First Pine Longboard

General Discussion
1

This is a first attempt by a non-wood worker.

I went with pine as it allowed me the freedom to explore the process of wood work with unfamiliar tools without the threat of destroying good quality wood. Paulownia was going to cost $900, while all the pine i used cost just $90.

Like all first timers, the idea of making a wood board has lingered for a long time; but then i stubbled apon Sways and some great threads by Swied, Retroman, Tom Bloke and others - and the daunting challenge seemed lesser.

I had to buy most of the tools: belt sander, drills, masonite, glue…etc. but i borrowed some. I stupidly bought some cheap tools - and paid for it! buy good tools, eh.

I made all the templates from the APS shaping program; 9’ x 23" x 3 1/4". Simple design and didnt get carried away with the finer points of rock star shaping. Introductory lessons in building a billy cart, not a V8 Super Car.

There was 2 months pouring over Sways and other sites and accumulating tools and making templates. Then i began familiarising myself with the electric planner. i had a good rocker template so i cut the rocker out of the 14 pine 2 x4’s so that i could get used to using the planner; i found that this tedious task gave me plenty of practice with that tool so that i could at least cut straight and even.

The rough shape was extremely heavy - i should have weighed it. It was because of this that i went against the advice of sways and chambered before finalshaping. as i was working by myself, there was no way i could move the wood glued together without a second or third person. so i went ahead and estimated the size of holes i could cut without getting myself into too much trouble. I’m now getting in trouble.

but not to worry, leasons learned and now its about getting creative in dealing with the problems. i could read 1,000 threads but its never going to make me learn like screwing up then analysing that mistake and to see it from another angle.

I’m at the final stages of shaping. most of it has been done with a belt sander with 40 grit. now i guess i’ll got to 60, 80 then 120 grit. I’ll do a fin, then might do the glassing; however i need to dig around for more info on that process.

A great experience. i sneak a peak at it every now and again, fairly happy with how it has gone. At least its inspired me to dream about the next one i’ll do.

Grant.



2

If i could figure out how to put photos in the body i would. FAQ not much use.

3

The rest of the photos.



4

What im up to at the moment.

5

Wow; that’s inspiring. Here’s a stupid question: is it harder to make a wood board as a first board compared to using a foam blank? Seems like you could take your time more with the wood . . . maybe that helps with attention to detail?

6

Nice work mate, let us know how the rest of the process goes. Pine is pretty cheap, that’s a good idea.

7

Awesome job with the belt sander. I made good use of my belt sander when I built my board. I found that I was hacking up the board too much with the electric planer (due to my lack of skill with the tool). The one issue that I had with the belt sander was that it was easy to catch an edge, which can leave a nasty gouge. The thing that saved me was a 2x4 with a cut belt sander ribbon glued to it. It brought the surface down to be nice and even. I’m going to practice my planing before starting my next one.

How much does it weigh now? What are your plans for the fin(s)?

More pictures, please!

Upload your photos to http://www.flickr.com, and link them to your post. You will be able to display bigger images.

8

Nice work will look killer when it gest glassed and fins on it.

Those planks don’t look very thick, how did you get the rocker in, did you cut it from larger planks or bend it in.

9

Obslop - I’m not sure if its harder to do a wood board before a foam one as your first board; i think one advantage of wood could be is that as wood is harder to cut and grind down you are forced to go slower. One great advantage that i found was that i didnt need a shaping bay! i made some stands and started cutting up the wood on my porch. all the chippings are in my garden. doing it with foam, that would have been impossible…major environmental disaster. thanks for the encouragement.

Swied - mate, great post a while back on your own adventures with balsa, definately pointed me in the right direction. Your not wrong about the gouges from the belt sander, horrible stuff. the deck and bottom are anything but smooth,so im looking at one hell of a mission to get it flat. you might have posted a picture of that 2x4 with some foam / belt sander paper that can get the right flatness all across the board. I’ll do that.

The weight, i need to get a scale and do the calculations. Once i get that i’ll post them. Same to with some better pics, those ones i put up are soooo small! i had no idea they would be so small. I went to the site you offered and am in the process of trying to get that figured out. More pics to come.

The fin will be an old school D-fin made from some old plywood in a shed near by. i had a bit of a play with some of it with my belt sander and it should be ok.

Glassing the fin (and board) is what im concerned about now, not sure if i’ll just get someone to do it or have a crack myself.

Woody - I took a picture of the rocker template i used and a pic of the board in profile so you could see the rocker plainly… but i need to spend a bit of time trying to figure out the input of bigger photos, the other ones are just too small, eh. but its pretty flat mate. Tail rocker is 3 3/8", and Nose rocker is 5 13/16" - or thats what it should be.

hope to get more pics ups soon. thanks all for the replys.

10
Quote:

Glassing the fin (and board) is what im concerned about now, not sure if i’ll just get someone to do it or have a crack myself.

Don’t worry about it, you are gonna find loadsa goodies here in the archives for a first time glasser. Don’t hesitate to post any questions you might have. You can do it!! I would advise to use epoxy for the whole job, boatbuilders have great experience with epoxy and wood so that is another source of info for you.

I can’t wait to see bigger shots of the board, the little one’s you’ve put up have already got me stoked!!

11

Ive spent another session of 3 hours making little headway into getting larger pictures into the body. Swied, maybe you can help?

Im all set up with Flickr. photos are on there but now what. I looked for a compression feature but did not find one.

