Board Update

Long overdue for an update on the board. Finished shaping and sanding, and have applied two coats of System Three Epoxy. The colors in the fulcata jumped out more than I expected, looks pretty cool. I have since sanded it down to prepare for the System Three Spar varnish. Unfortunately, I went down to wood in a few spots and have since had to recoat with epoxy. Now just waiting for a full cure on the epoxy, maybe by Wednesday I can start with the varnish.

On a side note, the sun has come out and the waves have been good for the last four days. With all the snow running off the mountains the current at Kako (the rivermouth where I surf) has been incredible...basically full on paddling the whole time you're out just to stay in place...but some really fun waves. 

reshaping and sanding

Got some more work done on the board this week. After chambering the center of the board last weekend, I took another look at the outline, and decided that the round tail wasn't really doing it for me. Since I had left the nose and tail solid, I decided to go with a swallow tail (despite wanting to try something new). I also tapered it down with a single set of wings to keep volume in the middle, but still narrow down the tail. The pics below are from right after reshaping, and a bit of sanding. I sanded after this for a few hours, and at long last it is looking ridable. Weight now is down to 9 kilo. The arial view shows how much sawdust and wood chips are accumlating in my yard, can't wait for the grass to come up...

Surfed a couple times last week, still snow on the ground, but it warmed up to +4...I actually surfed without a hood Thursday and Friday but suffured from some serious slurpee headaches when my head went under. The shape of the waves are pretty funky at this point this year, but it was still pretty fun.

Chambering

Beautiful weekend, finished shaping the board on Saturday, then chambered on Sunday. Drilled out the four corners of each chamber section then jig sawed between each hole. At the moment I'm sitting at 11.5 kilos for the board, but there's still a lot of meat on the bone so I'll keep at it. I'd like to get it under 9 kilos if possible. As usual, da cats were on hand supervising... Oh yeah, some great waves on Friday afternoon, forgot my camera though, next time...

board update: shaping

I finished my blank, and have taken it from my office to home to begin shaping. The first picture is half the blank ready to go. I've decided to try to shape the board without gluing it up first. I didn't want to mess with tearing the wood apart to chamber it, so I've run a couple pieces of dowling through the board and clamp it up while shaping. If I run a couple big clamps under the board, things stay pretty tight and I can get full length passes with the planer. This way I can also stop and pull the aboard apart and check thickness and shape by looking at cross sections. Today I had a good run at it, and just need a bit more cleaning up of the outline and I'll be ready to chamber.

The green board is the basic template I'm working from. The kittens on the deck are Ping and Pong, two cats that emerged out of the mountain sasa (bamboo) and now live in my shed. As I don't have a lock on my shed I figure they could be guard cats for my boards, bikes and tools. Don't mess with the Da Cats....

snow and surf

To close out February we've had record snow and some decent surf (at last). Nice uncrowded conditions. You've gotta love this season in Hokkaido when the sun comes out and the waves are up.

update

It's been a month, so I guess its time for an update. I'm still working on putting together my blank, as I wrote earlier, I'm gluing up 1830mm by 13mm pieces of fulcata. It's a bit tedious, but thing are coming together. The blank will be 2130 by 600 mm, about 7ft by 24 inches. I'm cutting rocker into three or four boards each weekend. Here's a pic of where I'm at...

Had a good trip to Hawaii in January. Got another great board shaped for me at the Factory, something along the lines of a Mitsven round-tail quad (although I went with the quad/thruster set up). The board has a really wide round tail that produces a crazy amount of lift. I'm thinking about going round tail on this build as well...time to jump back on the aku shaper to see what I can come up with. Here's a pic of the new stick...

Ezo Honu

Had a few waves this week, it was cold but fun, out for two hours on the 30th. No waves on New Years day, so I went for a run on the beach and ran across this, a dead sea turtle. I know they're pretty common in Okinawa and Shizuoka, but I had no idea they came up to Hokkaido. Poor guy, cold way to go...
off to Hawaii tomorrow...aloha