I scour the classifieds all the time and see entire wood shops for sale by the home wood workers.
You can get a band saw, jointer, thickness planer and routers for really cheap. I shop the flea markets for bar and pipe clamps. I bought 20 pounds of carbide router bits for 20$, that will last me for a life time of wood boards
I scour the classifieds all the time and see entire wood shops for sale by the home wood workers.
You can get a band saw, jointer, thickness planer and routers for really cheap. I shop the flea markets for bar and pipe clamps. I bought 20 pounds of carbide router bits for 20$, that will last me for a life time of wood boards
10-04 on that. here’s one I saw a couple of days ago. There’s always people moving and selling tools.
Assorted power tools - $300
Reply to: sale-198291179@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-08-24, 10:11AM PDT
10 in radial arm saw, wood lathe on cabinet plus cutting tools, 2 hp router, drill press, plus misc tools. 300 takes all.
what about getting some 1"x6"x8’ or 2"x6"x8’ pine boards and cutting out your rocker templates then cutting out your interior patterns with a handsaw or jig then glueing them all up to rough out the outline and planshape.
as long as you leave enough thickness on the top bottom and rail boards you should be okay shaping it
Wouldn’t need a drill press with forstener(sp) bits or router to bore out the shaped planks the traditional way just a saw
kind of like doing a HWS frame except your building out the entire structure with glued up vertical cross sections versus building out a skeleton and bending a skin over it.
Brewer did a big gun out of 1/8 sheets if veneer (ply?) that recently auction off for thousands.
I saw the board at Tropical Blends and I heard it weighed a ton
but a lot less than Mike Casey’s solid Milo table top olo which took 2-3 guys to carry…
Here’s some pics and info on it… I wonder if it was worth the effort at $6000
Dick Brewer Surfboards Solid Wood Multi-Laminations 9’6"
This is a custom art board shaped by Dick Brewer and made of 420 laminated pieces of wood!
Three stringer glue up, with custom wood fin.
Like no other Brewer ever made!
A true work of art.Estimate: $5000-$8000
SOLD FOR: M 101 (10) Dick Brewer Surfboards Solid Wood Multi-Laminations 9’6" $6,000.00
That’s what I was wondering–get 4 nice planks of cypress–2"-3" thick x 2’ x 7’. Spot glue two together for both top and bottom, outline, cut, hollow with ribs leaving room for rails, match up, vent, plane, fit, glue up, shape rails and fin it. Finish with what…
Would that work?
I was thinking more like how Rohan built his blue foam nugget or how Benny1 used to build out his EPS blanks but just hollowing out the sections before glueing them up
Then cutting the outline, shape the rail and crown the deck.
We’re kind of doing it now building our lowes EPS canoe.
basically cutting a slice profile out of the flat 2" sheets of EPS foam and gluing them up once slice at a time till you have the whole canoe which we then shape down and glass mat and wood over that. The slice profile contains both the inside and outside curve of the canoe. There alot of glue joints but we’re just building a core for the shell anyway.
but this is a whole other conversation…
I like pine
I’m going to skin my new HWS with 1/4" pine bead and cove flooring panels I got for $9.00.
I’d like to try the aromatic cedar bead and cove flooring but I don’t know how that will glass even though it sure looks and smells good…
Oh, but you do unglue it! To cut the board apart after shaping will cause you to lose a lot of width due to kerf width. I spot glue for chambered bopards and I mean spot glue, only a drop of glue every 2 feet or so. Even at times, I have a difficult time breaking the glue with so few spots. Channin insisted on helping me with his wood boards and would use a 4" brush to “spot glue”, I had to take a thin kerf saw to cut the glue, what a bitch that was.
After that, I glued his blanks when he wasn’t around, it save me hours of headache! SPOT GLUE ONLY
I’m probably way out of line here, but would there be any merit to using this method with either a low temp melt glue or something soluble in (say) alcohol, so that it could be “unglued” without any mechanical abuse?