I also went to www.tinypics from a thread recommended, but again, the photos are not coming down.

Surely there is a very straightforward process that this newbie is not seeing.

Ive searched the archives and other threads and none seem to hold the key. maybe someone else has the SIMPLE solution.

I’d love to post good photos like the ones on other threads. Is it that i’m on a Mac that’s the issue? I’m on Firefox now rather than Safari - which was the problem with not seeing “the mountians”.

frustrating.

12

Here are the steps to linking a picture from fickr.com:

  1. Go to Flickr.com, and log in.

  2. At the top of the page near the left side is a menu labeled “You”. Click on the down arrow next to it, and select “Your Photos.”

  3. Find the photo you want in the list of thumbnails, and click on it. This will open the picture in a new page by itself.

  4. Right above the picture you will see some buttons. Click on the one titled “All Sizes”

  5. Select “Medium” for the size of the photo.

  6. Scroll to the bottom of the page. There is an item titled “Grab the photo’s URL:”. Underneath you will see a link. Copy it.

  7. Go back to Swaylock’s, and reply to one of the posts in this thread.

  8. Start typing your reply. At the spot where you want to insert the image, click on the little image button. Paste your link into the box, and hit “Submit.”

That’s it!

13

Heres a test to see if it works.

Ahh, muchas gracias. Now thats a simple solution.

Here’s the 9’ with all the shavings in a pile.

This is the rocker templates. In two sections cause i couldnt get long enough masonite.

I traced the rocker on to the individual 2x4’s and then used the planner to cut it down to about 1/8" outside line. this was obviously not the quickest way, but as i said it gave me plenty of time to familiarise myself with the planner.

Pretty flat. I need to make the tail section transition smoother.

I was suprised at how well the pine adhered with just small amounts of shelley’s wood glue. When i got to this stage after all the long hard work, i began to realize that i might just be making progress.

Reason #1 why not to chamber before final shaping. ive got a few ideas of people on how to manage this. Im resigned to the fact that these holes (and there’s about 4 of them) are going to make the board patchy, but as a first up im not pulling my hair out. if i had spent $900 on beautiful paulownia… then id be pissed.

Thanks Swied for the excellent (and possibly time consuming) effort to sort me out with the inline posts.

Our first baby is due in under two weeks, so ive got to get hammering into the finishing touches before he comes along.

Cheers - Grant

14

I like what you’ve done, yeah the rocker is a bit flat, but overall you’re project has turned out well. Don’t be frustrated with the holes, the Hawaiian’s would use butterfly patches on those pukas (holes), make 'em thick, scribe them on the board, remove more material and slip in the butterfly patch. It’ll be some work, but in the end, a nice touch.

Good on ya, no matter what you do to repair those pukas.

15

And pint out a little lam of a butterfly to put over the top of the patches and no one will ever know.

A little flat but I’m sure it will be fine.

BTW - Pine looks killer once its glassed, so even it is surfs like a dog, it will make a very nice wall hanger, so you could sell it to a shop or bar to display very easily and use the money to make another one.

16

Wasn’t what i meant.

Wooden plug, shaped like an hourglass, Hawaiian’s used them for holes or cracks in canoe hulls. Also used in wooden bowls. Looked for some pics of ancient patches, got other things i’d rather do, but here is a pic of broken board repair that i used the same idea. Not really structural here, but possibly helps a bit. Mostly for the wood.

In your case, the plugs are obviously much smaller, although thicker, about an inch or so. Scribe on, cut out and insert the wood plug…aloha nui.

17

Yer I knew what you ment great idea, diddn’t mean to cause any confusion.

What I meant was once wooden plug/platch is done, cover that inturn with a lam or art work to hide the patch.

I just thought of butterflys as an example as it was a butterfly shaped wooden patch and it would be an easy cover up. As the holes are distributed randomly over the board I thought that might look cool.

Your inlays on there own do look pretty cool, but not everyone is as skilled as you and this is a first board projet so may not end up as beutifuly exicuted, also the boards made of pine which suggest there isn’t a great variety of choice decrative woods available.

18

I think the idea is to not cover the patch, a darker wood to make it stand out, “no mistakes here”, Sounded like cost was a factor in the pine choice, small plugs= minimal cost.

Not that hard to make a clean cut on the scribe, maybe a small drill bit in the corners, finish with saber saw and file. After all that work, why hide wood?

19

amigos my pukas are growing. Kaalulu I like the idea of laying wood over the area, especially such a beaut one on that board you had.

Right now i’m continueing with the sanding and will either put some wood filler into the pukas or cut some pine to each space - it will do the job. I hate to go half assed now and do a bodgey job.

I also talked to a shaper who is willing to glass, however his glasser is alergic to epoxy so he wants to use poly resin. Ive been told to use epoxy, so either i’ll switch glassers or i’ll do some more research and see if you can use something else to glass onto pine.

I dont have the facilities to glass at my house. so i’ll get someone to do it.

More photos to come when there is some progress with the fin.

cheers - Grant.

20

I think I would like to start a project like this in the near future, but I might go with the criss cross pattern that they use for the power surfboards: http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=264885;search_string=wood%20surfboard%20construction;#264885 is seems like it would be hard for me to screw this one up. Do you need to put in a drain/air pressure plug on these wood board, or is that only the compsand boards? Either way you projec looks like a bunch of fun and I envy your progress.