The Kala II: Electric Bugaloo

The same shape as this board; I used the template to design the frames for a one-off wood board. I went with a nice bookmatched redwood top and a lauan bottom (ripped and alternated at the stringer and glassed on both faces). All in all I still prefer a properly planked bottom but the lauan is quick and easy to work with, and looks good. I went with a bonzer fin setup with an FCS trailer rather than the regular large single fin – I intend to surf this one as a slippery twin as well as the bonzer setup.  The smaller side fins are glassed on and made of meranti marine plywood.
Artwork is a kala I shot a while back (hence the name) and printed up myself. I wanted to see how the heavy rice paper would glass, and it came out nice. The blue highlights cover the deck-rail joint, which due to the heavy dome of the deck came out uneven. The lizard on the bottom was heat-transferred directly on to the wood.
Rails are strip-planked with alternating white fir and mahogany. The leash plug is stacked ply, cut and worked by hand with a stainless bolt as the anchor.
Video of the gyotaku process after the pics.

The Kala

6’5” single fin round-tail, single concave to double concave/vee, moderate rocker, 2 5/8” thick. Multi-color resin tint with cutlap on deck.

Konahuanui

Konahuanui is the name of the highest peak on the Koolau range on Oahu. It sits prominently over the Hawaii Loa campus of HPU and looms large above the Pali gap (where the lookout is). The name, according to Tom Stone (professor of Hawaiian studies at Kamehameha) means “his large fruit”…as it is shaped a bit like…well, you get it.
Anyhow, this board is a full-on big wave gun – built for tackling serious North Shore surf. 9’1”x21.5”, vee in the nose and again just forward of the fin to flat out the back. This is based on inputs from a couple of prominent shapers – the vee in the nose helps negotiate chop on those big Sunset faces, and vee-to-flat in the tail provides a good balance of stability and maneuverability. Triple-stringer 2.0 EPS with heavy glass (double 6 oz bottom, triple 6 oz top).

Ride Report: Hynd Sight

Riding finless takes an entirely new mindset to surf. Paddling and catching the wave is pretty much the same…but try and crank a bottom turn off the tail like a “normal” board and you’ll just swap ends. Move your weight forward – engage much more of the rail – and order is restored. It’s  much more sensitive to small inputs; and the crutch is to stay very low and use your hands for coarse corrections – but it’s totally manageable. On a wall, once the rail bites it really takes off. On the flats it’s more squirrely. I understand D. Hynd’s 360 moves now – they functionally slow up the board while the wave catches up. Plus they are fun! Easier to paddle and take off than the alaia, with the same speed thrill.

Hynd Sight

The natural evolution of my finless surfboard obsession was realized recently when I came across some video of Derek Hynd surfing Jeffrey’s Bay on a finless board with deep channels in the tail.

I’ve been a fan of channels for a long time – my go-to board for the North Shore in college was a 6’ 10” thruster with deep channels. It was the fastest board I had ridden and would make sections that otherwise I’d get stuck behind.
Anyhow, Mr. Hynd’s boards are somewhere in between an alaia and a modern fiberglass board, with the funky tail. I’ve had success with my hollow-wood “Nohu” board – I’ve ridden it nearly exclusively since I made it. One of my lessons learned is that the tiny little twin fins on it bite almost as much as full-sized fins.   Between the rail, the tail design and those fins, it really held tight. Maybe too tight for what I was looking for.
So I took what I could glean from Hynd’s designs and combined them with my alaia and Nohu knowledge to come up with this “Hyndsight” design. It’s 6’10”x 21 5/8”, about 3” thick but with a good amount of foam removed from the tail concaves and the nose. The top and rails were painted to match my old Sunshine quad from 1984. The bottom…well, I let my creativity get the better of me.

 

Left: The New model. Right: The inspiration from 1984.

Above: Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain…

Pokeboard

This is for my youngest daughter, who is a pokemon fanatic. It’s the same “Malasada” template I used on the “demon hands” board, but a little thinner. It makes a great kids board as it is wide and stable, yet it is a full high-performance adult shortboard as well – thus it will grow with the kid.
I think it’s a good move to teach kids on a shortboard as soon as they are comfortable in the water. It builds strong surfing fundamentals – paddling, turning, balancing – where a longboard does not. I can always tell someone who learned to surf on a longboard – their style reflects the easy and forgiving nature of the big stick.

