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

Great night at the Gold Coast Surf Museum

Paul Joske with the first known Paulownia surfboard in Australia. Chambered , unglassed with Ebony finboxes and Ebony fins. Only West System Resin used to glue up the blank. The rest is as green as you can go.Paul also had a beautiful Agave board there. They were both for the same customer , who had traveled up with the boards from Victoria.

Young Mike Grobelny from Auckland New Zealand had 4 of the 6 only surfboards he had ever made with him. All CNC routed from one piece of wood and an inlay of .6mm x 3 ply Bamboo for the deck and bottom skins.Amazing technology at work and a very impressive result. He was quite a contrast to the to other two speakers who had a combined hand shaping experience of about 80 years.

We had a good roll up of about 100 very interested people tonight.

Mitchell Rae and his chambered Balsa guns. A very experienced wooden board builder with a great deal of knowledge to share. A talented artist and shaper with a wealth of experience and stories to share. From the jungles of West Java hand shaping balsa boards and surfing uncharted reefs to high end boards for the who's who of Australian surfing.

Mike , Mitchell ,Paul and myself at the end of the night.

Wooden Board Day this weekend

Click on the poster for a bigger view

This weekend is the wooden board day at the Currumbin Alley. I hope you can make it. Sounds like we have some interesting people with a great deal of talent planing on being there. It will be a great opportunity to meet other board builders / shapers and see what they are up to. Or if you are interested in starting a project you couldn't be amongst a greater talent pool. So if you have built a board or would like to, come and join in the spirit of the day. Bring your board , your picnic lunch and have a surf. Low tide first up , some nice banks at the moment.

Don't forget if you are in town Saturday night head over to the Gold Coast Surf Museum and hear from 3 greatly talented speakers on wooden board building.
6.30pm at Surf World Museum
Tomewin Street opposite The Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

If you have any questions contact me - grantnewby@bigpond.com

Greg's new board for next weekends Wooden Board Day

"I have just finished a new pintail in time for the show day at the Alley. It is a 6’2” x 19 ¼” x 2 ½” single fin pintail. My son wanted a retro styled pintail. I will be down at the Alley with several of my boards."




Greg did the Paul Jensen board building class a couple of years ago and ever since has been busy building boards with his son.I nice release after a week in his Brisbane city office as an architect.Be sure to check out his boards and many others next weekend.

The Grain " Sea Sled " body board

If you are looking for a project that is fun and not too big , this could be it ?

Grain Surfboards in Maine have a new body board design that could be just the ticket.

" Though we’ve had it kicking around the shop as an experimental board for a couple of years, originally The Sea Sled was more of a thought experiment in new bodyboard shapes than a real prototype. But when it became the first thing that visiting pros picked up, and when they came out of the water grinning, we knew we’d stumbled onto something special. The latest to love it was Keith Malloy who, when gathering footage for his upcoming body surfing/body boarding film, asked us after just one go-out if he could take it with him to Iceland. Hell, yeah you can.

And now they’re multiplying out in the shop, available to anyone who loves jetting down faces with the water at eye-level. Solid cedar, with distinctive side runners that channel the flow, this finless wonder is rugged, slippy, fast and fun. High speed slides are cake with the glide and low rotation resistance, and it’s small enough to keep in your trunk for anytime you’re feeling inspired."

For more great kits check out : www.grainsurfboards.com

Or for what is available in Australia check out : Cape Boat Works

All these shots are from the Grain site

" Always Offshore" from WA.

Just had a call from Gary Bennett from Western Australia who is coming over with a few boards for the Wooden Board Day. He is a furniture maker and keen surfer. He has worked on a few projects with surfboard shaper Jim Banks from Byron. Check out some of his boards and boards inspired furniture.

“Always offshore” is Jahroc’s latest collaborative project where Gary Bennett, David Paris and Australian surfing and shaping legend Jim Banks have decided to pool their extensive skills to create a collection of fine wooden surfboards. By combining Jim’s 30+ years of surfboard design and shaping skills with Gary and Dave’s 30+ years of designing and creating furniture masterpieces crafted from fine Australian timbers, the trio believe they can create some of the finest wooden surfboards the world has seen. Some will be artistic wall pieces made from solid timber and others will be artistic wall pieces that can also be surfed on using the age old torsion box construction techniques that have been used in aircraft, surfboards, boats and furniture for centuries.
Wooden surfboards are really where it all began and there are certainly lots of replica’s being made these days. Jim and Gary wanted to do things a little differently and apply the contemporary lines of Jim’s surfboard designs to create some collectable art pieces made from some of our beautiful locally grown timbers in Australia.
Jim still takes a very hands on approach to his shaping and is constantly testing and improving his designs in waves all over the world. From Indo perfection to the raw power of Margaret River Jim is constantly putting his designs to the test. Gary and Dave are excited by the opportunity to use their skills and contemporary techniques of fine timber construction and apply to making surfboards.
Surf boards are such beautiful objects. All three artists are passionate surfers so the idea of sculpting a masterpiece that can be taken down from the wall, waxed up, then taken down to the beach for a surf and still be durable enough to be hung back up on the wall is immensely appealing.
Why “Always Offshore”? Well when it’s offshore at the beach the boys can go for a surf and get that buzz that surfers get. When the surf’s not on they can go to their workshop and get that buzz that woodworkers get when creating, so you see for these 3 it really is "always offshore"!!
The collection, when complete, will feature some hollow torsion box versions that will be surfable. All going well the boys should have a collection ready to exhibit in March 2010. Keep an eye on this page to check the progress on this upcoming exhibition."








Check out these great boards and other projects : www.jahroc.com.au/Surfboards.htm