u guys think about this. im thinking about calling off my first trip out to cali, just to go to idaho and try to make one with him all summer!! super fun in idaho. and hes got a damn airplain hanger full of tools and stuff, id be in heaven. whats ur thoughts thanks dj
Look to get a good balsa blank/wood from an experienced person. not all balsa is suitable for surfboards
sounds like a dream come true. If you are a young person, you should take advantage of the opp. because they don’t seem to come along twice. If nothing else comes of it, you will learn much from Grand dad. Go for it!
In my humble opinion as a wood worker / surfboard builder, a wood worker that has good experience and a good eye for detail and finish is years and years ahead of a newbie shaper. Good wood workers are always building jigs for some kind custom creations so building rail marking tools, templates, profile whatevers, etc are no brainers. And the big difference is that power tools, hand tools and the sharpening of them are very to uses and do . Heck all of our tools are wood working tools that have been modified. Cutting foam is next to nothing compared to Balsa, Curly Maple, Cocobola, etc. So if Grand Dad is a furniture quality wood worker, combined with your shaping skills it should be no problem. Grand dad will have no problem with the application, it will be the design theory that will throw him off. This leads me to a question, what do you think the percentage of shapers that also wood workers is? -Jay
You didn’t mention the age of your grandfather. IMO, any time you can spend with him is time well spent. If you pick up a few tips (on life as well as woodworking/shaping techniques) and come out at the end of summer with a new board, so much the better. Summer in California is hit and miss for surf anyway. How many more opportunities will you have to spend time with your grandfather? What life experiences will he share that you’ll never get anywhere else?
For 4oo years, the men on my fathers side of the family have been wood workers on American soil. My greatgrandfather was a home builder, all with hand tools no electric ones yet. My grand father, Martin Phillips was the head jig builder at Wright Patterson air base in Dayton, Ohio and built the Grumman/Wright F-6E Hellcat, the most feared fighter aircraft in WW11, by the Japanese pilots. He was aslo the inventor of the pattern lathe (he sold the patent for a bottle). My father as a child turned out Louisville Sluggers by the 10’s of thousands on these lathes. My father,a wing commander of a B-24 bomb squadron out of England in WW11, Berlin Airlift, Cuban missle crisis, 2 tours of Viet Nam ( during which time he also delivered nukes to Johnson Island), retired in 1967 and went back into the fine cabinetry/architechual millwork business until his death 6 years ago.My younger brother took the reins of Phillips and Sons and re-directed the company to fine, all wood, coastal New England furniture of the eras of the 1600’s to 1800’s. And yes, I am a fine wood worker too
if you don’t do it you will kick yourself for the rest of your life…buy a whole bundle make 6 keep one sell the restand take a vacation w/Gdad to sandollar beach and ride’em… ambrose
If you don’t take advantage of this oppertunity you’re STUPID…DO IT…!!! Beyond getting a board, the bonding with the old man is priceless…It’ll do both of you good…DO IT…!!! http://www.hollowsurfboards.com
Opportunities like this don’t come very often. Do It! You won’t regret it.
I’m with the rest of them. You can come to California for the summer anytime over the remainder of your life, but this is a fleeting opportunity. Not to mention you’ll learn a lot…
I am a semi retired board builder and a full time woodworker.I mainly restore antique furniture nowadays.Go see your grandfather,it will help you more than you realize.Jim Phillips and I had his Dad’s knowledge and full use of an Air Force Wood Hobby Shop.It was priceless.You are lucky my young friend. R.B.
everyone, i appreciate all of the great input. im def thinking ill just skip out on the cal trip. not only would the board making be really fun, but spending time with hima nd his wife in idaho would be awesome! not sure how old he is, he is a veitnam vetran if that tells u anything, was a colonel in the army, for 30 years. he’s a great guy, and i enjoy spendign time with him this week, while we are both in Mass. he’s really not an old guy, just more of a retired guy, still very active. overall he’s an excelletn wood worker. and i think he’s more than qualified. besides the board, i think fishing, camping, rock climbing rafting, and any other things i can do would be great fun! i’m gonna have to talk to him about it tomorrow. see what he thinks. as for where to buy it??.. jim, or paul, or anyone else on the west coast… wheres the best place to buy it? remember i;ll be in idaho and ill most likely have to ship it. thanks for any input, and i appreciate all of the responses! dj
I couldn’t agree more with just about everything that’s been said so far. Your grandfather has knowledge that just isn’t taught any more, at any price. And he wants to pass it on to you - take it with both hands. One thing I have found while teaching younger guys that I’ll pass on to ya: your grandfather’s apprenticeship was, like mine with my father in the boat building business, probably a helluva lot less warm and fuzzy than things are these days. Well, there’s right ways and wrong ways to get things done, especially around powerful machinery, and when somebody is doing it the wrong way they can screw up the work, screw up the machine and screw up a few useful body parts. And informing that somebody that they are incorrect in their methodology wasn’t something out of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood- more like Marine boot camp. Some of that may come through from time to time, carried over from back in the day. While that older method of correcting technique maybe doesn’t fit in with modern standards of political correctness in the workplace, it has this virtue: it works, immediately, and the apprentice doesn’t forget. Don’t sweat it, there’s no viciousness intended, just keeping things safe and right. A 30" bandsaw doesn’t know from warm and fuzzy. Nor does any other power tool that weighs as much as a small car. Better your feelings get hurt than losing a few fingers or worse. And if you have a couple of pops with him after work, you’ll learn even more as you guys get everything back to an even keel. Hell, I wish I had saved the after work sketches on bar napkins from my apprenticeship. I could use 'em to illustrate a full sized book on boatbuilding. Hope that’s of use doc…
