Hollow Alaia Interim Curves

I could not resist posting a few pictures of the bottom planking for the new hollow alaia.  I love the curves that are starting to show up.

Sort of Alaia...

I've always liked the simplicity of the wood plank alaias.  The biggest problem is of course, they are hard to paddle and get into waves with.  I've always thought it would be fun to make a hollow wood alaia.  Not necessarily a kook box, but a board that has the same bottom contours and chines of an alaia.  I had forgotten about this idea for a couple of years until I saw what the wood board guru Tom Wegener was working on.  His brother Jon has been making very cool alaia-like boards with small twin fins (his Bluegills), but Tom shaped up some very cool foam alaias with enough thickness to be pretty easily ridden.  Tom calls them Seaglass.  Anyway, I got all excited when I saw pictures on the web and immediately started thinking how I'd do this in wood.  I've never shaped in foam, so I thought I'd give wood a go for this shape.  My shape is 6'6" long, 22" wide and about 2-7/8 thick, with slab sides, a chined bottom and a deep long center channel.  After making some preliminary drawings, I realized it kinda looks like Tom Morey's famous foam creation!

 The beginning of the channel.  The bottom will need to be planked in separate stages for the chines, channel and flat front entry.  

 One of the slab rails going on. 

 Obviously the deck is down, and I've kept it dead flat to simplify the build.  Besides, flat is fast.  

I replaced the conventional solid keel with a really simple stick truss beam which will be much lighter and just as stiff.  

More to come!

More Big Toys Working

 Nice balance of work and play....

 Half way to the bottom

Busy Working Again

Grading for the new Legoland hotel.  Close to home and to the beach!  Can't beat that.  When the scrapers are done digging, the hole will be 50 feet deep and then they'll fill it up again.  

Cigar Box Guitar

I had alot of fun making the ukulele, but really fun is building a simple blues guitar from a cigar box. I really enjoyed going to the second hand antique place here and scrounging around for a nice wood cigar box and miscellaneous bits for the instrument.  I followed some good-old-boy free plans from cigarboxguitars.com.  This is a great site with lots of information on how to build and play theses distinctly American instruments that were common from before the turn of the century into the '40's.  With tuners, strings, some radio shack electronics to make it electric and the box I spend just $30.  I used some mahogany from the garage stockpile for the neck and small parts.  Now I've got a quirky little three stringed guitar that is really fun to play and sounds damn good.  Check it out.

Here are a few pictures of the completed mini-simms.

La Luna