Give yourself the gift that keeps on giving this Christmas season.
Is that a ‘‘green leafy substance’’ on the deck of that board? Good looking board, by the way.
Yeeaaaahhhh craftee! Are you reviving the late 60’s-early 70’s glassed in leaf?
Everybody has a story from back then of cops trying to arrest people for that,
it infuriated ‘‘the man’’, which was about 90% of the fun.
Are you going to show more pics and details? Balsa on this one? How many transducer
attachment systems?
Mike
OOPS!!!
Man you guys are sharp tacks…its supposed to be bamboo leaves but from that angle I can see why it looks like the “alt leafy substance”, ha! I swear that wasnt planned. I’ll take another shot and post so you guys dont get the false impression Im a pot head…well at least not full time…its medicinal at this point 
Mike, its bamboo veneer sandwich over dow xps (sheet form) all built from scratch; no premade blank. Made the blank a year ago and finally got around to making something of it. Major humpback foil so its got a bit of tail flex going but not too much. No fins yet but thats happening as we speak.
Bamboo schamboo, some of us ‘‘sharp tacks’’ will see what we want to see.
Interesting construction, how thick is veneer, what’s it sandwiched with, how’d you
put together the "blank’', what’s the rail material, etc? What steps did you take to
mitigate the xps’ poor bonding properties?
Mike
Nice board. I thought the leaves looked like they were from an Agave cactus.
Very nice, craftee. A couple of years ago you stated you were a better shaper than A, B, and C. I thought you were full of yourself and full of guano, too. But, that board has beautiful lines and foil. Maybe you are better! What did Ali say? “It aint braggin if you can do it.” Nice! Mike
yaaa hahahah i was going to add a nice big green leafy friend to my next board ( maybe a few ). probably wont be able to bring that board down to the states. hahaha
Aloha Craftee… May I ask where you got the bamboo veneer?
The humpback foil is a nice idea…
Is the stringer set up traditional under the veneer?
Dimensions?
XPS density and finished weight?
A couple of years ago you stated you were a better shaper than A, B, and C. I thought you were full of yourself and full of guano, too.
HA! I often make unqualified statements just cuz its fun and no one gets hurt. But here’s what I mean. Shaping is not that difficult. Being able to translate design to foam, and repeating over and over accurately to squeeze out that last 5% of performance is much harder. Unless one has a very tight relationship with a competent shaper and lots of money to burn, IMO its best to learn the iterative, design/build/test process yourself. Once you become really good at this, one can make such bold claims, whether its true or not is not relevant cuz its very subjective. Tom Curren and Joel Tudor likely never come up as world class shapers A B and C. But when you consider the intimacy of the shaper rider relationship, ie being the same person, they are great shapers riders. IOW, I know what works for me better than A B C and I can fine tune it with more accuracy than those guys or the normal way of doing things, because I dont do it profit. The fact is, there are thousands of great shapers out there and many of those are backyard Swaylockians. If part of the criteria is shaping speed, then Im the worst shaper in the world! It takes me a long time to make these cuz its all from scratch.
No stringers Dave, but there’s extra glass, some in the rails, and esp under the back heel. 6’3 x 19.75 x 2.5 x 14.5T, 5.5 lb w/o fins. Im very pleased with the accuracy of bottom curve considering the difficulty in doing it without a purchased blank and simple hand methods.
Hotwired xps with dcell hump, final shaped to rough surface, skins are 4oz fg bamboo sandwich with strategic reinfs, vac’d on with a bit extra resin, no special rail foam. Dont know how reliable the adhesion is going to be…rolling the dice a bit here. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained
Last night I decided to go with a 5/4/3 possible fin combo. I want to ride it as 5 but I dont have enough experience with them with narrower tails. My current 5 fin speed machine has a wide 15.75 tail, its gonna be hard to out do that board, it just flyes. But with the proper removable fin setup I’ll be able to surf it with a plethora of fin combos. My guess is that a hybrid between a 4 and 5 will go best. I do this by tweaking down the size of the center fin and bumping up the rear rails. The hopefull outcome being the perf of a quad without the unpredictable response. I just like the stable feeling of having a center fin, the size dictating the stability and drag response.
Hi Craftee,
After all your years on Sways, how many boards have you build?
Your dimensions are very near a small wave groveller i want to make, what bottom configuration did you shape? And especially… WHY SO THICK? DOES IS STILL FLEX?
How thick is the XPS?
Bye for now, hope to see more soon.
Wouter
Hi Craftee,
Very nice board,
But don’t worry about the bond with the XPS, the only thing that fails is the foam it self.
But that is very repairable,
It won’t happen to soon if the deck is strong,
You made a really strong laminate,
Love to hear how it goes and holds up flex wise.
I think going that way too.
Could you give us some fin test input too?
Thanks and ENJOY! Soul