Surfboard Build- Longboard

[Bmac]

I've been playing hooky from my Hank Chair build. First I'm having trouble getting into that build, second I had to order a few router bits, and thirdly I think I have ADD.

Well, while I was waiting on my order of router bits to arrive, I pulled down a framework I had made for a surfboard. I had put it together awhile back but the wood I planned to use for the project still needed some drying time. I milled 3 paulownia logs this past year specifically for this project. It dried real fast, but needed a few warm months to fully season. I milled it in Dec, and 2 weeks ago it was down to 12%. I started messing around with the frame and before I knew it I was knee deep into the build. And this build took up my whole shop, since it's a longboard, approx 10 ft. No room for the Hank chair. I thought this would be an interesting build to show, and even though I didn't take a ton of photos, here goes.

First, I've been doing a lot of research on building a board. There are a few techniques, all resulting in a hollow board to reduce weight. Wood needs to be light and paulownia fits the bill perfectly. For those who have never worked with this wood it is an absolute pleasure to work with. Tools easily, bends well, and is SUPER light. I was originally planning to do this build with my son, but he is living at the beach this summer where jobs are plentiful. I plan to do the build and we plan to glass and finish the board together down at the beach.

To start the build you create what they call the spar, it's basically a skeleton framework that the shell is attached to. I used 3/8" plywood for this. I bought a pattern for the spar. Printed it and glued it to the plywood, cut it out and shaped it. The skeleton was rather flimsy and did not have a lot of surface area to glue the deck boards to, so I supplemented the gluing surfaces with 3/8" paulownia strips. Here's what that looks like;

High spots were leveled off and then I started laminating the deck. Starting with the center board, I worked out to the edges. I used Titebond 3, this was the recommended glue. The decking was just under 3/8" thick stock, resawn from the 6/4 boards I milled. The info I researched said 3/8' for balsa and 1/4" for paulownia, I split the difference. Here's the top deck roughed out and glued on;

The plan calls for a relatively flat top deck and a curved underside. The curve on the underside is referred to as the rocker, here's the board ready for the underside, gluing up the last of the paulownia supplemental glue strips;

Here's the underside completed, walnut accent like the top;

From the side profile you can appreciate the curve of the rocker;

Now it's a matter of squaring up the sides and start gluing on strips to form the rails. 

The rails are laminated pieces you glue to the sides that will be rounded off. I started with one solid strip and now I'm adding a decorative strip of walnut:

Adding these strips have made me appreciate the number of clamps I own;

The plan also calls for a fin, here's what I came up with;

Where I'm at now is I need to finish gluing up the rails, shape them, add the front and back pieces that will make up the front and tail of the board. Final shaping and sanding is last. Once at that step you need to glass the board, which is adding fiberglass sheets to the board, epoxy will be used for this step. After glassing you add the fin, that is epoxied and glassed on separately, and then the whole board is sealed with a layer of epoxy. This is completely new territory for me so doing it at the beach seems best as there are a bunch of surf shops around in case my son and I need help.

One other necessity with a hollow board it to install a vent. This is so if the board is sitting in the sun it won't heat up internally and start to delaminate or crack. I'm going to use a goretex vent that doubles as a leash attachment. I've glued a backer board on the inside for this and we'll install this after the glassing also. 

Thanks for looking.

[pkinneb]

Wow that's awesome! Thanks for taking us along although i'm not going to lie at the rate at which you and Chestnut knock out high quality projects makes me feel like quite the slug lol

One tip I'm sure you were planing on it but just in case you will need to coat the epoxy with a top coat as UV will break the epoxy down.

[Bmac]

17 minutes ago, pkinneb said:

Wow that's awesome! Thanks for taking us along although i'm not going to lie at the rate at which you and Chestnut knock out high quality projects makes me feel like quite the slug lol

One tip I'm sure you were planing on it but just in case you will need to coat the epoxy with a top coat as UV will break the epoxy down.

I think your basement has kept you plenty busy! I wouldn't call you a slug.

I got the resin from a surf board supply store, made esp for boards. Says it's got UV stabilizers, whatever that means. I'm assuming this may be different stuff than regular, but we'll see. I also have an additive I'm supposed to add. All new to me.

[Chet]

Another great project B.  Is this surf board something you will use or was it just a project to challenge the woodworking juices?

