Hawaii Trip

My wife surprised me with a trip to Oahu this January for a combo birthday gift.  This was my first trip back for 35 years!  She did an awesome planning job.  We stayed right on the beach on the North Shore at Three Table beach and listened to the pounding surf day and night.  We were a 5 minute walk to Waimea Bay where we walked and swam in the morning.  We snorkled at Shark's cove and Turtle bay and surfed Chuns and Haleiwa too, and spend a day with my cousins in Kalihi.  Here are a few pics.

 Steph at Kahuku Ranch on the windward side. 

 Me at my childhood house on Mokapu, near K-bay

 Big greens in Waimea Valley

 Super small surf at Haleiwa.  

 New friends Steve Andreas (from Carlsbad of all places) and legendary Buttons K. Even Steph looks stoked!  Steve and Buttons run a surf adventure business on the North Shore. 

 Me and cousin Donna

Waimea Valley

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.