Pine Alaia Weight

General Discussion
1

I am in the early stages of planning for an Alaia build as a winter project.

I have a design, (http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=404549 near the bottom) and because of my location and the fact this is my first attempt I am going to build from pine.

Should I be aiming for any particular weight range?

The weight of 3 x 7’ lengths of timber is quite substantial although I realise that a lot of this will be planed away …

Just thought I would check!

I am aiming for my finished board to be 6’6" x 15 1/2" x 3/4". As I said made of pine - probably 3 lengths, glued side by side before planing to rough thickness and then shaping.

Thanks for your help.

Surfer, 35

2

I suppose with only3/4" of thickness there’s little scope for chambering the pieces before glueing them, but might be worth a thought.

3

While I don’t know a helluva lot about alaias, I did have a look at the link you gave and links from that. Interesting stuff indeed.

I also noticed your drawing shows a volume of approximately 11.6 liters: excellent, that yields a weight of something like 5-7 kg, depending on the particular species of pine you use. http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_wood.htm could be useful in getting that number down some.

Also, you can calculate the specific gravity of your planks and then plug that figure into the volume. Your 7’x3"x1" plank is right at 252 cubic inches for full 3" x 1" section stuff. If that were water ( specific gravity of 1.0) it’d weigh in at right about 4.13 kg ( 9.1 lbs) Weigh your plank, divide that by the applicable one of those figures and you have specific gravity. Multiply that by the volume in liters from your drawing and you have a weight in kg.

Okay, if your 7’x3"x1" stuff is more a ‘nominal’ section size, say 3/4" x 2 1/2", just measure, multiply those numbers out and run them through the nifty online calculator at http://www.onlineconversion.com/waterweight.htm and there you are.

Hope that’s of use, looking forward to seeing how it turns out

doc…

4

I don’t think it will matter much, weight that is. I’ve always heard that a wooden board responds very differently once it’s in the water and floating. I think Paulownia is being used as much for it’s supposed resistance to taking on water as much as for weight and ease of shaping. If you have not purchased wood you could go with kiln dried clear cedar or redwood and it will be lighter and easier to shape. Like you, I did my first out of pine, then a followup with cedar. Both are tons of fun (built for prone riding), and I just glued up a redwood “blank” for number three.

5

I have a 6’6"x16"Wx3/4 thick pine alaia made out of 5 wood sticks that weighs 12.6lbs.

The weight doesn’t mean so much when you go under one inch.

It’s more about flex and length. They don’t float much anyway.

Get some fins to try it prone first.

The paulownia is easy to shape and seal from water, thats all.