Happy New Year to you all

Happy New Year to everyone and thank you for your continued support. I hope we all have a better year ahead of us than we have just had.Here in Queensland we have thousands of people with their houses underwater and the biggest floods ever.Some rivers are yet to peak so the worst of it is yet to hit.When we have tough times this year , lets just be tankful that we are not one of these poor buggers waiting for the water to drop and see whats left to start again.

Happy New Year to you all from Grant, Jackie and Natalie here on the Gold Coast.

Taiyo Surfboards by Yohei Shiraishi

Yohei has been building wooden boards in Northern California for many years.They are framed and he uses the bead and cove method to build his beautiful boards.

This is a 9ft 11" longboard he has just finished.

He also makes his own wooden fins.

" Most of the wood used for this board is sustainably harvested from our local forests. Types of wood include redwood, Port Orford cedar, western red cedar, and fir. Botanically speaking, heartwood is a ‘dead’ tissue of plants, but this surfboard is pretty much alive, and it stands so natural in the woods. I can’t even imagine how harmonious one would feel on a wave."

Check him out at : www.taiyosurfboards.com

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you all. Thanks for your support this year and your continued interest in Wooden Surf Boards. Looking forward to a big year to come and some new projects in the shed.
May you all have a safe and happy break.

All the Best from Grant , Jackie and Nat.

Greg's new board

Greg Wheeldon has just finished another board for Christmas.

" 6’6” x 21 ¼” x 2 ½” fish I just finished over the wet weekend. Photos taken before rails attached and shaped."

Some pretty trick wood work here Greg. Nice job.

"Single nose concave, with double tail concave. I inserted foam blocks, as the glasser will fix in FCS plugs in a 5 fin set-up. I will probably use a quad fin setup, but the 5 fin plug set-up gives maximum flexibility."

" It is off to the glasser yesterday, for one layer 4oz glass, for finishing just in time for Xmas."

Fish are a great board to build first up as they are small and easy to manage at home in a smaller space. Not so expensive to build and get glassed.

The ride report from Mark Yee

"I took the wooden fish out for the maiden voyage this morning.
2.5 ft hightide waves at Winkipop, slight SE onshore but still very rideable... if you have a wooden board!
Legrope attached, a light rub with some cool water sex wax, a pre surf photo and I was out there.
I spent the first 5 minutes adjusting to the extra width and weight (6.4kg), but it paddled well and was still easy to duck dive.
A shoulder height set wave comes at 'uppers', I was a bit too deep and late and managed to nose dive, albeit in a graceful renaissance-retro wooden board kind of way.
Next wave I was in peak position, took off and....FLEW.
Mowing through sections the 2 guys on regular shortboards were struggling with. The full-speed trim all down the line and ended up at 'lowers' a good 150m away.
I spent another hour trading waves with one of the older regulars, feeling my way through the characteristics of the board. Any surface bumps were made negligible and before too long i had made a few tentative off -the-top manouvers. I think it will loosen up in turns once I can get a better feel for the extra weight-induced momentum of the board
The only time I thought I had pushed it too far was midway through an end section closeout floater.
Thinking to myself. Did Jensen design the board for this kind of stuff ?? And quietly praying I wasn't going to put my feet through the deck on landing, it air dropped off the lip onto the flats without missing a beat.
So I celebrated with a post surf photo, a coffee from Swell Cafe and am hoping to make a paulownia mini-simmons 5'5" sometime over summer."

Hope you guys are getting waves.
Cheers
Mark

Another one off to the glasser.

Good friend Tony Crimmons form Brisbane has just finished this board and headed off to Peter" Mo" to have it glassed here on the Gold Coast. Great looking board once again . Tony builds a beautiful board.

Board building class offered in Wales

Paul Leonard is a surfer / boat builder in Wales and just contacted me to let you know of a class he is organising next Febuary. He will be hosting a workshop with Rich Blundall ( Tree to Sea ). For more info check out the site : Treetosea.org

Venue: The venue for this workshop is a an old converted Victorian coach house on the west coast of Wales. The workspace is heated and has a sound-system, a large kitchen, toilets, a bar, and also provides an option to move out into an adjacent courtyard if it’s warm enough outside.

Aitor's wooden hull from Spain

" I am Aitor, I live in Bilbao, the North of Spain, near a really nice wave, Mundaka.