[Bmac]

I'm making the board for my son who loves to surf. It's also a challenge that has been fun to tackle. Who knows I might just try to surf some after this build.

What I really want to make for myself is a SUP (stand up paddleboard). I plan on putting that on my list if this goes well, I have plenty of paulownia wood left over for that and a few more boards. 

This project fits into my interests with a lot of shaping and some artistic license for design. The downside so far has been the seemingly 1 million glueups I've had to do!

[Tom King]

I would ride it a few times, and then hang it on a wall in the house.  Looks awesome.

There should be plenty of youtube videos on glassing a board.  We used to make really lightweight windsurfing boards in my boat shop.  Our method required babysitting, and catching the kick just right to trim the excess glass off with single edged razor blades, at just the right time.   That method works good for boards with hard rails, like yours.  The glass is bent over the up side rail, and just hangs straight down below the lower one.  Catch it right, and you can trim that hanging off part very easily.

You end up with a lot of resin on the floor, as the excess is squeegeed off.  Hobie Cats came in two long cardboard boxes, and we always left several of the boxes opened out on the floor.

It helped a lot for that shop to have a grossly oversized AC system, so I could cool it down fast to low 60's for fiberglass work, and then turn it back to normal for it to cure.  We could glass a board, go eat a meal, and then come back to trim it later.

[Bmac]

8 minutes ago, Tom King said:

I would ride it a few times, and then hang it on a wall in the house.  Looks awesome.

There should be plenty of youtube videos on glassing a board.  We used to make really lightweight windsurfing boards in my boat shop.  Our method required babysitting, and catching the kick just right to trim the excess glass off with single edged razor blades, at just the right time.  You end up with a lot of resin on the floor, as the excess is squeegeed off.

Yes, there are a lot of videos on glassing. Of course it's one thing to watch it, but another to do it. I can tell it will be messy. 

With your windsurfing boards, what wood did you use for them?

[Tom King]

They weren't wood.  We bought the blanks that were white foam especially for epoxy resin, with a thin wood stringer.  A blank for a 9 foot board would weigh just a couple of pounds. 

 There is a lot of science in the rocker, so we didn't want to get into experimenting with different rockers.  The blanks came rectangular, with the stringer already in the blank, and the rocker precut.

The glassing is not difficult, after you've done it once.  Best to just go ahead, and do it, rather than trying to go slow.

[Chestnut]

19 hours ago, Bmac said:

I'm making the board for my son who loves to surf. It's also a challenge that has been fun to tackle. Who knows I might just try to surf some after this build.

What I really want to make for myself is a SUP (stand up paddleboard). I plan on putting that on my list if this goes well, I have plenty of paulownia wood left over for that and a few more boards. 

This project fits into my interests with a lot of shaping and some artistic license for design. The downside so far has been the seemingly 1 million glueups I've had to do!

I have also wanted to make a stand up paddle board. There are parts of your build above that are awesome and go completely over my head. Good work i hope you sare the end result.

21 hours ago, pkinneb said:

Wow that's awesome! Thanks for taking us along although i'm not going to lie at the rate at which you and Chestnut knock out high quality projects makes me feel like quite the slug lol

One tip I'm sure you were planing on it but just in case you will need to coat the epoxy with a top coat as UV will break the epoxy down.

Hey now. I haven't done any wood working in at least a week. Your basement is a lot of work and is going to be awesome when it is done.

[Bmac]

Got a few things down on this last night and early this AM before work. I'm pushing to get this finished up by tomorrow night, when we head to the beach for the weekend. If I don't get it done by then I won't have a chance to get it down there for 3 weeks.

I added all the side pieces to build up enough bulk for shaping the side rails;

Used a circular saw to cut off the ends, and squared them up for addition of the front and back to the board;

The tail end;

The top or front of the board;

Sized a few blocks and glued one of them to my tail piece, still need to attach the second block and glue piece on, but this is how I'll attach the tail;

Once I glue on the tail and front piece I need to shape the rails and sand the board. This photo gives you an idea of how I plan to shape the rails, you can see how toward the end the rail is rounded over and blended to the top, the big chuncky strip of wood at the bottom of the photo will be mostly ground away and blended in with the rest of the rail. I have a lot of shaping to do, this is where the Festool RAS 115 with 60 grit will get the job roughed out quickly and my rasps will refine the shape ;

Here's a cut off piece so you can really see the construction method. You can notice the side rails are partially hollow and the shaping has begun.

