Bling for a '64 Econoline

I made this receiver hitch plug surfboard for my friend Tim's bitchen restored 1965 Econoline van.  He wanted an old school longboard shape with a D fin with a sunburst pattern!  No problem, the fin is only an inch high!  Mahogany and pine.  Looks pretty sick.

Mangeras Hand Plane

Second generation handplane.  The hardwood is mangeras, which looks alot like mahogany and the stringers are cedar.  It is a pretty dark wood with short strings of sap that are a nice golden color.  I started using hardwood as the previous hand strap anchors were pulling out of the softwoods.  This has more bottom curves and a nice deep channel.  The channel looks good but I'm not sure how much performance it adds if any!  They are super fun to make and absolutely fun to use!  

East Coast Style

Bobby's sweet green board on Long Island.

Mini Slider

Eric's son showing us how it is done on one of my hand planes.  Nice Job!

5-10 Simms, Part II

Finally got a bit of time to work on the board.  Here's the progress:

 Ready for the top skin.  The top of the rail wood is all planed down to accept the deck. 

I built a center truss beam in-place after the ribs are installed, while the assembly is still in the rocker table.  This little stick beam replaces the conventional solid keel.  It is very stiff and very light.  I've also started adding left over bits of 1/4x1/4" stock to the ribs for additional gluing area for the top skin.  

 This is the rear with the blocking for the fins. 

 I'll glue on a solid tail block once the top skin is on. 

 You can never have too many clamps when the top skin goes on.  When I test fitted and clamped the skin on, the right half of the ply skin broke away from the hardwood decorative stringer I had glued into the skin.  So I glued on the left half, and the other half will go on in a few days. 

Gluey, gluey, clampy, clampy.

Finally, all sealed and ready for the glasser.  Hey, it only took like 3 years to get to this point!

As always, this will get a single layer of 4 ounce cloth and epoxy resin.  Fin set up is twin with a tiny trailer near the tail.  The fins will be epoxied into the grooves after the lamination coat.  This is a nice clean method, and in case the fin breaks, the skin or glass job is not damaged.  I would just rout out the groove again and install a new fin.

Here are the fins.  I had made a small set (bottom) for the board, but a shaper friend convinced me to use the full sized fins on the top.  I tend to underfin a lot of my boards so I agreed to try it.

They are single foiled and only about 3/8" thick.  I thought this was way too thin, but my friend John Cherry guaranteed they would perform, and yes they do!  The trailer is in the middle.  It is only about an inch high and 3" long, but it makes a huge difference in performance, giving significant hold and drive on a bottom turn and taking out any tail wiggle that is typical in a twin fin set up.

Deck

Ok, more pictures to follow after she's all glassed up and shiny!

5-10 Mini Simms

Here is the start of my new simms style board.  The bigger simms is really fun, but it has so much rocker that it needs bigger/jucier waves to really work.  This smaller one will be flatter so that it will work better in smaller, crappy summer surf. 

Ingredients: (1) sheet of 1/4" sandeply, ripped in half, (1) 2x4x8 clear redwood ripped into stripps and two nice keel fins. 

Nose blocking going on.  I added a nice strip of hardwood to contrast with the soft wood ply.

 Bottom skin with the first rail strips in and the rough-cut ribs ready to shape.    

Outline.  

 The ribs are in and the rocker table is set up so next the rail strips go on.  

Blocking for the fins. At this point, I lay a batten across the top of the ribs and check for fairness of the deck line, especially near the nose. I'll make minor adjustments to the rib now before the rails go on. 

More Mule Mods

The reshaping of the nose had good results.  But the trim point where it would turn was still very small.  I think a small bit of rocker may help, but I can't add that.  What I could add for some stability were fins.  I make some small keels and tried them in a couple of places.

 I tried keels on the tail.  I put a bit of toe-in to the keels and that acted like brakes, really slowing the board down.  I could turn, but the board really wanted to go straight.   

 So I relocated them up to where they would be on my simms style board, without the toe-in.  The braking effect was gone, but I had to be up near the nose to get a turn out of it.  

Fine, so now I'm going to try a small single fin in the center.  I'm hoping it will give my just a tad bit of stability in the tail.  I think that with all that sharp rail, it does not need much of a fin at all.  In fact, the addition of a fin was really to allow me to get an idea of how the bottom shape performs and then remove the fin.  

Mule Mods

I knew the bottom shape of the Mule was not ideal and it was apparent when I rode it.  There was too much volume in the first third of the board and I felt that the rails were way too thick there too.  Because of this, I had to stand really forward to have any control on the board.  I had some directional control standing up, but not a lot.  I could bellyboard it just fine, but standing up was really tricky. As it is a prototype, I had no problem taking the planer to the bottom and reshaping it as I would a foam blank.  I reduced the volume and thinned out the rails, giving the entry a much more conventional shape.

 Big difference on new and old rail.  

I'm hoping this will improve it's behavior. Next time I try a radical shape, it is going to be in foam and not wood!

Ron's Alaia

I made this 5-11 alaia for a friend who had never ridden one but wanted one for the summer.  I tweaked my shape a little by widening the tail, narrowing the nose a bit and moving the wide point a little close to the mid point.  This one is cedar with three redwood stringers.

Redwood Mule

I'm going to call the new finless stick the Mule.  I started with hybrid, but that is too popular now and boring.  Mule is a synonym for hybrid so that works.  "I'm gonna go ride my mule" sounds good too.  Here are some more build pics.

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.