Below Sea Level

Took the kids to a super secret north county reef for some negative tide spelunking yesterday. Even more fun than watching football!

Caution

Novice Noserider Ahead

This is my personal board for summer. Supposed to be the summer that ended this week, but I was a bit late getting started. The other dims are moderately wide, rails are fairly pinched but not too much, with a blended concave under the nose carrying about halfway back. Shape and concept by me, color execution by Peter St. Pierre. I toyed with an orange/black or yellow/black combo, but in the end I decided to go blue, you know, for the ocean.

summer09

Hallowe'en Alaia

The Incut Ghoul. Be afraid, be very afraid...

A Really Big Show!

I went to the Sacred Craft Del Mar today - too many shaping demos, too many trippy boards, mind... will.... explode....



Joe Bauguess, the mini-Simmons master.



Jon Wegener shaping a 21st Century alaia



Say What????




Cooper Designs




Next three - the Swift Movement guys never fail to surprise you. Ekstrom, Kenvin, Putnam, etc.






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Gato Heroi window display.



What the????



Leucadia's newest funky surf shop owner, JP St. Pierre.



Oh fudge, I just remembered I forgot to take pictures of John Cherry's amazing work. Super nice guy and full of useful info.

Life's A Beach

Not much in the way of waves round these here parts the last couple a days, so I got back to finishing up the latest mini-Simmons based shaping project. I'm going to call it a long mini planing hull since it's a 6'4". Too long really, but this time I'm going an inch narrower in the outline, less thickness, and a lot more bulk out of the rails. The blank doesn't really work out for some of the key characteristics of a true Casper board, so I'm dropping the Simmons reference. But the general foil, bottom contours and rail design are pretty much the same deal.

Or so I hope.



Always start off with a plan and try to stick with it. Maybe after a few hundred I won't have to write it down.



As I mentioned the other day, the blank had a lot of prep work needed. It was a good 1/4" thicker on one side, and the bottom was not flat in the tail section. There was also a high spot in the deck at the nose to deal with.





Yes, I do have a patent on the Popsicle stick rocker measurement wand. It's more complicated than it looks, e-mail me for info on how to receive a set of plans.



Looks like we're right where we want to be, copying the rocker of my favorite fish.





There was a lot of other stuff in between, but here is the final product, less the final-final finish sanding.





Let it simmer for a few days, some flaws always seem to develop after the garage gnomes fiddle with it.

Hack It Up

The first step to shaping your own board is to true up the blank - per Jim Phillips video, and he would know. This means making sure it’s free of any imperfections like twists or high and low spots along the rail. As he points out, blanks are put together by men and not machines, so there is always something tweaked with every blank. This one represents some of China’s finest foam. My buddy bought a couple of containers full of them after Clark shut down hoping to turn a quick buck. Unfortunately for him the opposite happened, but I ended up getting several blanks for dirt cheap.

If you look closely you can see the wicked twist in the tail section, up much higher on one side. All the more reason to chop the last two and a half feet off altogether and shape a mini-Simmons planning hull. But that leaves the major problem of the difference in volume of the two rails. The port side is almost 1/4" thicker. I’ll have to even that out before skinning the rest of the deck, and starting in on the bottom. The bottom also has its own issues, like too much pre-shaped belly throughout. This will be great in the forward third of the board as it matches the intended final board design, but I’ll have to flatten out the rear two thirds to get a neutral blank to work with. So, a little pre-work is in order. And oh yeah, the blank is 3-3/4" thick at the cut off spot, a measurement that will have to go down to almost 1/2" once the S-deck is put in. Thank goodness for power tools.