the "f" word...

(hahaha - thanks for the play on words there Squalyboy!)
...yes, that's right, its FOAM.

I'm taking a break from building wood boards to shape a foam blank surfboard. I won this blank at a raffle at the Surfing Heritage Foundation, and promised to build a board from it. I was gonna try compsand (wood veneer over foam), but decided just to shape and glass it as a foam board.

Its a whole different experience from building a wood board. I'm sure I'll get back to building with wood, but this is a great learning exercise. It's an egg, 7'0" by 21" by 3".

selling my scraptacular fish!

I put my wooden fish up for sale on ebay, you can check it out here. I hate to part with this board, I love it, but my wife says if I'm gonna keep building these (I've started two more), then I gotta start making some money from 'em, hahaha. Why is she always thinking about paying the bills, I wonder?

two more for the quiver!

finally completed these two! Now my shop can be freed up to begin creating again!

studying under the master

I recently had a chance to attend a surfboard design class / seminar under the leadership of longtime shaper Bill Thrailkill. Bill has shaped for Velzy (1960), and later shaped for Challenger, Hobie, Hansen, Surf Systems, Surfboards Hawaii, and also as Thrailkill Surfboards. He also did some contract shaping for Lightning Bolt.

The seminar was held at the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente, which houses a museum of 100 years of surfboard history.

In attendance were about 18 serious board-builders, most of them backyard shapers like myself, and one other wood-board builder besides myself.