Building your own board

Principally this thread is to share information with folks (AND allow Dennis to see the progress easier) about a custom board being design by Dennis and I. Dennis is a big guy, an "experienced" guy and a former surfer. I'll post the pic's and step descriptions as we progress. For many, like Dennis, a stock board just wasn't suitable for him. Others may benefit from this info, also.

Just to let you know Dennis, the board is rough cut and sanded. I still need to work on the rails and some blended, but initial shaping will be done on Sunday.

Jeff,
Congrats on the comp. How did James and Judy do?
Can't wait to see the progress. I will talk to you on Sunday. I think that there has to be people who want to build their own board either because of size considerations or creative thoughts as you have done with your own boards.

Hey Dennis, James won the Boys division for a second year in a row. It's almost routine at this point, he wins whatever he enters. He's a ripper. Poor Judy, she struggled with the speed and didn't have a ride that was reflective of her TRUE abilities. However, the highlight of her run was a 360 she completed for the very first time!

Jeff.
Congrates to Judy for her first 360. Now she will be looking to add some airtime to her routine. I think that she will need to get her hair wet to get there though.

Just how big is Dennis?
I am 5'10" 190 lbs, and the Liquid Force SkimSkate 5.0 doesn't seem to be adequate for me.

I'm interested in monitoring the progess as well.

Hey Lovin, Dennis Goes 285. You're light as a feather comparatively speaking. I'm trying to re-size the digi-pic's for post to this thread today.

Now, I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. There are a TON of boards that you can plunk down a few bucks on and be surfing today. Most, if not all, are worthy of your consideration. In this thread, my good friend Dennis and I were talking about his situation. He is a big guy, think professional football linebacker. He also surfed as a boy in a traveling surf show. Now, at 56, he has, like most of us, some physical restrictions. The primary one that affects his surfing is his knees. The width of his stance is limited. LARGE begginner boards didn't address his ability. Smaller performance boards proved just too small. So we undertook to address all of these considerations in one off board for Dennis.

Our subject:

There are numerous materials to shape a board with, but for simplicity sake, we used a foam blank from Clark Foam Co. Clark distributes to numerous surf board supply companies and a quick search on yahoo will yield a list, some, hopefully close to you. Without going into a huge disseration on board design, we chose to shape this model after a longboard, which is what Dennis rode as a boy. Further, this shape addressed the need for increased volume and allowed us to tailor specific performance features. The final size is 6'2" LOA. The blank we chose was 6'11". This allowed for all necessary dimension with a relatively small amount of shaping. Clark offers a myriad of sizes, shapes and densities. You want to shape the foam as little as possible, so pick the one that is as close to your final product as possible. This is a picture of the blank, with the outline of our design already traced on.

There are as many designs as there are wakesurfers. Principally, if the flow looks right to you, it'll no doubt work well. Again, I won't go into a lengthy discussion of design, but merely how to transform your design to reality. It os MESSY to freehand your design onto the board, often times when you lay it out, you don't like it. So, I prefer to lay my design out on a section of butcher paper. Rework it until I'm satisfied and then when it's done, I cut along the lines of 1/2 of the design. To insure that the outline is the same on both sides of the board, you'll just flip the paper cutout over. In this way, the outline is exactly the same.

The two pictures below should pretty clearly show this process. I started on the left side and then progressed to the right side.

The two pictures mentioned above.

Left side:



Right side (note the outline already drawn on the left side):

With the outline of our board drawn the next stage is to rough cut to within about 1/4 inch of our outline. You may be tempted to cut closer than this, but word-to-the-wise it's MUCH easier to shape away than to try and reattach foam. The tool of choice for this is a hand saw. There are other options, but the reality is that you no doubt have THIS tool in your garage somewhere. Cheap is good.

A before shot:

To give you a visual of what the blank looks like after rough cutting. Note the scraps left over after rough cutting. You can see that we didn't take much from the blank by comparing it to the early photo of the original blank.

With our general outline in place, we want to shape it down to the traced outline. You'll want to do this part BEFORE doing any deck or bottom surfacing because you still have the outline on the deck, any shaping of the deck will remove that tracing. The tool of choose for this work is the "surfoam" available at any hardware store. The blades are replacable and you will only need one handle for your lifetime. The surfoam blade looks like a cheese grater and acts in the same way. This tool is not "accurate" so again, easy does it.

Once the general outline is trimmed up, we need to "skin" the blank. The external surface of the blank is hard, very difficult to sand or shape in any way. Just below the surface is a very easily sandable foam. It is less dense and very easy to work with, as well as, dent, scrape, poke and generally damage. So, be careful with your project from this point on. We use a common planer for this "skinning" process. Again, there are other options, but most folks will have this tool in their garage. It bears repeating, easy does it. Take off just the surface and go slowly. Also, this process will create tons of dust. I use a face mask whenever I sand or skin a blank.

You can use the planer to make major cuts into the deck and bottom of the blank. For example if you wished to radically change the thickness or the natural rocker, using the plane will save you a great deal of time. If, however, your blank is close to the final shape, then all you need to do is remove the hard outer skin. It should look like this after skinning.

Hey Jeff, I am Derek George's older brother, Congrats to James on the win! He is a lil ripper. Derek had football and could not make it this year. How did it go? How was the wake? (I know its no Tige23V) Who won in the pro's? thanks

Hey BG, we were sorry that Derek couldn't make it, he mentioned that he was unable to attend last week. I love my Tige', but I have to tell you, this wake was HUGE. The transition was nice, not too steep, I'd estimate the height at about 4 feet from the bottom of the trough. The speed was a bit fast...I heard they had it set at about 12.7...it felt fast, but not overly so and at that speed the pocket was a day and a half long! It's the only wake I've been behind where it actually sucked you back into the pocket.

I didn't watch the final in the men's open, but watched Jamie Lovett practice and do 7 360 shove it's in a row. All the skimmers were going off.

As soon as I find out who won I'll let you know.

Hey BG, we were sorry that Derek couldn't make it, he mentioned that he was unable to attend last week. I love my Tige', but I have to tell you, this wake was HUGE. The transition was nice, not too steep, I'd estimate the height at about 4 feet from the bottom of the trough. The speed was a bit fast...I heard they had it set at about 12.7...it felt fast, but not overly so and at that speed the pocket was a day and a half long! It's the only wake I've been behind where it actually sucked you back into the pocket.

I didn't watch the final in the men's open, but watched Jamie Lovett practice and do 7 360 shove it's in a row. All the skimmers were going off.

As soon as I find out who won I'll let you know.

Jeff,
At least you could have used a picture of me out of the water and riding. LOL I'll just post my own Blue Hat picture. Also nice work on the board so far.
Dennis

i used a piece of half inch ply-wood that was slightly warped. first cut my shape and sanded it then i used fiberglass resin to seal the wood. then i sanded that and tried it out it worked good for the 15 bucks it cost im going to make a new one tonight.