Homemade Leash, boardbags, etc...?

Hey all… Just about done my hollow wood board, bought the cork for the rails today, now it’s just a matter of finding time. But that’s not what this is about. I was wondering if any of you shaping gurus have made your own leashes and board bags, and if you have, do you have any good tips or hints or anything? For a board bag, i’m thinking some of that silvered bubble wrap(the heavy duty stuff for insulating ducts) would likely work alright with stiched and taped seams. And some sort of rubber tubing with nylon pulled through it for strength would likely work alright for a leash, but I’m sure there are some tricks to all this that you might be inclined to share with me. Thanks in advance for all replies… Red Feenstra

wayull, this seems to be my night for fabric and cloth questions. Serves me right for moonlighting in the boat canvas biz. Or is that ‘no good deed goes unpunished’??

To begin with, cords. While you could probably do one with surgical tubing with a nylon cord through it ( shades of 1968 ) or urethane or whatever, the real entertaining part is sewing the velcro cuff that goes around your ankle. For that you need a heavy-duty sewing machine, an industrial model preferably with compound feed, using #92 or #138 Dacron sail thread, heavy nylon or polyester webbing, neoprene, Velcro and all that. For the price of a good leash, well, by the time you get to making one, buying one instead is a bargain.

Now, board bags are a little more do-able, especially custom sizes that are awfully expensive to have made. I’ve thought about doing some. I wouldn’t reccommend the bubble wrap stuff, though. Why? It works okay, but only once. Pop those bubbles once and it’s just a sheet of plastic, useless for protection after that. Instead, I’d go with one of the plastic foams sold for upholstery use, the open cell variety, I think it’s polyethylene. At least 1/4" thick for a daybag, thicker for a travel bag. They cut nicely with a hot knife or utility knife, pieces can be glued together well with contact cement to make one big piece or to add extra padding in what might be problem areas like nose, tail and rails, it doesn’t act badly around heat… it’s good stuff. For handles and such, nylon or polyester webbing sewn on with straight stitch along the edges and box and cross stitch at the ends. Snaps, D-rings and so on are standard items available from any good supplier.

Outside fabric, I’d go with a good polyester or nylon packcloth, it’s rugged enough and at the same time it’s water-resistant due to a coating on the inside, calendared ( rolled in with a hot roller) into the fabric itself. Go with a light color. A coated ripstop nylon, maybe with some packcloth wear patches stitched in in the fin areas, that’d be a good item to use on the inside what with wax and smeg in general, you can hose it out if need be.

#10 YKK plastic continuous tooth zipper is the only choice for zippers, about 6’ of it with two zipper cars or whatever you want to call 'em, they call 'em ‘sliders’ now, which is reasonable enough. The big teeth don’t jam or derail as easy around sand and wax and crud, use the plastic zipper cars instead of the metal 'cos the metal ones corrode eventually and then you have to rip stuff apart and redo 'em. For all this, plain stitch it together, again ideally using a compound feed industrial machine but a strong older all-metal home machine can do it, #92 sail thread or heavier, straight stitch while it’s turned inside out, slip the padding in last thing with mebbe a stitch or two through it ( or earlier with a little spray adhesive ) to keep it more or less in place. Double or triple stitch the seams starting at 1/2" in from the cut edge of the cloth and making your next row of stitching at 1/8" further in, 4-6 stitches per inch if your machine will do it, otherwise the longest stitch he machine will do.

Most packcloth, etc, comes 60" wide, so you can get both sides out of one length. It cuts fine with good quality shears or a hot knife. I would probably use the board as a pattern and use something like a block of 2x4 to scribe around it, 3 to 3 1/2" extra on both/all sides to allow for an easy fit and what’s called seam allowance, more and mebbe a gore in the tail to allow for the fin. Use a soft lead pencil, I like a #1, or seamstress’s chalk or that sort of thing to draw on the cloth, they also make pens and crayons for that purpose. A plier stapler is real good for holding it together while you’re sewing it, pulling the staples is no biggie, put them in so they are nearly perpendicular to your stitch line 'cos that way there is less chance of them hanging up in the feed mechanism.

There’s more to this, of course, that’s a brief overview.

A one stop source for this stuff is at http://www.owfinc.com/ , with lots of others out there too, but that one is easy.

