A couple of Classics....

   Hot, breezy days have people lining up to get their next custom summer board. Here's a pair of Classics on the lamination rack.

Both boards are resin tint, with resin tint deck inlay. Traditional lap-line, pinline will be added after hot-coat.  Old school lamination to match the feel of old school 50/50 rails and single-fin glide. A couple of more Classics in the wings, including a triple-stringer and one for yours truly...errr, the shop, I mean. Don't get caught without a log for the summer, order your Classic today.

A photo-essay...

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be approached by photographer Anastasia Petukhova, requesting the opportunity to photograph me while shaping. Anastasia is a very talented photographer who is in the process of creating a photo-documentary about surfboard building. She plans to show her work at a solo exhibition sometime in the future, but in the meantime you can find her most recent work on shapers HERE.

The board I'm shaping in the photos is my current daily driver. You can see all of the photos taken by Anastasia during this session in the "Shapers Series" on her blog.

Pure custom...

Believe it or not, this shape started out as a 7-10 Widget 3yrs ago. Customer Phil didn't like how it fit, so I took it back and we put our heads together and came up with this shape. Phil loved this board, and then recently a friend rode it and insisted on buying it. Phil came back to me, wanting the same shape, but with some tweaks, most notably EPS/Epoxy construction. Here's the result:

If forced to name it, I'd call it a double bump-wing swallow-tail Nova Speedster, but you can call it a "custom". Isn't it time you had a custom board built?

Sneak Peak at T-Belly Gen 2...

I've been working on a couple of belly boards, one of which is a prototype for the next generation of T-Bellys. Here are some photos of the early stages of the build. I plan to do a complete article on the whole project in  a couple of weeks.

Tenplate underneath is TB-G1

 

Every shape starts with a template, and if its a new shape, a new template is created. One way I create templates is to print out the full outline from Aku, carefully tape together the 8.5x11 sheets of paper, cut the outline, and trace it onto a piece of masonite.












After cutting and truing the big curves with my Hitachi Planer, I use a surform true up the smaller curves and finish with a bit of sandpaper.

The outline is then traced onto the blank and cut out. I have another planer set-up to just true the outline on the blank. With all the contours on both the deck and the bottom, shaping one of theses takes almost as long as shaping a longboard.

Here's the finished bottom viewed from the tail. Notice the defined tail concave and the elevated wing on the rails.

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Yesterday, my glasser applied the sealer coat to the deck. I like to have my EPS boards sealed with a slurry of epoxy and cabosil, It helps to fill in the little pock marks that plague EPS blanks, provides a great surface to bond the rest of the lamination, and helps to prevent de-lamination.