Say a 9’6" balsa?
Or a 9’6" paulownia?
Liki
I can’t answer THAT wood’s and sizes weights specifically, sorry. But I CAN say, having lifted ‘Hicksy’s’ 8’ HOLLOW wooden ‘mal’ and Gray Murdoch’s ? 6’? hollow wooden fish, the word that comes to mind is…HEAVY !
Just curious… why do you ask ? Are you thinking of making one ? … Go for it !
ben
if , like me , you’ve only ever ridden foam boards, you WILL notice the weight difference and different feel of the board the minute you paddle for a wave. Not neccessarily a better or worse thing, just different, I would say.
I’d like to ride a Bert made ,wood , vacuum- bagged fish say 15 x 5’10 x 20 x maybe about 2 1/4 - 2 3/8 x 14 @ 9" pod and wood twin keels one day, just for a different sensation again. [But, sorry… I don’t have the money Bert. Have you made those sorts of boards at all ? Be good to see one on this site, if you have !]
Having just finished shaping a 10’ old school balsa. I can tell you that it is HEAVY. It is end grain balsa so it could be heavier than regular balsa. I was down the beach the other day and a guy had a solid palowina shortboard. It was not glassed just multiple coats of varnish or urathane and it weighed a tonne/ton.platty.
Beautiful looking board, Platty !
[I’m glad you posted that for ALL to see…it deserves a ‘public showing’, for sure !]
Roughly how many hours work , you reckon ?
Materials cost …?
Fin shot , please ?
thanks Dave !
ben
Hey Ben. Cost to date nill. The blank is made from totally recycled material. The stringers are old cedar outdoor furniture. The balsa is what we use at work as a core material in the motor yachts we build. It is amazing what gets thrown out. Regular trips to the dumpster are a daily thing for me. I’m goint to start with the fin 4th from the left. 10" and take it from there. platty.
SPLENDIFEROUS !!!
…It must be GREAT working on / with boats…marine ply , balsa, epoxy…made any marine ply fins ?
Glad to see those five templates are for fin boxes…what cloth and how many layers , do you remember ?
Where will you be riding this , Dave…copa , macs, avo…, ?
Can’t wait to hear how it goes…[ any chance your lady could get some shots of you on it ?]
ben
The only gut I know who can tell you about wood is Tom Wegener. It is what he does , It is what he knows.
That’s a pretty generic question. Wood varies greatly. I bet you could have a 9’-6” weight 100 pounds, or 25 pounds. Depends on the wood and the skill of the shaper or millwright.
Liki,
Someplace in the archives there is a thread in which Jim Phillips talks about getting the weight of a 9’ balsa board down to around 9/10 lbs. Not sure if this is before or after glassing. In any case, I use the number as my goal. Never achieved in my few efforts, I should add.
The problems are the quality of the wood for the board, the chambering, and the glassing. Good light weight balsa is difficult to find in my area and expensive. Even those pieces I do find usually have to be scarfed to others before use. I continually check the beaches for old floats in the hope of finding a treasure-no luck yet. Chambering, if done with skill, can reduce the weight significantly but won’t make up for heavy wood. Glassing with epoxy as opposed to polyester is where I have found weight savings.
If you are planning on building a balsa for the first time you might consider going the blank route. You would save money and be happier with the result if you paid someone such as Jim to build you a blank.
Have not used the paulownia but have seen Tom Wageners beautiful hollow boards-very nice.
Hope this is some help. Have fun!
Patrick
Hey, Ben. 1 & 3 are made of 34oz tri-axial E- glass. The others are made of regular 6oz surfboard cloth.
Tri-axial is three layers of glass filaments stacked on top of each other and stitched together. They run 0/45/45 the 0 runs down the length of the roll. Warp if memory serves me right.
I think I will ride this at Macs, Killy or down Umina way. Maybe Box if I can get a boat ride out. Anything over two feet will be to big for this tanker I think. The weight is going to be the major factor with this one.
Will post photos. Could work as a tamdam board. platty.
I made a solid balsa 9’6" with 5 stringers, weight was about 21 pounds. Chambered boards can be considerably lighter (at considerably more work). Much depends on the quality of the balsa, I’ve seen some balsa longboard blanks for sale on ebay that were stated to be 44-45 pounds. OK for a wall hanger maybe but I wouldn’t want to ride one.
We have got a nine one balsa which weighs about 15 pounds, Roy rides boards up to around 70 pounds but more often boards in the 25 to 30 pound range. we have an 11 foot nine Paulownia/Pine/Redwood/Cedar board which gets a lot of use and weighs about 20 pounds. Heavy boads are not for everyone but I have seen the 13’9" redwood pintail we built (70pounds) getting tubed and making waves which no one else could make on lightweight boards. Different strokes for different folks but I think that wood suits a different style of board and that trying to make a wooden board which is identical to a foam board is missing the point. Tom Wegener’s boards are 35 pounds plus and he says that he likes them that heavy too. Getting those logs onto the roofrack on our bus which is about 12 feet up is a major mission, we are thinking of mounting a small crane onto the roof.
Keith,
I just discovered your 9’6" balsa in the “Resources” a couple of days ago. Added it to my favorite board list. Beautiful work!!! Love the shape as well as the woodwork. I would bet chambering would put it easily in the 15lbs. range.
Thanks for posting it.
Patrick
hey. just chambering a 63 semi-fish cedar thing im making and im realising ill have to chamber quite hard in order to keep the weight down. If you check my post you can see in the first pic that i`m actually using two hands to hold my board. That could be due to my chicken-wing arms but also the fact that the board is fuckin heavy. Just do it though. If in doubt use balsa, Paulownia And Cedar. The more the merrier
I know that’s right. You might want to check these out.
http://www.grainsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1328
9’5 balsa from pre chambered blank 19 lbs.
9’11 solid balsa 30 lbs.
10’4 solid balsa 32 lbs.
Shaping light weight wood boards is something I have been working on for 4 or 5 years and I can give you some general numbers to work off of:
Lightweight balsa weighs 10-12 lbs/cu ft
Regular balsa weighs 16-20 lbs/cu ft
Paulownia wood weighs 18-20 lbs/cu ft
Red Cedar weighs 23-25 lbs/cu ft
You could use APS3000 or another shaping program to find the volume of the board you are planning to shape, then use these weights to estimate the differences.
Some quick math from a generic 9’6" longboard from APS3000 at a volume of 70.1 Liters would yeild the following weights (estimate only)
Lightweight balsa: 24.75 lbs (solid)
Regular balsa: 39.6 lbs (solid)
Paulownia: 44.55 lbs (sold)
Figure you will loose a lot of weight in chambering then factor in the glass schedule and you could have a rough guess at what to expect.
Balsa Bill - just have to say those are some beauties.
Are we talking only solid wood, chambered wood or hollow wood?
This is a veneer compsand. 9’-5" x 23". 2 lb. EPS core, 2oz/veneer/4oz bottom, 4oz/veneer/4oz deck. Balsa rails.
I just weighed it- 14 pounds. With fins and no wax.
