I've got wood... Thanks to you guys!

General Discussion
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Mostly Harmless Surfboards #s 0008, 0009, 0010

Finally done, after better than two months in the works, they are done.

At the risk of sounding like an awards show winner, there are some people to whom I owe some serious thanks, and it would be a sin not to mention them and give them their credit. So, to Bert Berger, CMPHawaii, oneula, JJR, Greg Loher, chipfish, benny, sabs, and all the rest… Thanks. For the stoke, advice, and knowledge (whichever of the above you happened to supply).

Now, on to the boards…

This first one I made a buttload of mistakes on, at virtually every turn. the inlays, pinlines, and nose/tail blocks were not in the original design. Soooo many mistakes… At one point had to sand off and patch about 70% of the wood on the rails. It was a learning board, for sure. But it is lighter than my blue bonzer, and the curves are smooth, so it should ride. Woods are black walnut, birds eye maple on bottom inlay, balsa/butternut fins, makore stripes on deck, and balsa nose/tail blocks.

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Second one…

Much smoother to make altogether, getting my technique down. Still a pain to do the rails, but much less hassle and sand throughs. Did a deep bonzer concave, and finned with lokbox (big thanks, JJR!) Woods: Black walnut, makore and bird’s eye maple stripes, balsa nose/tail blocks.

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They were just practice for this one. Classic Lis shape, scaled directly from Surfboard Design and Construction book. Toughest one of the bunch to get a clean finish on, thanks to that lumpy, bumpy figured makore (3x hotcoat/sandout)… But so very, very pretty… Thanks again to that lumpy bumpy figured makore veneer. Lokbox as well (thanks again JJR), with some of those super-neato wood veneer keels from rainbow to complete the package. The keels are in the mail still, so that photo will have to wait. Keel preview below, however.

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Like, WHOA!!!

Can’t wait to see the craftsmanship you reach by number 20. Obviously, a job well done.

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Good God! You’ve been busy, my friend.

Amazing, every time a veneer-over-EPS shows up on Swaylocks these days, it’s more beautiful than the last. Very well done, all of them.

And so, tell me…

What thickness veneers, 1/16, 1/8"…?

Did you vac bag the veneers, square off the rails, and glue on bent strips to shapable thickness (How Sabs & I, and ((I think - but he’s not really telling)) Bert do the rails), or did you bag on the veneer around pre-rounded rails (Oneula/CMP method)?

In the rails, whether the veneer is wrapped or squared, is there wood tucked under the veneer for perimeter stringer strength? If so, what kind of wood & how thick?

Did you vac bag on the rail wood or glue it piece by piece? Glue, epoxy, or something else?

All epoxy or poly hot/gloss?

Dimensions on the bonzer? Did the veneer go right down faithfully into the channels or did it take some hidden work?

Thanks. And again, Jarrod, very nice boards.

Ben

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Busy like an insane beaver, Ben! My fiance is about to kill me!

Thickness was actually pretty thin, only 1/32 and 1/40. Any thicker would have been too brittle (and too heavy) with that hard wood. Still made a super strong sandwich, though, can’t even come close to squeezing the rails with all my strength.

I shaped everything first, like cmp/oneula, then bagged on the bottom, then the rails, then the deck. Sanding after each layer of wood, of course. I found with creatively placed relief cuts you can do the rail with just one peice (cut to rocker, of course). I made my relief cuts using a razor held as parallel to the wood as I could, this created a joint with edges that could slide past one another, making an easily sanded scarf. It did make dark lines in the wood, however (see photo of nose of board #2).

I bagged everything. The first board was in the bag in excess of ten times (stopped counting). Every sand through had to be patched, then sanded, ad infinitum… The second board got bagged 6 times, and the third four times.

I actually kept the bonzer’s bottom pretty mellow on the concaves, but the thruster, with the deep bonzer concave was really a peice of cake. I did spray on a bit of the veneer softener from joewoodworker.com, but probably didn’t need it. Just lucky on that one, I guess.

All epoxy, start to finish. The only extra beef that the rails got was an extra couple of layers of glass under the veneer right where I push down for my duckdives.

