Finished my first board at the weekend, It’s taken me a long time to get round to it but it’s finally done, once I got started thought it only took about six weekends and a few evening, I’m really stocked with how it turned out, so I thought I’d share.
This go out to everyone on Sways who has helped make it the place that it is, I couldn’t have done this with out you, so a big thanks is due, especially to all the barnacles for there wisdom and to Chips for his stoke and endless motivation (seriously I don’t know where he gets all the energy from, must be something in the water
Anyway the board is 7’82 x 22 x 2.5, has a flat bottom, it was glassed with a single layer of 6oz on the bottom and double 6oz on the deck, all the fin boxes have patches, the centre fin has a diamond shaped patch under the glass and the side boxes have oval patches on top of the glass.
Plenty of room for improvement but as first attempts go I’m stoked, and I loved every minute of it.
Ok time for some photos.
No.1: Shaped blank, (the photos before this didn’t come out)
No2: shot o the nose, I found this the hardest area to shape.
No8: Patches for the side fins added with clear lam, not a full oval they but up againt the lap line from the deck, the patch for the centre fin was gone along with the bottom lam so it would show up a darker shad, (though i marked this out with a pencil and managed to leave some on there, which showed through, i’ll get how i covered that up latter.
You can also just make out tape line for the hot coat, in the tail area where Ipooled some resin to get a shape edge in the tail section.
Then did the hot coat, no pics of this as i was too busy withthe resin at the time and covered in resin, but it went well.
No9 & No10: fin bax install, used mike’s probox, the thought of taking a router to board I’d just finished glassing was stressing me right out Icantell ya, but mikes system was really smoth. Iactually had moreproblems with the resin to glue them in. I mix in too mush milled fibre and was getting loads of gaps, so had toscrape some out and top it up with a thinner mix.
Actually through out the whole build every thingthat i thought would be hard went smoothly and the thinks I thought would be a peice of piss took a lotmore time and effort to get right.
I too am “stocked” for you ! [how many other boards do you have besides this , the first one you have built ? Are you ‘well stocked’ , in the boards department ?]
thanks heaps for sharing those photos …my questions were clearly answered
…now get some fins , paddle out , and ENJOY riding your own creation !
Thanks SrPato, can’t wait myself, just got to go buy a bag to take it to the beach in, its just slightly too wide and long too fit in the bag I have.
Your think your jealous, you should meet my girlfriend, a few days back she actually asked my which I love more her or the surf board! I think she was only joking, maybe i have been spending a little too much time down the shed though.
I actually replied to that one too (Doh) I said "I love the board, but I’m inlove with you, you can’t be physically in love with an inaimate object, just dont be surprided if you come home to find me in bed with it.
She also has a song she sings called “lets talk about something else” some if i start talking too mush shit about boards, but on the whole she’s been very encouraging and suportive.
Anyway No17 & 18 deck plug instal, thought this would have been easy after the fin instal, but no. First of all I tried using a forster bit in a dit and a wooden jig, but the bit was crunching up and leaving a blackline arounf the glass, and slipping and it was too heart stopping, so in the end I used a router and the jig has to make the hole slihtly bigertoget rid of the drity marks the forster bit left.
More. I fogot to mension the pinline, this gave me heaps of trouble, redid it a few time, by far the harded part, my hat goes off too all the pin liners out there. runing two lines of tape is a lot harder than I thought it would be
Thanks John, mabye the decal works as a good luck charm. now if it can just generat a swell too.
Every time I see a board like this and hear “it’s my first”, I can’t help but remember how many boards it took me to reach that workmanship level when neither Swaylock’s nor any other similar site (and no computers for that matter) existed…
Back then, if you were not lucky enough to know closely a shaper (and there were only one or two in France at the time), you had to learn everything the hard way, that is looking at photos in the mags and trying to duplicate, not even knowing what materials or tools you should use…
You guys have it easy, nowadays…
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not depreciating what you did, Woody. It’s actually a very fine work and you deserve congratulations for it. I’m just backing what you already said: Swaylock’s made it possible for anyone with some reasonable amount of handworking ability to make a VERY GOOD BOARD on the very first try. Keep up the good work, Woody.
