Just had to bust out one more board before hitting the road on my new travel nursing gig. Last shape for the foreseeable future. that’s kind of sad.
But I made sure the board was a doozy, at least to the extent I could. I really wish I was a better glasser and sander.
6’8"-20-2 5/8 E-wing bonzer. Skin is full-length ecuador balsa I milled and carried up here myself. I owe Andres in Playas BIG for that hookup! Inlay is ecuadoran Tagua nut “vegetable ivory”, scrimshawed (if you can so call such damage) by me. Andres idea, again. Thanks Andres.
Bonzer runners are hawaiian Koa. I heart Koa. And I heart Bernie for sending it to me. Thanks Oneula.
That board is simply delicious! The skins, the inlay, the wings, the koa fins, the nose and tail blocks, the leash loop, a doozy indeed. Good to see you putting that Ecuadorian balsa to good use. Hope you have a good trip and if that is the last board for a while, hang your head high you have done well.
Still having trouble lifting my lower jaw from the floor… What’s your price for one of those, Jarrod? PM me if you like. Like they used to say in the 70s: outasight!!!
WOW! That’s one of the nicest boards I’ve seen posted here. I’m going to build a compsand bonzer 5 this summer and in my mind’s eye that is more or less what my board looked like. Congrats.
Thanks everyone for the encouraging words, they’re very well-received as always.
Yes, it has the big single-to-double concave, I’ll see if I can’t get a shot of it to post up. Cost on one of my boards is usually $600 and up, although it would be hard to price this one since it is made with so much stuff I can’t get until I go to ecuador again. As terrible a glasser and sander as I am, it would probably be hard to talk me into doing another e-wing with glass ons anyway!
Layup schedule was my normal 4 oz over and under the wood. Although I had a good feeling about this board, and wanted to make it completely bullet-proof, so I also did a deckpatch of 4oz over and under the wood as well. This brought the completed weight up to a hefty 6.5lbs. Wood was about 3/16 when I milled it, but it required so much sanding to take all the saw marks out that I probably brought it down to 1/8 by the time I was finished. At least, that’s how I planned it. Eps density is 1lb, as usual, and finish was just the hotcoat sanded back to 320 (600 on the rails), then sprayed with “Deft” rattlecan gloss lacquer. It doesn’t completely cover the appearance of weave exposed during the sanding process, but it seals everything well enough… Besides, this wasn’t going to be a customer’s board, so some minor cosmetic imperfections were acceptable to me.
Of course, now I have a week before I leave here, and the forecast is calling for NOTHING in the way of surf before I depart! Go figure! Guess I’ll have to get a good 4/6 with a hood, and see what I can find in alaska.
I cheated, I didn’t use a rocker table with a contour mat and everything to press the concaves in with the vacuum.
I cut my bottom rocker out of the block of eps with a hotwire, left the deck rocker for later, so I had a nice stiff thick (4") “blank” to work with. I marked out my centerline, made a rough sketch of my outline, and just cut in my concaves with a sanding block. Then I bagged on my bottom skin, the nice thick stiff blank making it easy for the wood to form to the concaves. Only then did I put my rocker templates back on and hotwire the deck rocker.
Doing this way was the best way I could think of to give a stiff surface to work against when cutting in the concaves, as well as protecting the rocker from any unwanted changes while getting the all-important bottom skin bagged on.
For the record, when I do bonzers with compsand methods (this is my 3rd) I haven’t been putting in those between-runner channels. This is mainly because I don’t trust the balsa to conform consistently to such a narrow channel. I justify this omission by citing the success of the Merrick Singlefin 2nd Gen in being retroed with bonzer runners. People rave about how well they work with their single-to-double bottoms and spiral vee, but they also don’t have the runner channels. At any rate, I’ve never missed the channels.
that’s kind of sad.