Hope that’s of use

doc…

Technology, Technology, Technology. Shades of ‘68. Shock cord(bungee) or surgical cord cut to the desired length. Loop the board end with a half hitch, slip a piece of cord(that you cut from your mom’s living room drapes) thru your leashplug or drill a hole thru your fin near the rear base and attach to your fin. Loop the end that goes over your ankle with another half hitch. Slip it over your ankle and you’re good to go. If you want to get fancy cut the cuff off the sleeve of a Levi jacket, tie the shock cord to that, unbutton the cuff and put it around your ankle. Waa-Laa! For a quick board bag; take a painters’ hallway dropcloth(canvas), fold in half lengthwise, sew the sides with a needle and 2lb test fishing line. A 14ft. dropcloth makes a fine 7ft. board bag. Tie up the end with some of that left-over drapery cord. Now you’re stylin’ Dude! Totally Retro! If this all sounds to complicated, break down and spend a total of seventy-five bucks for a twenty dollar leash and a fifty dollar bag. If I wasn’t a total SOUL- Surfer/Shaper I wouldn’t take the time from my lucrative backyard board business to hip you to all these industry secrets. Oh yeah. I use 2lb. test and canvas scraps leftover from that bitchin’ board bag to patch holes in in my “thrift-store” jeans. Totally functional, totally retro, totally bitchin’. McDing

I’m having flashbacks too. Made board bags out of old heavy blankets folded over & cut to shape, then sewn up w/ a big needle & nylon fishing line (and here I thought that was MY idea, I guess not - I think I used 10 lb test though, never broke…). I also sewed in a drawstring, which was just some 3/8" cord in a pocket at one end for closing the bag up. My buddy used to make his out of lots of old towels, pretty strange looking but functional.

Oddly enough, the times I travelled this way, baggage guys always seemed to handle my (obviously) homemade board bags with some respect. Never got any dings that I can recall. Now that I have expensive purchased bags, I always get dings. Probably a lesson there somewhere…

I would recommend NOT making your own leash. The storebought ones are really good and reasonably cheap. If you’re that retro, you shouldn’t be using a leash anyway…

The cool thing about using the cuff off the Levi jacket for your leash is that if you cut the other sleeve off, you’ve now got a bitchin’ Biker jacket. McDing

I made a board sock out of some tough Walmart material. Layed the board on it, traced it, cut it, sewed it, done. Also, for an easy nice touch put a pocket on it with some velcro to close it and now you can keep wax, keys, etc. in there.

Thanks for all the hints so far. I’m not really out to save a lot of money because I’ve spent enough already to work on this board (carbonfiber, cork, it all adds up…) And I guess it is a little bit of pride here too. You know, make the board yourself, do up the boardbag and leash too. I was thinking of making the bag with the silvered duct wrap on the outside, and a heavy, padded canvas inside.(I’ve got an Old tent to cut up.) Hot glue the seams, and then stich with waxed nylon. By hand, but I guess it builds character. Doc’s likely been through it, and so i’ll get through too. The leash I’d kinda like to fit with the board, just cause. But if I can’t get anything reasonable together I’ll just shell out. The question was more out of curiousity of what Can be done. By the way Doc, you’ve got all the bases covered. I’m always on the lookout for your posts because I’m definitely still learning. Monkstar, what sort of walmart material? Red Feenstra

Wayull… one thing about a heavy padded canvas board bag is… it’s heavy. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, canvas also tends to take on and hold water, which means ( on the inside of a waterproof membrane or envelope or whatever) it’s gonna rot, smell bad and a number of other things less than wonderful. The water-repellant finish they use on tent canvas is just that, not necessarily waterproofing it.

Me, I’d skip the idea of waterproof/water repellant entirely for the outer layer. Better that the damp gets out, y’know? And rather than taking apart that poor ol’ tent, save it for a Baja trip or something. By the time you’ve cut it up, sewn together the odd bits and generally worked around the limitations of using old tent pieces, well, you coulda spent twelve bucks and gotten four yards of this stuff: http://store.yahoo.com/phoenixtextiles/y-393.html or this stuff http://store.yahoo.com/phoenixtextiles/ur-128.html . Neither is waterproof per se, a little scotchguard spray could change that as much as need be. Which ain’t much.

I haven’t used the printed canvas, but I have used a lot of the natural, between equipment covers, dog-proof furniture covers in my living room, dog beds, a whole bunch of other stuff. When I was learning this boat canvas biz I bought a bunch of it, just to practice with the sewing machine. It sews nicely in a home sewing machine ( granted, that ‘home machine’ I learned on is a 1953 all cast iron model that’s heavy enough to double as a skiploader counterweight ) and #69 Dacron sail thread and #18 needles. That printed blue stuff looks kinda neat, as a matter of fact ( they apparently just started carrying it) , I may get a bunch of it for cushion covers and similar for my boat. Certainly would make a good looking board bag.

