Getting into board making has given me a new lease on surfing.
I’ve just started at a new school where i get to actually take classes in surfing, and surf excellence.
We are a doing a project around a sustainable, crowd sourced board, inspired by what Hayden Cox did on the WSL facebook page.
Making it as a compsand so it will last ages and I’m gunna try to source some plant based epoxy, therefore sustainable, and all the kids from the program got together with me at lunch and we all voted on general shape, dimensions, bottom contours etc, (we have decided on a squaretail egg kinda shape), so crowd sourced.
The board will be done at school, all steps shown to the kids.
After its finished each kid gets to take it home for a week and surf it and swap it around, at the end of the year we will raffle it to raise a few funds to buy a new camera to film the students and stuff as ours is rooted.
After each 7–10 year old has taken it home for a week and swapped it around with his/her mates ; there won’t be much left to raffle off. So figure on a class in “Sustainable Ding Repair” next school term.
The board constriction is a 2mm birch veneer over the foam with 4 0z over both sides of that. This constriction has proved to be extremely durable, in my limited experience, the main negative is that it may be a little heavy.
So long lasting not a ding fest.
If it gets a ding, the ding gets fixed.
As far at the kids, the process is about introducing them to “a” board building process. In the later years of school there is the possibility of them creating there own board but at this stage its about spreading the stoke and opening their minds.
Remember they are 11-15 years, and there is about 30-40 of them. I’m not glassing 30-40 boards.
but “good luck sk8ment, good to see you trying to show the groms how to make a board…”
So i hot wired out the blank and im taking it to the machine man friday.
I have cut the veneers into standard width and a 45 degree angle for the joins as the are all big rectangles. They were about 1100 mm by 320 rectangles now they are closer to 290 wide with a 45 degree angle at one end.
So there will be a join down the stringer and an arrow shaperd end to end 45 degree join.
The Balsa rail strips are cut to profile, fun with a stanley knife. (box cutter kinda knife, not sure if the internationals will know what a stanley knife is). The balsa came up great really consistant texture, density and colour.
I dont have any pics of the skins, but I have a few pics of a little repair I have to do on the tips. Kinda like a how to with pics not words. I probs dont need to as they will get cut off for tail and nose blocks but if I dont you can be sure they will get caught on something and get ripped off.