I read your blog every day, in my opinion is the best blog for wood surfboards, in fact sometimes I used some post for my blog , I send you some (maybe too much) pictures of my 8.6 hull made of plywood, paulownia and cedar. I spend one year to build it, but I made many mistakes and corrections, I finally managed to finish it, because my friend Javier helped me , he is a great carpenter, who also let me use his workshop , and Fernando de la uz, a great shaper that glassed the surfboard for me.
I've tried the hull and it really surfs well, it is a little bit heavy out of the water, but in the water the weight is not noticed, has a lot of inertia but is very quick , and easy to make the take off with it.

I'm so happy with the surfboard that I've started a new surfboard, lightning bolt replica, if you want you can see it on my blog and practice Spanish.

Thanks for everything, and congratulations for your blog.."

Here is Aitors blog : www.woodsurfboard.org

Timberline surfboards SUP

10ft 6" SUP by Raphael Wolfe from Timberline Surfboards in Santa Barbra. He builds some sweet boards using Paulownia over styrene core to get some light weight results.
Check him out at : www.timberlinesurf.com

Ian's new board all finished and ready for action.

Ian has just finished is 9ft longboard.All the components have been laser cut from hardwood ply with cork rails and deck inlay.




Ian has used some interesting details on this board.

Raphael Wolfe and Timberline surfboards

Simon Skerry Alaias at Stone and Wood.

Last night down at Byron Bay a number of young designers and surfboard builders gathered to show their wares at Stone and Wood brewery. Great location to meet anytime when you can stand surrounded by vats of beer and surfboards , photographs of surf and groovy clothes.Oh and $2 beers.I met Simon from Lennox Head there and he builds boards in a shed out in the country. Nice resin work on his boards. But these two alaias stood out as being quite different.
The one on the left a much wider coffin shape with a fin flex profile. And the other a radical fish shape was thicker and the nose more hullish. The bottom had many deep channels and was well made. Both very different and very interesting.

Check him out at : Skerry Surfboards

Board building classes offered

Rich Blundell, the co-founder of Grain Surfboards in the USA and who is responsible for the Tree to Sea forum, the largest Wooden Surfboard Builders forum of its kind in the world, will be visiting Australia in 2011. He will be running two Workshops on building your own Hollow Wooden Surfboard in Victoria.
Using his patent-pending Strip & Feather method, participants will be instructed in the art of building a Hollow Wooden Surfboard using one of his many proven designs, or Rich can design one especially for you.
Each Workshop will be limited to 8 participants and will run for Two Days.
At the completion, each participant will take home a Hollow Wooden Surfboard that they have made themselves, ready for final sanding and fibreglassing.
Both Workshops will be held on the Mornington Peninsula in Mount Eliza, Victoria in March 2011.
So if you have ever thought of building your own Hollow Wooden Surfboard, but don`t know how, or you have already built one and would like to try Richs` newly refined method of construction, this is your chance.

For further information and Workshop dates visit the Website treetosea.org
Or phone Robert Ivers 0409 211751

Troy and his recycled SUP

" Hi Grant, Here are a few pics of a 10'8" SUP I just laminated. The deck and bottom are made of recycled cedar fence boards from one of my landscape client's old fence. I was building them a new one of corrugated steel and bamboo, and while working on that, kept eyeballing the old boards. The owner asked us to take them away, so off they went to await their metamorphosis. Combined with Paulownia (rails, nose and tail blocks) and a bit of mahogany and redwood, it looks sweet. "









Troy seems to always be building another SUP , in fact he builds more than anyone I know of. So if you need some pointers contact him : lefthandman@mac.com

Boris and his Alaias

" My name is Boris Stender, I am from Germany. first I want to say I love your blog ´wooden surfboards`. I did not knew that there are so many boardbuilders.... I learned a lot about boardbuilding.

I lived a few years on the Canary Island because I love surfing. in February a friend showed my an Alaia. I heard about this type of boards but never touched it. back in Germany I went to my local wood dealer and bought some Paulownia."



" The logo and the words are not burned, its printed on a normal inkjet printer on a paper for transforming on t-shirts. you print it out and than you had to iron it on the board."

"The first Alaia is 7´2´´ x 15 1/2´´ x 3/4´´ because I found this dimensiones in the web. the second I made a bit wider 7´2´´ x 16 1/4´´ x 3/4´´ and the third is 6´6´´ x 161/2´´ x 3/4´´...."


" I was inspired by Tom Wegener but I added a channeled bottom because I thought that is the minimum if there are no fins. the result was great when we tried the boards in April...."





" Here they are riden by friends of mine Manuel Cabezudo and Asier Agirre. fotos of Manolo are from April, Asier from November. they told me they liked the session a lot......"



As you can see there are people from all walks of life from all sorts of places , even land locked countries building wooden boards. It is great to have them share their experiences , so thanks Boris and we look forward to your next projects.