Other tips: Some veneers work better than others. Butternut (at the same thickness) simply wouldn’t bend. To brittle. The makore got really wavey when wetted out with epoxy. The black walnut was super sensitive to fingerprints, scratches, rates of epoxy apsorption, as far as the finished color. You can really see that in the first one, since it got handled a lot.

The “super cheap” masking tape I got from harbor freight to mask the down side of the veneers wound up being the most epoxy resistant tape I had. go figure.

Oh, and the finish on the first two is a spray clearcoat, hence the lack of luster. Found it holds wax better than gloss. The fish has to be glossed, no option really.

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Quote:

Amazing, every time a veneer-over-EPS shows up on Swaylocks these days, it’s more beautiful than the last. Very well done, all of them.

I completely agree!

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fantastic looking boards, especially the fish, the wood looks truely amazing ,if chippindale surfed i am surf he could/nt have made a better looking board, peteuk

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Beautiful things.

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Chip and Dale do surf, tandem no less!

But seriously… thanks pete, that was a compliment of the highest order, especially after seeing your own work. And everyone else too, I just love the way the stoke and knowledge flows around here.

Here’s another hard-learned lesson from the first board for everyone interested in vac bagging… there is no way that a flat sheet of veneer can be wrapped over the deck and all the way around rails without relief cuts, no matter how much veneer softener and vacuum pressure you use… no way.

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Shwuz,

AWESOME. I want to ride one.

please, please, PLEASE compile that stuff into a resources article.

Thanks for sharing.

Enjoy!!

Mike

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So much for learning how to crawl before you can run. These are olympic marathoners Shwuz. When can I place an order???

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Jarrod…

blow me completely out of the water why don’t you…

Here I am with 2-3 boards in 50%-80% completion and even though I had a jump on you, out of the blue pops 3 absolutely beautiful home spun creations… Time is always the missing factor for me I can’t even imagine the amount of work you put in to get those done. That’s alot of vacuum pulls on those boards I hope they weren’t the 12-24 hour pulls CMP and I do on ours…

BIG Question…

The hardwood veneer usually comes ultra thin 1/32-1/64 like you said. Joewoodworker has a ton for sale.

Did you just use that as your wood layer with glass under and over, or did you lam that over the top of a 1/16-1/8 balsa layer? Be real interesting if you just got away with the ultra thin hardwood veneer and the inside outside glass sandwich…

My screwup is I spray glued my 1/32-1/64 fancy veneer to the tops of my balsa which in turn cracked and bubbled up after I epoxied the covered balsa to my foam. Now I’m gently scraping off all my expensive fancy wood and sanding through in some spots on the thinner 1/16 balsa. Learn the hard way around here as they say, but that’s what happens when you try and rush things… Koa inlays in the blasa seem alot easier to do but you have me drooling again.

In the future I plan on doing the whole CMP balsa thing first then sanding everything down and finishing it off just prior to glassing and then applying the ultra thin veneer as an additional layer over the balsa epoxying the hardwood to the balsa under vacuum instead of just free gluing it to individual balsa strips.

BUT… if you aren’t using balsa under the ultrathin wood it’s another consideration but trying to sand a 1/32-1/64 wood layer smooth would be my fear (unless your doing the inside and outside glass under vacuum at the same time using peel ply and a bleeder… THIS would be a whole different method…

Right now I have some book matched mahogany, maple and even specially cut thin koa veneer just waiting for me not to screw it up again.

Gary Young is playing Koa veneer over an initial layer of bamboo veneer over foam to build light weight replica koa racing canoes on the big island. He’s probably not using the woven lauhala style bamboo we’re using unless he’s smoothing it out before placing on the thin veneer.

Chris Garrett is gluing his wood to his foam which I’m presuming are spackle sealed and glassed I bet prior to the gluing of his wood veneer skins on since no glass is placed on the outside of those boards…

Bottomline…

I’m in awe

We should share horror stories on the process…

Oh yea in my opinion no matter what doing rail layers suck unless Bert, JIP or you enlighten us how to make it as simple as doing the top and bottoms…

Aloha and Congrats from Hawaii…

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Mike~ I’ll have them in the resources very soon. Kick me in the butt if you don’t see them in a week.

cmp~ Yeah, I’ve never been one to crawl first. I would never have attempted it if I didn’t have such great resources like this site and people like yourself. Don’t think I’ll be taking orders anytime soon, though. It will take me a while to forget just how difficult these things were to make so I can bring myself to make more.