The Malasada

It’s a “Hawaiian Biscuit”.  Short, wide in both tail and nose and shallow rocker. Vee-tail with channels for speed. K3 fins on FCS Fusion inserts. Lightweight. This board will go airborne off the lip.

The Grey Ghost

A 7’ funboard (the “Kalaeloa Blaster” template) for my Nephew Al who just graduated from high school (Westford Academy, home of the “Grey Ghosts”). Epoxy/EPS construction with airbrushed skulls and highlights, FCS fusions and lightweight glass with a deck patch.

Paul’s Longboard

Fresh out of the shop, a sweet 8’ longboard for my high school buddy Paul. He designed the graphics and paint scheme on it, and I designed the template/shape for the board. A classic shape with concave to double concave on the bottom, soft-to-hard rails and a modern 2+1 fin setup. With the pintail and a nice continuous rocker it’ll work in just about anything from ankle slappers to overhead tubes, looking good the whole time.

Laminating/Pinlines and a Completed Board

For a board like this, laminating is a multi-stage process. I like to do the majority of art and color right on the foam. Once the art is good to go, I do a “skim coat” of thin epoxy resin over the raw foam. This fills in the many small gaps and spaces between the EPS foam beads, and will provide a solid base for the glass coat to lock on to. Once it starts to kick, I’ll lay out any logos or art that I’ve done up on translucent vellum and squegee them flat, ensuring all the air bubbles are out from underneath. Then the glass goes on – while the thin “skim coat” and wet decals are kicking. A nice tight lamination, pulling out from the center to the rails, usually gives a nice flat surface with the cloth well adhered to the blank.
On this board I’ve done a fabric inlay on the nose. Once the fabric is cut out, I pour on the resin, spread it around, give it a minute or two to soak, and squegee it flat. The edges will get covered with pinlines after the lamination.

If I’m doing pinlines, I’ll wait a day or so for the first lamination to cure. I clean the board with denatured alcohol and a tack cloth,  and then lightly sand down the area where the pinline will go. Then I mask it off and lay the line using an art brush and good-quality opaque acrylic. I’ll do a thin, quick coat which will seal the edge between the board and the tape, then lay it on thicker. Once complete I pull the tapes, clean up any goofs, and it’s off to the next lam.

Between lams is also a good time to look at the board up close and far away, and see if any changes to the art need to be done. This is the last chance I’ll have to put something under glass (and thus make it a permanent part of the board).

Overall I’m fairly pleased with the end result. There are numerous imperfections that are clear to me, as I’ve hand-crafted every square inch of it from blank to polish. Everyone who’s seen it so far has been impressed; hopefully the customer will be also.

The Boards of 2010

With the completion of the last two projects for the year, the shop has been cleaned and the project slate is clean. Here is a retrospective of the eight boards that were created this year.

Santa’s Workshop–Part 3

For the final project of the year, I went for a high performance pintail longboard for my surfing buddy. His boards were surfed out – yellowed with age, ding repairs all over and heavy with water. It was time for a new one, but I knew he’d never ask me, so I took the initiative.
He was over this morning to drop something off, and I asked him to help me photograph my latest project. I had him hold it up while I snapped, and he suddenly noticed this:

Nice.

Santa’s Workshop-Part 2

I made this nice little fun shape for a young lady who lost her dad to cancer – the same time as I was undergoing treatment. It was a hard time for all, but she remains a happy kid and a good friend to my oldest daughter. She was over one day and saw me working on Angelyne’s fish, and asked me: “uncle, can you make me a surfboard?”. It is impossible to say no to that.
If it looks familiar – that’s because it’s the same shape as the family board. It’s an all-around fun board, can be ridden by little kids like a longboard in mushy waves, by bigger kids a bit more aggressively, and really rips for big kids. It will allow her to either enjoy surfing once in a while as a fun thing, going to the beach and riding the foam straight in, or allow for progression towards more proficient surfing.

Santa’s Workshop, Part 1

First up for the Christmas season is this lovely tanker I built for my big brother Rod. After he and Becky’s wonderful visit to the islands last summer he asked me to build him a suitable board for his home break in the great state of Maine. So we have the “Big Brother” model: 9 feet long, full profile with plenty of thickness. Fabric inlays on both sides; spray fade on the deck with masked rays and pinlines. A real beaut. It’s on a slow boat to South Berwick and should arrive in January.