…but , I felt this deserved its own thread , and would like to hear people’s comments and questions , as Bill kindly sent this to me and said it was okay to use .
Hi Josh, no, it’s just an old 8’ 3" Surfoam blank (Surfoam is french homeblown foam) that I had forgotten since 2000 in some dark corner, no stringer in it (as I like to glue-in my own stringer(s) from time to time). The trouble was that the blank was an early production one, with uneven density and such so I thought that putting a stringer in it would be a loss of time and I started wondering what to do with it. And then I remembered those stringerless first aussie V-bottom by Mc Tavish and thought it might be fun to revive one. (Although 6’ 00" is two feet shorter, at least, than the originals…) And I went on to make me something for summer beachbreaks. I’ll keep you informed of any progress… I plan on doing tinted bottom lamination, fabric inlay on top, and a giant flexible fin, like in the “good old days”…
I noticed with my stringerless blank , it “bounced” around a fair bit …
Shaping was actually a nightmare. I tried to set my stands as near to each other as I could, but, even then, the blank kept binding in the middle so I had to use feather strokes all the time. Besides, as I told you, the blank had those long uneven density marks in the nose area, making it very difficult to hold a nice curve without bumps. Also, not having the stringer as a visual reference point for symetry isn’t easy either… I penciled a middle line to help, but it kept erasing, so I went on working by eye…
Ben, before you ask, it’s 6’ 00" x 21 1/2" x 2 1/4". Although I laid down the template as far back as I could (had to keep some width for that giant tail) the rocker in the nose is still more than I wanted. So the plan is to laminate bottom first and, since there is no stringer, it should flatten out a bit with resin shrinkage. Then fabric inlay, then deck laminate.
Thanks, Josh. Surf Research is one of my favourites sites: I even dropped them a note about a French quotation by Charles BEAUDELAIRE that they had on the home-page and it was not quite well spelled and I got a pretty nice and humorous answer from Geoff CATER, asking if I was in the “Académie Française”… Excellent site, and, yes, there are some pretty V-boards of that golden era (67-69).