-Samiam
Balsa has absolutely the best strength to weight ratios of all woods, better than pine, so this statement is a bit misleading.
Actually paulownia has the highest strength to weight ratio, and is way ahead of balsa in that department
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David - I’m not Jim and would never deign to be. But seriously, for Texas, and for limited experience with, & tools for, wood - you might want to follow the Roy Stewart plans. Search for Tom Bloke & a balsa board by Austin.
Reason being, all the cuts are flat. You can buy the wood milled to the right dimensions (Lonestar balsa is in Texas) and cut the ends, glue, and clamp. Cutting along the grain of any wood is harder than across it; along the grain of balsa tends to produce fibrous fuzz that’s best at clogging saw teeth and making you sneeze. If you’re working with anything less than serious power tools, crosscutting is your best option. And every scratch will look terrible under even the best glass job. Trust me, Jim does the good ones, but I’ve done the bad ones
Roy’s build method has lots of merit. Don’t overlook it just because he has a ZZ Top beard and talks about hoop fins. Tell him what you want to do with it and he’s a very resourceful guy - I’m sure he can modify a design to work for where you live. If that works out well, finagle a visit to Richard Mc’s shop and take it from there.
Besides, how cool would it be to have a PowerSurfboards 11’ super pintail on both sides of the world?
Thanks for the kind words Benny, pine wise my trusty D11-9 roundtail is mostly Pine (Pine bottom. pine/cedar deck, pine frames and paulownia rail blocks) it’s super strong (meaning overbuilt !) very buoyant and weighs about 45 poonds
That’s Monterey pine BTW ( I live next door to the biggest Monterey pine plantation in the world, so we tend to use it for lots of things).
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The problem with pre-chambering is, the deck and or bottom have contours, the early Rhino balsa blanks were filled with stryo sheet and were constructed in the same way. I made a living for about a year repairing them for all who bought them. When you start to dome the deck or put in a concave, there is a real good chance you will cut through to the chambers. Even with the method I use doing the shaping first, I see how much change there is in each plank as I route them. I used to start on one side and route to the other edge, but now I route from each side and meet in the middle. On a 4" wide plank, the routes are unaligned with each other by a good 1/4" across the top. It almost has the look of a shiplap construction from the inside of the partially glued up, routed blank.
In the past week I have seen 2 home built guys come by with their abortion wood boards that they tried to chamber without router guides and trying to move the router in the wrong direction of blade rotation.
In one way the blade is drawn into the center of the work, in the opposite direction the blade will run out through the side of the piece being routed.
It is not the piece of cake that one wants to go wrong. It took me several decades to figure all of this out, where is the surfboard chambering manual? It is a case of what can go wrong will go wrong, slow and steady wins the race
Pine roundtail…that’s just about exactly what I figured you’d come up with for TX gulf surf. I hope he goes for it. 
I have been reading this forum for a while and have decided to take the plunge and try to build a
an 8’ chambered board. I was hesitant, but tried one practice rib in 2x4 pine, and it came out fairly well and weighs 2.5 lbs. I think I can get it down to 2lbs, with some rasping and making the bottom deck thinner. Pine seems quite strong.
Built the shaping stand today. Need to add some padding. Next is sourcing more 2x4’s and cutting the rocker, then the outline shape, then lots of planing and sanding. Then chambering. Simple tools seem to work. Just a jigsaw and electric drill.
The tail rocker on the experimental rib is a bit steep in the back. I’m thinking of toning it down a bit to keep the speed up when paddling.
I’ll try to post pictures of the process as it unfolds. It might turn into a pile of kindling for a Thanksgiving Day fire in the fireplace, but I am hopeful and happy to be getting started.
Thank you everyone for the inspiration and instructions/tips.