For the interior - go with something slick and shiny, that coated ripstop I mentioned before is ideal. You want something that won’t let wax get into the weave of the cloth, that wax and crud can be scraped off of and sand will shake or hose out of. Remember that wax and sand combine to make a primitive but effective sandpaper, no? Besides being heavy.

The duct wrap on the outside - again, it’s a one-time thing when it gets banged, and it’s not meant to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fate …or, for that matter, the bangs and bumps of being used to carry and store a board. And if you have to be nicer to your padded bag than to the contents, well, there’s an innate conceptual design flaw there, y’know?

Hot glue - lovely stuff for temporarily tacking heavy fabric together with if you haven’t got a stapler, not what you want for long seams. Remember, waterproof isn’t really your major concern, especially the seams. If moisture can get out, that’s what you want. In isn’t an issue, really, you’re not trying to float off on the thing or use it for a tent. For padding foam - like I said, I like the stuff they use in the commercially made board bags, it’s cheap and easy to work with and it pads the board nicely. Again, you want something that won’t take and hold water. After all, that do get awfully heavy. And the idea behind a board bag is that you carry it a lot. Heavy isn’t that good a thing, y’see.

Hand sewing builds character, all right. As I have already been described as something of a character, I use a sewing machine whenever I can. You can find really nice old machines at the local swap shop ( at your local dump, where they put the stuff that’s too good to throw away ) or the Sally Army has old, good ones cheap. Look for all-metal machines, heavy iron, as old as you are. Singer, White and Necchi are three I like, and if you can find an older Pfaff you have a real winner, those things are Panzerschiffen*. Parts and accessories are still available for all of 'em. If the machine is seized up, bag it and wait for the next one to come through. If you take it home and the motor doesn’t work, take it back and get another one instead. It’s not hard to learn to use one, after all, I managed it. Practice, practice, practice.

*Panzerschiffen- bad German for ‘battleships’.

Hand sewing zippers sucks in a big way. Trust me on this. You want to spend several hours hand sewing ( and doing a mediocre job at best) or a few minutes ( and doing a very nice job, thank you ) with a sewing machine and a $5 zipper foot accessory?

Do spend some time thinking about how and where you put the attachments for the carrying straps. Including a wide, well padded and well-designed shoulder strap. Plus a haul loop of webbing at each end for getting it in and out of vehicles, dragging the bag around airports ( never carry something if you can drag it, and guess what retrofit is going on my store-bought travel bag ) and similar. Mebbe another loop or two of webbing material for use in lashing the board bag down to the tops of Third World taxicabs, which don’t come equipped with surf racks as a general rule. ( memo to myself, for my next trip, build some 20’ heavy-duty webbing straps or the Soft Racks from Hell, capable of carrying my boards and four other guys’ boards on top of one of them thar third world taxis at Ludicrous Speed on Bad Roads )

While going retro is prolly kinda cool in a way, well, look, you’re building a hollow wood board ( at considerable expense in labor, materials and so on ) of pretty advanced stuff. Carbon fiber, epoxy, wood machined to a fare-thee-well with the best tools you can get your hands on, all that. Might as well do the same with the bag ( buy a good leash instead of making one - do you want all your hard work to go sailing off towards a rock 'cos the funky retro-style leash you made failed? ) instead of going funky-cool that only works so-so and does a lousy job of protecting the board, y’know? While you most definitely can make a better board bag than you can buy ( though I kinda like the little suitcase-style wheels on the new travel bags - another retrofit, maybe ) you won’t be able to do it with duct wrap and odd chunks of old tent. I’d use the best materials I could get ( nylon packcloth, top of the line YKK zipper and padding, nylon webbing and ripstop lining ) 'cos economising a couple of bucks on materials ain’t really worth it, especially at this stage of the game.

Leastwise, that’s what I’d do. Hope that’s of some use

doc…

just a comment – pretty much every board bag that has ever failed on me, did so because of the zipper. They really ought to come up with something better, because between salt water, sand, wax, etc the zippers just inevitably fail…

PS I used old blankets for board bags because it allowed me to use the board bag as a sleeping bag in a pinch. Oh yeah, washable too…

The best board bags I ever bought were by a company by the name of “Goin’ Off”. They were in Garden Grove, Westminster, somewhere down there. I bought a bunch of them and tried to peddle them to my cheap a$$ surf club buddies. They beat me down on 'em so bad that I didn’t even come away with gas money. I still have a couple. No zipper failure after a couple of years. I don’t know if they are still in business. Anybody heard of them? Otherwise Da Kine makes a decent bag for about $80(longboard).