 

[Chestnut]

you reference plans. Here did you get these plans. Also how in the heck did you attach the top deck and the bottom to the internal frame?

[Bmac]

35 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

you reference plans. Here did you get these plans. Also how in the heck did you attach the top deck and the bottom to the internal frame?

I got the reference plans from this site;

http://www.woodsurfboardplans.com/index.html

Here is a link to an e-book I'm using, same author as the plans on the link above but on a different site;

http://woodsurfboardsupply.com/TheBooks.html

What I like about these plans is they walk you through the whole process of fabricating your own frame (spar) to the final product.

The decks are glued on and I started with the top deck and glued the middle board first. Then I added boards to the sides of that board and worked out to the edge of the board. After the top deck was glued on I attached the bottom deck, starting in the middle again and working my way out. I wish I took a few more photos.

So looking at the pic below you see the attached top deck (facedown on bench) and I'm about to attach the lower deck. If you look at the frame you might be able to tell I glued on 3/8" strips to the plywood frame. These strips allowed me to get an edge the clamp could use for clamping pressure;

Heres another photo with out the top deck, you can clearly see the strips attached to the plywood frame;

Does this explanation help?

[wtnhighlander]

Looks weird to a furniture builder, but essentially the board is just an odd-shaped torsion box. Gonna be really cool, too!

[Tom King]

I don't know how they recommend to leak test the hull.  We used to use a vacuum cleaner as a blower.  You don't want to pressurize a hull to amount to anything, and not much pressure is needed for a bubble test anyway.  We just used a spray bottle with weak solution of dish washing detergent.  The hose to the vacuum cleaner was held near the drain plug hole, but not pushed up against it.  

The pressure release hole/tube/whatever is never along the rails, or anywhere underwater, but it's good to know that nothing else leaks.

I have an old Stanley power planer, with a depth control lever on the front that you can control as you're taking a pass, that we used for shaping the foam blanks.

[Bmac]

2 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

Looks weird to a furniture builder, but essentially the board is just an odd-shaped torsion box. Gonna be really cool, too!

Yes a lot like a torsion box. And it is weird, quite a bit a free form shaping and designing. 

1 hour ago, Tom King said:

I don't know how they recommend to leak test the hull.  We used to use a vacuum cleaner as a blower.  You don't want to pressurize a hull to amount to anything, and not much pressure is needed for a bubble test anyway.  We just used a spray bottle with weak solution of dish washing detergent.  The hose to the vacuum cleaner was held near the drain plug hole, but not pushed up against it.  

The pressure release hole/tube/whatever is never along the rails, or anywhere underwater, but it's good to know that nothing else leaks.

I have an old Stanley power planer, with a depth control lever on the front that you can control as you're taking a pass, that we used for shaping the foam blanks.

Plans don't call to leak test. I think diligence with the glue up, glassing and sealcoating is supposed to do the trick as far as leaks go. The early wood surfboards leaked, they planned for that and had a drain hole in the base, they would open up the drain and stand them up and drain them after surfing for the day. 

[Coop]

You say early boards? We’re these made prior to the introduction of the foam boards? I had several in the sixties and seventies and they were all blank foam boards with wood stringers. I even stripped the glass off of an old “ pop out “ and reshaped and glassed it myself. Wasn’t the prettiest thing on the beach. 

[Coop]

Speaking of surfboards, my wife is constantly changing things for “the season”l she will make me a wraeath for the shop door accordingly. The latest theme is summer/beach and asked me to make her a surfboard. Kind of quaint but it didn’t take long.

[Tom King]

9 hours ago, Bmac said:

Yes a lot like a torsion box. And it is weird, quite a bit a free form shaping and designing. 

Plans don't call to leak test. I think diligence with the glue up, glassing and sealcoating is supposed to do the trick as far as leaks go. The early wood surfboards leaked, they planned for that and had a drain hole in the base, they would open up the drain and stand them up and drain them after surfing for the day. 

With a fair amount of experience in working on boats, I'd leak test it.  I'd also have a drain plug.  There is a saying about boats that goes, "If you put it in the water, it's going to get wet".  That means in places you don't expect too.

