Surfboard

Looks fantastic. Wish we had bigger waves on this side of Florida.

-- Shawn, I ask in order to learn

Nice! Hoe much do they run?

-- -Sam - West Virginia -

Beautifull boards. Building a board is high on my project list. I have actually already started the design. I would love to hear and see more about the process and build.

-- “There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” ~ JRR Tolkien

Good looking surfboards.

-- Don, Royersford, PA

Great looking surfboards! I looked at your surfboard blog and followed the links to your furniture pages on your personal website. Great looking stuff as well. Also your sailing pages were interesting. I’ve got two sailboats now, a Beneteau First 285 and a Holder 20 (trailer boat) I got into woodworking after I retired to make a little money working a couple of days a week, so I could spend the rest of my time sailing. Only the woodworking is becoming a monster and I have very little time for sailing now.

-- Hal, Tennessee http://www.first285.com

Beautiful boards with a great design , Very well done.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

Thanks for showing how these are made. You do excellent work!

-- "The beatings will continue until moral improves" -- Bart Ridings, Illinois

Wow, are these things really hollow (as the last picture seems to show)? I had no idea they were so involved… I thought surfboards were just laminated solid boards cut and shaped. This reminds me of fine instrument construction. Good job.

Also, that’s quite the assortment of spring clamps.

Hi Shawn, well on this coast, Lake Atlantic, we too rarely get good waves. Check www.sunsetbeachsurfclub.blogspot.com for some hurricane surf photos. There are couple of Tom in there, i think the first one, he also builds wood boards but likes working with foam. He also has a great eye to for design.

Hi Sam, about $100 a foot. In shops they are more, to account for their profit. If our of our shop, $100. We tried to figure out what out how much we make and realize there is no real money in this gig, there is with foam. Foam takes one day to shape and couple says to fiberglass, good profit there. Wood takes about 3 weeks. So it keeps us out of bars and they are fun to build.

Hi Tokolosi, go to YouTube and search under oldfartssurf. I posted bunch of vids on how to build a HWS board. What is showed is about 2/3’s of this project. There is lots of trimming, shaping, sanding and just getting wood to go some place it doesn’t want to.

Hi Don, thanks.

Hi Hal, we loved sailing and put money into that boat. Used it a lot up in NY/NJ but it’s more difficult down here. Mostly open ocean…not for me. Sold it last summer for a song to nice guy. She found a good home. Good that you can make money at wood working. NICE looking shop you have.

Hi Jim, unlike foam, kind of hard to change profiles once rib design is drawn. Unlike foam, these look like art.

Thanks wood guy.

-- Dan Johnston

Very cool! do you know Ric Allison?

Hi Bob,
Yes, hollow and very much like musical instrument, although about the only strumming we do is when we see dolphins and try to get them over, closer to us, we pound on our boards deck. Kind of like an off tuned drum ;). One needs LOTS of clamps. I need to pick up few more 36” ones and just found a scrap pvc to make more circle clamps. Never enough.

B13, I don’t know Ric. Can you point me in his direction? thanks.

dan

-- Dan Johnston

Very nice!f similar building style to ‘Grain’ surfboards. I like.

Hi Tom,
First would you email me that you rec this answer? I’m not certain how this site works. thanks. blinddogsurfboards.blogspot.com

As to being similar to Grain, yes and no. We both use a HW style of spar and ribs. Their rail build up is different, more like layers than shaped, which is good way to be really rounded rails 50/50 but doing 70/30 or 80/20, in my opinion leaves too much wood. We do it much like a stripper canoe, but w/o cove and bead molding work. Typically we use 3 maybe 4 rail strips about 1/2” wide, this works fine on 70/30 80/20 but for more pinched rail, strips are 1/4”. what a PITA to do.

Also I think Grain does a terrible job of nose and tail finishing. It’s like they build a beautiful board then slack off in that area. The board lacks ‘motion’ when you look at it. It’s like they got to the nose and said…ok we’ll end it here. Doing it in a more traditional way takes time and lots of fine cutting to get it perfect, but what we’re building, like Grain, is something that will last basically forever. I see you’re up in BC. Was there years ago. Used to camp out east of Nanimo. I think that town had only one paved road back then, 1970 or so.

Nice canoe’s you’re building. what is the covering?

dan

-- Dan Johnston

Dayum! That is bloody beautiful…..well well done.