New 9-8 Nova for Scott...

Man, I love "Pick-up Day", the day the customer first lays eyes on his/her new board; the smiles, the high-fives, brings out the kid in everyone. Its one of the things I like most about building surfboards. This day it was Scot and his new 9-8 Nova.

This Nova is 9'8" 17-1/2" x 23" x 14" x 3-1/8" It was glassed with double 6oz deck and single 6oz bottom, and finished clear, sanded gloss-coat, with black pinline. And just for a little pizzaz, we added a wooden tailblock. The 2+1 fin set-up adds to the versatility of this shape. I recommend 9-1/2" single-fin for waves 4ft or smaller, and 7-1/2" center fin with 3.7" side-bites for waves 5ft or larger.

8-8 Mini-Nova Squaretail...

This custom board was built for return customer Kirt who has a penchant for geometric color designs and fast single-fin longboards. The board's dims: 8-8 18" x 22-3/8" x 14-5/8"  3-1/8". The rails are pinched 50/50 with a hard edge in the last 16" of the tail. Bottom features subtle nose concave with "V" in the tail. Laminated wood tailblock punctuates the cedar/basswood T-band stringer. Color work by Ray Lucke is a combination of air-spray and black resin stripes.

Keeping it in the family...

This 10-0 Nova is headed for my son-in-law. The Nova is a very versatile shape and can easily be fine-tuned to meet the needs of its intended rider. In this case I kept the design very simple and straight-forward shape-wise to make it more "user-friendly". Overall dimensions are slightly fuller than normal plus a little extra thickness and some nose kick to compensate for the late take-offs that sometimes plague beginners. The single-fin set-up with the 10" TA Farberow Flex is a forgiving fin, providing good stability at slow speeds, but responding well when pushed. The aesthetics of this board are classic "longboard" with triple 1/8" cedar stringers, airspray rails and red pinlines. And a tailblock (of course!)
Dimensions: 10'0" 18-1/2" x 23-1/4" x 14-1/2" 3-3/8"

I build and shape all of my own tailblocks. No two are exactly alike.

Most glass shops will run the pinstripe over  the stringer(s) because its easier, less work. Ray and I think it just looks better if the stringers are taped-off, so we take the time to do it that way. Sure its more work and most people wouldn't even notice this little detail...but we do.

Summer rush has died down, wait-time for new boards is down to just over three weeks.  Order your new board now!

The process...

 I thought I'd show a little bit of the process of board building. This is a 10-2 for Steve down in Panama. After a long discussion via email, we settled on this hybrid longboard design which blends some classic features like egg rails and single-fin set-up with a more modern outline. The triple-cedar stringer and wood tailblock are just pure longboard no matter what era. Here's the board after final shaping:

Then the bottom lamination in Volan with light yellow resin tint

Getting ready to add stripes...

...and not just airspray, but genuine, old-school opaque resin stripes.

Just the bottom-half of the middle stripe is needed. Stripes will be "feathered" into hot coat to minimize raised edge and then entire board gets gloss coat.
All done and ready to go to Panama