Well folks, if I were a more dedicated photodocumentarian this would be a more interesting and impressive post. Seth has been working on shaping his first surfboard for the past couple of months, but I of course didn't bother to photograph his progress until he had progressed pretty far... So I'm including a picture of the kit he worked from, below:
You can see that the "blank" as its called has some but not much shape to it, just a little upturn at the front and back (in jargon, it has some "rocker" to it already). This arrived in the hugest box, as two separate pieces of foam that had to be glued together with the "stringer" in between (thats the wooden strip that you can see at the nose; it runs the length connecting the two halves and providing both stability and flexibility). Below you can see Seth's shape in progress, as well as the little tarped-in shaping bunker he made himself in the garage to contain the dust, of which there was gobs.
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| Rounding out the rails |
Below you can see Seth shaping a single concave into the bottom of the board; it runs the back 1/3 and helps to channel water to provide more drive.
Below is the board during glassing, in the basement. Wish I had some action shots for this, because its a really interesting process. Seth stretched a knit fabric (bamboo in this case) across one side of the board, wrapped it around the sides and secured it with super strong double sided tape (you can see it running the border), then poured epoxy into the fabric and wiped any excess away with a squeegee. The excess fabric is cut away at the tape line with an exacto. Then you flip the board and do the other side (this means it gets double layered on the rails). Seth's board has two layers on top and one on the bottom. This is a pretty atypical way to glass a board; it's far more common to use fiberglass cloth, but this method is a bit more ecologically sound, and Seth said he liked it and will probably continue to use this method down the line.
These next photos show what seemed to be the most difficult part of constructing the board: glassing on the fins. Seth used a wood block and tape to set them at the angle he wanted, then wrapped them and glassed them like the rest of the board (but with a quicker setting epoxy).
Finished board photos!!! (and some nice pictures of our living room)