Doc, as my Dad used to tell me, “tools don’t know the difference between hooves, hide or eyeballs”. I had one of the “crapsmen” use one of my bandsaws(without asking) last week, ball of thumb, cut to the bone, pushing work DIRECTLY inline with the blade, cut through, kept going!!! Just like the butcher cutting chops
Exactly, Jim. I have an acquaintance ( dunno if I want to call somebody that dumb a friend) who managed to rip his thumb right down the middle with a table saw. Another guy, little afternoon project with a skilsaw after a couple beers and his guitar playing was literally cut off after that. Then there was the time the old man gave himself a manicure with a nice shiny brand new Skil 100. Lovely job of it too…fingernails and about half the callous on his fingertips flat as could be. He could ( and did, in bars when he felt like being impressive ) light kitchen matches off his palms, so there was a healthy callous there - no blood, just cussing. Scared the hell out of myself one night, working late, tired and wanting to get the job done. Just nicked my thumbnail and the callous of the thumb with a tablesaw blade…and after immediately becoming more wide awake than I had been for days, called it a night. I’ve considered demonstrating to newbies by feeding a soup bone through a bandsaw and mentioning that their finger bones are much easier to cut… Uncle Doc’s Rules of Tools - 1 - If you’re even thinking of having a beer, it’s time to put away the sharp stuff. 2 - Tired? You start making mistakes when you’re tired. Put the tool down, NOW. 2a- Getting angry? At the project, the customer or life in general? Take a break before you do something stupid. 3 - Maintainance, maintainance and more maintainance. 4 - Sharpen the damned thing. If it’s dull, you’ll kill the tool and maybe yourself trying to force the work. 5 - Turn the music down or better yet off. You can’t hear the little things the tool is trying to tell you. 6 - Don’t rush the job. Better to have it done a little late than very late and heavily bandaged. There’s more, though those are the ones that come immediately to mind. doc… still have all my fingers …
good rules doc! only injuries or accidents ive ever coem across when shaping is cutting a finger with a rasor. which always seems to happen. atleast once a month if im lucky. i luckily the blood sands off the foam pretty good. well i talked to gradnpa today, hikm and his wife promise once i plan it they are coming down to build me a big work shed in my back yard. which is awesome. grandpa awesome told me some great stories of fathers and grandfathers and there work with wood and metal. seems like it runs deeper in my blood than i thought! i forget the name of the tool. but he insists on giving it to me once we start the balsa board. i know the name but its 1 in the mourning and im half asleep. its the tool with the 2 handles with the big sorta rounded blade. kinda used for the same thing as a surform. but i guess it was his grandfathers, and he insists on handing it down to me, hoping ill turn out to be a great wood worker some day. i think im gonna go up there sometime. as his wife and him were thrilled at the thought, and def want me to come up for a while, and just hang out. As for experience, he surprised me in saying hes watched a couple balsa boards be done…? he explained when stationed back in hawaii, he used to help out at some sort of a hobby shop that some dude would shape balsa boards. he said that they used to make em all the time. he also acts liek it would be nothing. i have lots of faith in him. also i would really like to pick up all the knowledge i can get of wood working, and life for that matter. overall im def going to proceed in not only him coming down and helping me build a nice work space as he says “the right way” which will be more than set up. and i also plan to shape a board with him. jim, paul, doc, or anyone else… what’s the best place to buy balsa, that i can depend on it being good without actually hand picking it. i say this due to location. any advice on choice of wood, any place i can depend on. thanks dj
only injuries or accidents ive ever coem across when shaping is cutting a finger with a rasor. i luckily the blood sands off the foam pretty good. seems like it runs deeper in my blood than i thought! Pun intended…
Doc, are you the Checkered Demon? Same of Jaspers? #5. is why I don’t wear ear protection, the tools are talking to you the whole time they are running. I had one fool in Fla. toss a firecracker under my door, right between my feet while running my bandsaw, the sound of snapping blade is just about the same, I was PISSED
Hi dj- The tool is called a drawknife - very much the thing that was used for the old redwood boards and balsas for cutting fairly large convex surfaces. It has a relative called a scorp that is used for concave surfaces. Think of 'em as a spokeshave’s big brother. If you can get hold of some good sized chunks of cheap, clear-grained wood, practice, practice, practice. Then there are broadaxes and hatchets, adzes, the whole tribe of planes, chisels and mallets and … damn, this is kinda fun remembering it all when I was learning. If you get the chance, start haunting old tool stores and such. Every power tool replicates some hand tool and I think it’s still best to learn hand tools - helps you design production methods for power tools and it’s fun besides. You start thinjking about things like you see at http://www.owwm.com/Default.asp and if it really gets bad, well… have a look at http://pages.sbcglobal.net/djf3rd/index.html Your grandfather, he’s right, you know. Making a board is simple compared to making something like a Windsor chair or a half decent set of cabinets. Lots of intricately shaped pieces that all have to fit and function together. Don’t stop with just knowing how to build a board. Enjoy… doc…
Hi Jim, Checky D is a pal of mine from the same rough area, originally from Fo Reeve, but I’m not him. Taller, for one thing. I do run Jasper’s though - Mike still owns the place. Oldest living surf shop in New England. Hey, speaking of bandsaws, are you familiar with the http://www.timberwolf1.com/ Suffolk/Timberwolf bandsaw blades? If you haven’t used 'em, I can reccommend them completely and the prices are comparable with the %$#^ Olsens and Starrets. doc…