ok folks its time for number 3 in the series of 30th birthday boards for my good friends, this time its Robins turn. Robin turns 30 on christmas day so its time to get my skates on!
when our group first started surfing Rob used to be content fooling around in the shorebreak and occasionaly picking up a bodyboard for a laugh. also about 2 yrs ago he very sadly lost his Dad who was caught in a rip swimming off the coast of Ireland and though he’s a tough cookie this surely cant have been easy everytime we were all getting stoked about surf trips and the like.
last year he decided to buy himself a board and picked up a nice 9’1 longboard off ebay and has slowly got used to it and now surfs regurlarly with us.
ive set my mind on a bellyboard especially after seeing jeffs bellyboard thread. im thinking something fun to ride prone or on his knees, no fins but some fun experimental channels towards the rear of the board, lots of volume as he’s fairly big and either a scooped deck or a 1.5mm ply skin like the WMD guys.
below are some photos of the foam in stock at work at the moment… blue dow x200, 1.5-2lb eps, very heavy fibreglass cloth.
im thinking 5-6ft, 24 wide spoon nose, with a tail like the photo of jefs board
anyone care to help me out with some thoughts?
my hotwire zone!
and jeffs board i like the tail of
id love ambrose to give me some poetry… hey i could even add a poem under the glass!
just getting that finished in time for starting my 43rd birthday board at t’end of January then? Good planning mate!!
Is there anything that you don’t have access to through your job? Got any western red cedar and siberian larch needing to be disposed of? Or Paulownia? Or yada yada yada!!
Keep the pics coming mate (like I need to prompt).
lol, unfortunatly i turn 30 on 10th jan so im probably going to be a bit pushed to get yours finished… maybe ill do a 44th one for ya!
i have 4 more mates turning 30 next year so its gonna be a busy one! maybe some of them will just get fins
we are slowly running our stocks of solid timber down at work as demand from students is dwindling and we’ve had to get rid of some of our bigger bits of kit so its difficult to process big logs now. we have only got sapele, ash, oak, beech, walnut and jellutong left. jellutong will probably be continued to be ordered though as its popular with the model makers. i guess as soon as we get our cnc router after xmas they will all be on mdf, ply etc.
we are however expanding our foam stocks, in the past we only bought the blue dow but ive now linked us in with an eps manufacturer who will cut to whatever spec i want!!!
heres a pic of the template i was working on today!
One day when the weather warms a bit I’ll make it over to HM. My arthritic old bones are begining to groan after winter surfs nowadays. Bout time I got one of those new fangled rubber wet suit things and chucked the board shorts in the drawer.
Robin we have known since university where we all studied 3D design and production, we all ended up living with Robin and formed a very tight knit group of friends… and we all appreciate each others good and bad points!
Robin is collectivly known as a very cheeky chappy, always getting in and out of scrapes, often leaving others in the line of fire, always crooning after ladies, dressing for the ladies…
he is an awesome friend too… he offered to get his rusty old Karmann Ghia fixed up to take some good friends of ours to their wedding, pulled all the stops out and even roped a load of us in for the very rushed finishing touches the day before the wedding
there are so many stories i could tell about Robin but perhaps the best is this,
because of where he lived and the fact that his Dad was a teacher he managed to get into an all girls school for his 11-18 education… an only guy in a school of 800 girls! explains a lot about our Robin!
i only know the girl in that shot but know quite a few folks down there.
so i got the dreaded flu last week which totally through my schedule out. been putting loads of extra hours in this week and i think im ready to glass now.
not too bothered that the shapes not perfect, just want it to be fun and colourful.
ive aplied a thin screed of decorators filler and sanded back, most of the holes have been filled but im not too worried as im going crazy mexican blanket type thing!
i had to sat night after a bit of drinking with him at a friends party!
anyhows on with the progress!
i lammed the bottom yesterday with intentions of a mexican blanket type effect ala austin but as its my first one its nothing like i imagined but still pretty stoked with it. came into work this morning to find the laps on the rails had come away in places so had to cut my laps a lot lower on the rail than i wanted. this also left me with a pencil line where the old lap was to be and also some of the colour where it had touched the foam.
to remedy this i cut my fabric to sit within the lap line (which was tricky as the fabric is so darned thick!) and lammed it with white resin.
i also stuck it in the vacuum bag to make sure it was down firm. i took it out a few hours ago and it had set nicely but had a few areas where the white resin had seeped under my masking tape! massive learning curve trying to fix errors! i decided to add my second deck layer with clear resin and im thinking i might spray white onto the hotcoat to neaten it all up. i think this one might get a double pinline!
check out the pics
tomorow im going to clean up any straggly bits of glass and then hotcoat hopefully get both sides done!
