Just got my hands on a stack of wood shipping pallets from the back of my local grocer to try my hand at making an Ala’ia. I know pallet wood maybe isn’t the best kind, but I inspected all the pallets until I found one with the best wood, that appeared to be pine or cedar - since this is my first build I don’t want to waste good wood and I didn’t want to suffer the slings and arrows (and splinters) of making one out of plywood.
That said, I’m definitely going to make this more of a “modern” shape, with a deep center concave and convex rail bands (think Wegner style) and a little flare at the tail (not quite peanut but just a little for traction). What I was wondering, was if anyone has played around with adding a spoon to the nose of an Alaia?? I know it couldn’t be too pronounced with how thin these boards are, but is it possible to make a nose-riding Ala’ia? My concern would be that the spoon in front would catch on the wave face and make it pearl upwards, but I can’t seem to find any video or threads where someone has tried it. Any input?
Wouldn’t one of the “peanut” shapes with sidecut do the trick like a fin though? I thought they lock it in pretty good, but I suppose with nothing holding the board in place aside from the water you’d just helecopter around…
Hey thanks for your input no1! Glad to see you give a crap about helping people on here - yet again another incredibly useful post!
Seriously dude, go back to lurking. You have never contributed a single useful thing to these forums other than to criticize other people and pretend you’re some kind of expert. This is a place where new people come to learn - I’m a new to shaping so forgive me if I didn’t pop out of the womb with a planer and a blank in my hand like you oh omnipotent one. Not to mention I’ve never been a longboarder, so a thousand apologies for not having an intimate knowledge of the physics of noseriding
I've been playing around with finless alaia type boards for several years and while I ride all of mine prone, I know several much younger guys having a blast on them standup style.
A proper Alaia is flat, finless and really good at going super fast; the average Noserider's built with plenty rocker and a big ol' fin for slowing it down..
"Horses for courses"
With the right alaia you might get a nice cheater five...........
Watch all the alaia videos on youtube before cutting any wood.
Especially Tom Wegener at Patagonia Wood is Good 4 part series..
Pallets you say? OK, use a popular outline, (I’ve made one if you need one) and cut out a glued up piece of wood. If you glue them side by side lengthwise it will be stiffer than glueing them side by side widthwise. If you glue them diagonally, you’ll have a sidewinder alaia. No shite. I’ve been playing with them for years now and still can’t get my big fat head around one. You don’t need more than 6’ in beachbreak surf if you plan on turns/cutties. No more than 3/4 of an inch either basically.
The only thing I think might help keep the tail down without adding fin-like devices or shapes… Would be to add a concave pocket in the rear to act like a suction cup to the water… How big or deep that would need to be would be another question… You could do two longish fins separated in the middle… I think you may have to add an upward swoop off the rear of the concave to keep the pocket from adding lift… of course going the path less traveled is why we have the mini simmons and others… Go For it, it’s just free wood and time
The only thing I think might help keep the tail down without adding fin-like devices or shapes.... Would be to add a concave pocket in the rear to act like a suction cup to the water... How big or deep that would need to be would be another question... You could do two longish fins separated in the middle... I think you may have to add an upward swoop off the rear of the concave to keep the pocket from adding lift... of course going the path less traveled is why we have the mini simmons and others... Go For it, it's just free wood and time
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Adding fins means you no longer have an alaia.
Concaves do not have a suction action, just the opposite actually.
Convex shapes do the sucking...
FWIW, Tom Wegener brought them to our attention but the Alaia was very common in old Hawaii.
The Bishop Museum has several.
This picture was taken around 1898, the man is Charles Kauha, a Waikiki Beach Boy who preceeded Duke and his brothers by several years.
His board is every bit as thin, shapely and complex as any you'll see today.
The reason they didn't stay popular is they are not easy to paddle and ride for beginners.
The long thick planks which became so well known, can be stood on even when not being pushed by a wave and so became the mainstay of the Beachboy/Tourist interaction.
I wish I'd been aware of the alaia's potential when I started surfing almost 50 years ago.....
I stand corrected… guess I got the rear end of my statement partially correct with the up swoop at the back. Maybe a shallow channel for the mid part and the convex at the rear… up swooping to the tail of the board… in a subtile form it may add benefit… but upon further thought it would have to look like an egg shape sticking out from the bottom… but it still would be a fin of sorts. I really like the twin hot curl a fellow shaped from one of the Fish Fry events. Not the long one but the finny one found here But I think this one is a bit off topic (but dead sexy)
I really like the twin hot curl a fellow shaped from one of the Fish Fry events. Not the long one but the finny one found here But I think this one is a bit off topic (but dead sexy)
When you say widthwise, you mean gluing them up kinda like the way you would if making a lumber wall?? As in horozontally instead of vertical if the board is standing on its tail? Never really thought about that… I assume you’d want it stiffer?? Seems like going widthwise would be more prone to snapping at the joints? As for the sidewinder that sounds interesting… any particular purpose to giving it a twisting flex like that?
I’m just going with pallet wood for the first one 'cause I don’t wanna screw it up if I’m using good expensive wood - if it works well and is bouyant enough though I may just make em out of pallets from now on… free is always good if it works!
hmm interesting - may be a fun experiment for next time but I’m not sure I’ll get more than a cheater 5 unless I can somehow incorporate some seriously sharp downturned rails while still magically mantaining the ala’ias slideablity. For now I’ll go with a more basic outline - I like the smaller Wegner shape that Mochado rides in his now-famous Vimeo edit
Thanks for posting that vimeo link. Beautiful surfing and music both. Last comment on page fascinating
When I lived in Barbados in the early '70s, there were tons of local kids riding boards almost identical to this. They called it 'hulling". Most bellyboarded but some were standing, totally in control just like Rob. And on little waist-high zippery waves, they'd just fly right past you, making waves that were impossibly fast for a conventional surfboard. An 90 year old fisherman told me that he and his friends loved hulling when they were kids, which would have been back in the 1800s, before anyone had ever surfed California!
It’s amazing the way surfing spread and the different variations on it that were around back in the day. I actually watched a great film on Netflix called “White Wash” narrated by Ben Harper - it was about this history of African Americans in surfing. It actually talks alot about, and gives one of the most accurate accounts of how it left Hawaii back when the missionaries first banned it. Lots of natives ended up leaving the island to keep their culture and wound up in places like New Zealand, California, South America and all the way across to the Atlantic…
The most interesting thing for me, was when Robert August talks about the whole scene in “Endless Summer” where they go to Africa and say things like “nobody had ever seen a surfboard there before in their lives” and how they thought “it was some kind of airplane wing” - the truth about that whole journey is that the Africans were actually already surfing when they got there, and had been doing so for hundreds of years! A few native Hawaiians had emigrated to Africa and brought surfing and Ala’ias with them. Of course this was still durring the times of segregation and lesser rights for the “savage black man” so rather than depicting the scene the way it actually played out, they made it look like they brought surfing out there.
