Wooden board building class in the Philippines May 1 to June 14

For more details contact :   thefreeridemovement@gmail.com ; chris.badfish@yahoo.com.
actually the workshop will be held at Auqui Island we just dubbed it as  "skull island" because of a certain rock formation on the island. Click on the poster to enlarge

Beautiful 1958 Bill Walace Balsa to be at this years Wooden Board Day

 Ronny Silcock has restored this beauty and will be bringing this piece of history along to share with us on Sunday 2nd August to Currumbin. Thanks Ronny.

Martin's new simmons

Martin Turkis just sentthese pics of his new board. " It's 4'0" X 23" X 3". Mostly flat/slightest of hull entries, with single concave running back from the front foot and a bit of vee in the tail. My own shop-made fin boxes which allow a bit of fore/aft fin adjustment. XPS core, poplar ply skins, redwood rails, finished with spar varnish.

I've ridden it twice now, both front and backside, and it's a lot of fun."

A great looking board that would be a ton of fun to ride. Nice job Marty and thanks for sharing.

A new look at getting those rail bands on

Sergi from Flama Surfboards in Spain just sent these pics to share of a new way that he has come up with to get his rail bands on.The board is cradled on edge and this enables you to access the whole length of the rail at a good working height. Get them glued and set up and then strap them down.

" I also made it double, like for working with two boards at a time. It holds firmly the board sideways and there are hooks aplenty to tighten the straps, which is specially useful for the more curvy areas in nose and tail."
 Looks like a great way of doing the job. I use good quality masking tape myself.

Sergi has just sent an update to share -  " I'm adding an image of the plan I made to build the TASAWUWAGI-Rack (Take A Siesta And Wake Up With A Great Idea). haha!
It might be useful for those who want to try."

This years Wooden Surfboard Day will be Sunday 2nd August

Sunday the 2nd of August is set down as the date for this years Wooden Surfboard Day to be held in the park at Currumbin as in the past years. We look forward to meeting other budding wooden board builders and the projects that they have been working on through the year. Each year peoples experience grows and the level of skills and finish of boards is a testament to the long hours and effort being put in. So if you are working on a project at the moment or thinking of starting one, now you have a reason to get started or stuck in to finishing it for August. Please feel free to send pics and details of any boards you are building to share with others to wet their appetite. As you now know it is a gathering of like minded people who enjoy being challenged by spending countless hours in the shed building wooden boards. A great time to meet others with the same passion and to see what they have been up to. If you don't build boards but want to find out more you could not be in a better place to ask all the questions you want. There are many ways to build a wooden board and they will be on display on the day. So bring your boards and go for a surf. The Alley in winter is often at it's best for a slide across the banks on a wooden board. And there is nothing better that being on one you built yourself.
Looking forward to catching up with old faces and welcoming new ones. For any more info contact me  : grantnewby@bigpond.com

PNG SURFERS LEARN ANCIENT CRAFT OF BUILDING DIY BOARDS, HAWAIIAN STYLE

Sam Bolitho for ABC News: Surfers in Papua New Guinea are going back to basics and learning the traditional Hawaiian techniques of timber surfboard building.

The boards produced at workshops in Madang province earlier this month were made from locally-sourced balsa trees, and carved out using a combination of hand tools, axes and machetes.

"It's a bit of work, a lot of man power and a lot of sweat," PNG Surfing Association president Andrew Abel told Pacific Beat. "You can imagine they don't have the benefit of hand-powered tools and planers and things like that which would make it a lot easier.

"A lot of the village people were actually using their traditional axes and bush knives to carve these balsa wood planks."

The training was offered by renowned Australian surfboard shapers Tom Wegener and Bryan Bates. Members of the Tupira Surf Club were taught how to build boards in the Alaia style, which were ridden in pre-20th century Hawaii. The thin boards feature round noses, square tails and often do not have fins.

"They're very difficult to ride but a lot of the lightweight kids had no trouble whatsoever in hopping onboard and ripping those waves up in Tipura," Mr Abel said.

Mr Abel, who founded the PNG Surfing Association 28 years ago, said the workshop was a reminder that surfing in PNG dates back hundreds of years. He visited many communities where village elders shared oral history of how young children had boards crudely carved out of 'splinters' from broken canoes and felled trees.

"So what we've essentially done is taken those ancient belly boarding skills and enhanced them with the modern surfboards of today," Mr Abel said.

 "Our Pacific Island brothers to the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean [in Hawaii], have also been doing the same thing. But unfortunately over the course of the last hundred years that culture has been lost."

Mr Abel said he hoped the surfboard shaping training would be the catalyst for a new era in PNG surfing. "It enables them [local surfers] to capitalise on the balsa wood timber that's in abundance in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... that they can use to surf but also sell to tourists and raise money for their respective families."

 

This article is from Pacific Longboarder Magazine