[Bmac]

Spent a fair amount of time pushing through this project, but I will run out of time to get it finished by Fri. Still, here's my progress.

Began shaping the rails. When you shape your rails you can chose a harder or softer rail. Basically a soft rail has an even curve from the top of the board to the bottom. A harder curve has more weight and a slight edge on the underside, it's curved evenly to this edge. I went with a soft rail. Here you can see the rail at the early stages of shaping, got to this stage with the RAS 115 and some rasps;

Alittle more shaping....

And starting to look better....

When you look closely at the next 2 pics you can still see the rail is slightly wavy and not perfectly smooth, this fine tuning will take a while;

Here I'm getting ready to attach the tail. The blocks are attached to the tail piece via a long grain glue joint and the blocks fit into the hollow part of the board;

Try in goes smoothly;

Used a few clamps as cauls and glued on tail;

Did the same this for the front piece, same technique and similar result;

Had a little time this AM and I couldn't resist, rough shaped the tail;

And it's starting to look like a real surf board;

A lot of shaping and sanding still left. I also need to make a glassing stand. I plan to do that with 5 gallon buckets, some 2x4s, plywood scrap, rocks and rags. If that doesn't make sense then wait for my next series of photos. I'll likely be away from this project until next week.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

[Spanky]

If all woodworker’s, worked like Bmac and Chestnut we would need more sawmills cutting lumber.

[lewisc]

On 7/17/2019 at 4:08 AM, Bmac said:

what wood did you use for them?

A little late on this one. Looks like a fun project with plenty to learn from.

As far as timber goes, you'd need lightweight timbers but does it matter what timber? Because it's all coated in fibreglass and resin, I'm guessing it should be waterproof and the durability of the timber wouldn't matter?

[Bmac]

6 hours ago, lewisc said:

A little late on this one. Looks like a fun project with plenty to learn from.

As far as timber goes, you'd need lightweight timbers but does it matter what timber? Because it's all coated in fibreglass and resin, I'm guessing it should be waterproof and the durability of the timber wouldn't matter?

The best woods to use are the lightest you can get, but you are right in saying you can practically use any wood if you don't care about the weight. 

The emerging wood used today is Paulownia. It's light but very strong for it's weight. It's decay resistant and doesn't absorb water, esp saltwater like Balsa. Balsa, along with it's tendency to absorb water, is not nearly as strong as Paulownia. Cedar, Redwood, and even Pine are okay choices for a board, but my research clearly shows Paulownia has the best strength to weight ratios and is the way to go. 

I harvested my Paulownia from my property. The trees were planted by me in 2000, right after we finished the house and moved in. I planted 10" seedlings and it is one of the fastest growing hardwood. I never planned to use these trees for boards, but I had a softspot for this tree. My grandparents had this tree next to their farmhouse, and growing up I loved the smell of the flower this tree produces in the spring. My grandfather eventually had to take the tree down and it was then I got a chance to work a little with some of the wood. I never forgot that and had always planned to raise some of these trees on our 10 acre property, just turned out that they were the perfect tree for surfboards.

For those intrigued by this wood and it's evolution into these specific uses, look at these links;

https://www.tomwegenersurfboards.com/history/hollow-wood-surfboards

https://flamasurf.com/content/8-paulownia-wood

http://clearwoodpaddleboards.com/why-build-with-paulownia-wood/

https://diysurfboardkits.com.au/benefits-of-paulownia/

[Tpt life]

“...persistent exotic invasive in North America.” 

Check local laws before planting Paulownia. 

[Bmac]

3 hours ago, Tpt life said:

“...persistent exotic invasive in North America.” 

Check local laws before planting Paulownia. 

Yes, it's listed as such, but it was also introduced to the America's in the 1840s, 180 years ago. Can't say it's caused a lot of destruction over the past few centuries. Also, depends on the species of this tree you plant, there are some that are not invasive. 

It is a fact that the State of Conn. has banned planting this tree, not sure how many localities have such rules, but I'm sure they exist.

No such regs affect me and I'm not terribly worried.

 

 

[Tpt life]

23 minutes ago, Bmac said:

No such regs affect me and I'm not terribly worried.

 

 

Not worried about you. Yours are already in the ground. Posted for the wider readership. Carry on.