Oneula~

BIG answer: Yes, the veneer was my only wood layer. I bought three woods, makore, black walnut and butternut. I rejected the butternut as too brittle and not porus enough. It just wouln’t bend. The sandwiches that resulted from the great wetting-out ability of the RR epoxy and these woods feels incredibly strong. I can feel zero flex when I squeeze the rails with all my might. Can’t say that about any of my other boards.

Sanding wasn’t really much of an issue, since the vac made the veneer take the shape superbly well, not much sanding was necessary. Where I did sand through, I just vacced on a patch and sanded it flush. Yeah, it took some trial and error. A whole lot of error on my first board, in fact!

I’m thinking I got really lucky on my wood choices, as something harder and less porus would probably not work as well. The wet-out of the wood was a major factor in the flexibility under vaccum. I’m not sure I’d try to do this with koa.

Now that we got the big question out of the way, any little ones? :slight_smile:

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Another bloody awesome board Shwuz! I love the way you got the fins to look so good with the wood!

Well done!

~josh~

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No small ones…

(maybe two small ones… uretha…or EPS… and stringered or stringerless?)

but I owe you some wooden fishy glass-on fins

WHo knows maybe out of pure respect of what you’ve accomplished so quickly I’ll send you my 8"x18" slab of 1/2" rare curly koa I got from my wood vendor that I didn’t have the heart to cut into fish fins… Someone with a band saw could make a bunch of nice boxes from it… Or you could decorate your next Lis masterpiece with some curly koa fins although those new wood and turbo lokboxes are great!

Be interesting to hear the whole story… By now I’m sure you know it’s such a pain and pleasure discovery process…

Guys like Bert and CMP are so lucky to have been doing it so long it’s like second nature to them. You can’t beat having those years and years of trials and tribulations behind you.

Aloha

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Gee, Jarrod , your boards continue to amaze me . [Mine , however, continue to appall me !]

Sorry to have kept hassling you over the last few months about what you were up to . Obviously you have been very VERY busy !! The wait was worth it , though …sensational craftsmanship !

Which one took the longest to do ? …was the fish the most fiddly ? How long , roughly would that have taken you ? [just for an idea of what you could charge for labour , if you ever DID decide to sell any of them ??]

So, how many boards total is that now, Jarrod ? Is it REALLY only TEN ??? Gee, you sure have a quality quiver now !

… Now [like me] , you probably just need to move somewhere with long quality waves [pointbreaks] , and a hospital to work in …?? Mexico, perhaps ??

I assume you graduated your course in amongst being engaged , and making three quality boards […geez , I feel so LAZY by comparison !!]

Keep up the good work mate !! …I always enjoy seeing your stuff … it’s always fully inspiring to this pleb .

I LOVE the bonzer’s wooden runners …I hope that’s inspired YOU , Lob , to go for it with making YOURS out of wood !

ben

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Shwuz,

I like the way you’ll try anything, from pinlines to eps to wood to fat penguin. But what astounds me the most is you always seem to blitz it! your boards are of (if not higher) quality you’d expect from the top pros.

Great stuff!

Josh.

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they look great, can u start a thread and let us know how they go after you wax em up and baptise em ?

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thats twice in one week …

im left speechless again …

the grain on the fish looks insane …

im impressed by the whole package , well done jarrod …

im becoming obselete around here , i cant top some of the latest creations ive seen from oneula,sabs, benny , pete , and now you …

o well at least i know where to look if i want someone to reproduce my boards and help clear this back log …

i hope you used a heavier eps with that construction or a light urethane …

didnt see a vent ?

so i presume its not sl grade 1lb eps …

i know oneula already asked the question so i will wait for a reponse as well …

once again , awsome work , great looks , you wont get from your car to the waters edge , without getting stopped by half the passers by …

regards

BERT