Wooden Board Day 2011

A great day and a nice spread of chambered Balsa boards by Mitchell Rae , Outer Island Surfboards

Solid Paulownia tow board by Roger Hall.

Hand planes by Mike Cunningham from NZ

MC Handplanes

Roger Hall with some unbelievable amount of work on display.

Future frames and projects

Flextail Balsa by Mitchell Rae

Inspired by the humble bee.

Straight off the CNC router

Honey combed solid Paulownia and 3 ply bamboo , 1.8mm thick and no glass.

Mike Grobelny from New Zealand with a couple of samples of his high tech approach
to wooden boards.

He certainly had people scratching their heads and inspired many

Johnny Sutcliffe from Mangawhai Heads, NZ with his pride and joy , the new Kaikatea fish.

Gary Bennett, furniture maker from Margaret River , Western Australia with his
hollow cedar fish.

The Joske tent with plenty of great wooden boards built by Sage and his Dad Paul.

Fish and frame getting the once over

Aptly named.

A bit of an ethnic influence

John Purnell from Valla Beach with a very nice chambered and unglassed Paulownia board

Local father and son team Geoff and Jack Moase from Dovetail Surfboards

Another great showing by Roger Hall from New Zealand , Surfline Surfboards.

Paul Joske and Roger Hall discuss the finer points of Rogers solid Paulownia tow board

John Purnell builds a nice board , clean and simple.

Couldn't have put it better myself

Mitchell Rae , Outer Island Surfboards had a great show of his beautifully built chambered Balsa boards. One some 23 years old and surfed regularly.

Dean Rogers from Terrigal NSW with his Paulownia and Cedar Fish

Nice one Dingo

"Tiki" from Wamberal , Central Coast NSW with his first wooden board. Chambered Paulownia and a nice bamboo and glass fin with some cleaver inlay work.

We had a beautiful day with about 24c and a nice sea breeze to keep things comfortable. A bit of swell running but a Northerly roughing it up. A steady stream of people flowed through the park most of the day. As always lots of questions from all sorts of interested people from all ages and walks of life.

Robert Ivers , "Hollow Wooden Surfboards" up from Victoria for the day

A Velzy Balsa Pig - original in great nick. Great to see boards like this on the day. This is where it all started for some and left off for others.

A family heirloom out for the day. Thanks for sharing this piece of history.

First effort for Sunshine Coast builder Joel Terry. He is already planning the next step. He had only just finished it the night before and surfed it for the first time today.

80 + year old Barry Regan from Balina , still building boards and getting out for the odd paddle when he can. Unreal effort from a great guy , who inspires us all.

Old school and cool as ever

Local Gold Coast bus driver , Frank Kaczmarek with one of his framed fishes and another on the way.

The interest in wooden boards is pretty wide.

Nobby from Japan brought another beautiful clear all Paulownia longboard this year.Here he shares his building technique to Gary Bennett from WA.

Rooster and Roger Hall deep in discussion on the finer points of wooden boards.

Local Gold Coaster Craig Paterson showing the construction method he used for his boards

Traditional style and finish never goes out of fashion.

It was a great day with many new faces and boards from near and far. Some who have come before weren't there and I received apologies from many. I know times are tough and travel is expensive. So as always if you have a project you are working on and would like to share please send any pics and words. Also I didn't get to photograph and meet everybody so if you have shots please send them to me to post here. If some of the info or names are wrong please set me straight as I meet a lot of people with this day and the Fish Fry.

Once again a big thank you to all those that could make it to the Saturday night at the Gold Coast Surf museum to check out the 3 very interesting speakers.This is a great venue and has a wonderful collection of surfboards and history . And thanks for all the support from the guys who travelled from overseas and interstate to be in the park.There is always a great vibe in the park as there is a mutual respect for anyone that lays down a board as we know there is no easy way to build a wooden surfboard.I think it is fair to say we all left very inspired with what we saw and plans are brewing for what the next project will be.

Thanks guys.

Additional photos supplied by Andrew McKinnon and Mike Cunningham