I hope someone else hasn’t already posted this, but it looks like the good folks over at Grain surfboards have beaten everyone else to market with a full line of HWS kits.
They have them for sale at wetsand and liquiddreamssurf, and all their info is on the main Grain site.
Got to hand it to them, it seems like they’ve done their homework. The wood looks nice, the shapes look clean (for the most part, I saw foil and blending issues here and there in the gallery), and they are selling their kits for damn near as much as I’m selling my completed boards for. As for their “off the rack” boards… Damn. Pretty, and pricey.
Maybe I need to think about moving up a couple of price-points.
Quote:
Home Grown Build-It-Yourself Surfboard Kits are put together by hand in Maine from locally grown, sustainably harvested northern white cedar. Each kit comes with all the materials you need to build your own board: board frame, cedar planks and rail strips, fin box, leash plug, glue, epoxy, fiberglass, rubber gloves and more. Every step of this process has been thought through and is detailed in our 40 page instruction manual. Each board takes approximately 60 hours to build, but will be around for a lifetime of waves.
…Although I’m pretty sure this one is chamberd and not hallow…Something smells fishy.
Check out the matching grain patterns, that would have to be sliced-thin deck skins to get that kind of bookmatching. Pretty tough to do that with solid planks, chambered. I wonder how all the knots affect the skin strength?
Rhino said: Although I’m pretty sure this one is chamberd and not hallow…Something smells fishy.
Shwuz replied: Check out the matching grain patterns, that would have to be sliced-thin deck skins to get that kind of bookmatching. Pretty tough to do that with solid planks, chambered. I wonder how all the knots affect the skin strength?
and ROBBO says!!!
yeah i’m with you there Shwuz, it certainly looks hollow not chambered, BUT… if that is the case they must have some trick in doing the rails because by looking at it they haven’t laid up the rails in the “normal” hollow board way, that is layer after layer and then shape, hmmm, wonder how they did it? I don’t think the knotts would affect the strength of the skin too much, they are fairly small and there is plenty of good wood around them. cool and different looking board though eh!
Killer looking boards! He is doing some great woodwork with those boards. The website is great too with excellent pictures. All those are hollow for sure. He’s a good craftman. Check the Blog for other pictures. They are doing some of the frames and stuff via CNC.
I remember the Swaylocks member “RichieB” posting here about Grain surfboard a while back. I think the website changed it’s look since then though. But no mention of Rich on the site now. Maybe Rich is doing his own now, I hope so. Good for them.
he is defintly doing something diffrent, but I still say that the rails on the above board arn’t layered strips.(but maybe it’s the lighting)
Take a look how the railstrips in pic 19 actually go in between the skins and not just on the side of them.
It looks like he attaches the rails and turns them BEFORE he attaches the skins and then proably fairs the skin out.
Very interesting.
hmm yes, very interesting!!! I wish they had a how-to section ah-la Paul Jensen! a guy once tried to describe to me how Tom Wegener does his rails and it sounded similar, I just can’t get my head around how it is done though, I would love to see one in the flesh, but yes it does seem that the deck is put on OVER the rails and then blended in to them.
On the Grain Surfboards website in the Blog and it’s archive there are some construction pictures. Nice work. It sure is cold there most of the year though. Thats gotta keep the crowd down.
The old woodshop addage “You can never have enough clamps.” was never more evident…makes me glad I’ve been hording clamps all these years cause these look like fun…
Alright, I Finally understand his method. Some what…
yeah Rhino, I understand the method about 95%, just can’t quite get my head around how the rails are finished to meet the deck when it goes on, given that the board is of varying thickness and I assume the rail material is of equal thickness, it looks like they step the rail layering back as they get towards the mid point (thick point), but I still can’t see how they make it good enough for the deck to join tight all the way along, or do they just plane/sand the rail material down to the top of the ribs???
if anyone has the definitave method and can explain it better than my poor attempts PLEASE DO SO!!!
They would be using bead and cove instead of the square strips to eliminate the need for putting filler in the gaps. What you see where the top deck goes on is the following: THe full size strips are added on first, then planed/sanded down prior to putting on the top deck. The bottom deck is already on when the rails are built.
It’s an interesting method. I’d like to try it sometime.
But they also display them well with an excellent website that draws you into what looks like a good board building and surfing lifestyle in the NE. Seems to suit that area of the USA.