Nice chambering. I built one of those (see picture to the left) and it will take about 16 of those 2 lb. pieces to make a board. Mine is about 6’6" and went from 90 lbs. unchambered to about 28 lbs. chambered and shaped. Still floated great, just the wrong shape and fin (single). Once you got it pointed in the right direction it was a freight train. no slowing down. So it’ll will be heavy but with attention to shape and fin placement it’ll be fun.
You could buy a blank from Vince in Bali if you ever go there. He’s actually moved to east java now. He uses a local Workforce and sustainably sourced Paulownia. The chambering is not as good as I see pictured here but it is still a high quality blank. I think about $600 for a mini mal size.
A lazy option but possibly the most sensible
Thanks tkelly for the preview of my possible future board from the pic and description of yours, and the encouragement to go forward with mine. Your board looks great.
I was also thinking of a single fin because it is easier to install just one and not have to deal with angels and cants of a thruster setup. But, based on your experience, I might have to rethink this. I am cutting the shape from a template made from a “floaty” fun board that has a thruster setup, so I can mark the tri-fin locations fairly easily.
I am guessing my board will come in around 30lbs, but I still have hope for a bit less (ever optimistic). The deck seems overly strong for what is needed, so I may thin it out a bit further.
Quick questions on glassing. I am very tempted to only use SolarEZ polyester resin (http://solarez.com/products/acrylic-modified-polyester-resin/) without cloth, but in my gut I feel that cloth is needed for strength and to ensure waterproofing (the resin might fracture without cloth.)
How did you seal yours?
And would you recommend cloth with the resin or just go for resin alone?
4oz top and bottom, or 6&4oz?
s or e cloth (given that the wood is already very strong)?
Jago25_98 RE: Vince’s blanks: I lived in Kalimantan for a few months and spent a month in Bali. I am always looking for a reason go back to Indonesia. You have me thinking…
Hey GG,
I use one layer of 4 oz. e cloth top and bottom with epoxy resin. I used cloth because it made it easier for logo and glass on fin installation and epoxy because it soaks into the wood to add a micro layer to prevent water intrusion. You won’t get any heel dents with wood, that’s for sure. Keep us informed.
I made a board out of pine about ten years ago. I chambered it as much as I dared. The thing was still too heavy. It’s currently living under the house somewhere.
pine, at least the variety I see here in so. cal., is a heavy, sappy wood ill suited to surfboard making. Agave, cedar, redwood, balsa, paulownia, are all, to varying degrees, superior to pine for surfboards.
I used what is referred to as Sugar Pine, 2"x6" S4S, properly dried and stored. Acted and felt a lot like good Cedar. No sap or juice to speak of. Fine sawdust. Still heavy.
“Agave, cedar, redwood, balsa, paulownia”…
Ah, would be nice…
I did a 10’6" old growth wine tank gun for Merrick, the raw blank unshaped, 110 #
After shaping, chambering, 28#.
As you build, rocker and profile each piece, drawing your finished outline as you glue each pair of sticks.
I say pairs, because as the wood is drawn and profiled it will spring away from the rocker that is your template.
2 pieces are much easier to keep aligned the 8-10.
The gluing at this time only needs drops of glue and I mean drops to hold it in place, keeping glue away from where it exits the plan shape, the tips break off if it has glue too close to the ends.
I’m putting together a 9’6" right now and the assembly isn’t a race, take your time and it will pay off in the end.
Saw the outline, true up, level the pieces top and bottom. This where you get into trouble, run a band nose to tail on where you want the bottom edge of the top rail to be. Get it to where there is a nice clean flow and start crowning the deck, you want it to look like a blank.
After your finished cussing, flip the blank, true the bottom and rocker nose and tail.
You want the initial pieces very very close to the finished profile so the won’t be un-needed labor.
Turn the bottom rails, tune them with your best plane, turn top rails, go to work with the block plane.
This is where I spend hours truing before cracking the blank apart, because once chambered you do not want to attempt reshaping.
I made guides to route lengthwise and a second template to clean the ends of the route.
I normally keep the skins at a half inch, but with pine you can go to a 1/4".
