The twinny has finnys.

Ready for the art of señor pickles.

Update on the Mistakes

While waiting for the glass to cure on the caribou I ripped the glass off the bottom of "the mistake" and reshaped it.  It's now about 4 inches shorter- 5'7"x a little thinner x a little narrower with lighter glass on bottom and a split tail.  It was a hack job, but I didn't want to take the deck off too. Since it already didn't surf great, I've got nothing to lose but foam and fiberglass. The caribou (5'11" fat 80's style twin) is coming along too.  Both are hotcoated, just have to clean them up with the sander-both are getting sanded finish, then fins for the caribou.  Next weekend is PR immersion testing.  Can't wait!!

The Caribou

Maybe because its winter, I don't know why but this one is the caribou.  The learning curve on doing perimiter stringers from scratch was tough. Its crazy how hard it is to see the curves when you have 2 colors of wood and foam. Finally I started to look at just the light and it clicked.

Boardbags

A friend expressed interested in doing some boardbag designs so here are some pics of my first attempts. These go with two of my alaias (thanks ilmi for the idea).  I passed a fabric store in the east village that was going out of business last Fall and now I have a pile of fabric just waiting to take shape, hint, hint...

I sometimes sleep with my boards

Not really, but my girl should be jealous of the Mini Gene Simmons.  I've never had more fun surfing than on my first foamy.

How convenient, a delam...

I originally made this board to take to puerto rico in November and as an educational exercise it came out perfectly-basically everything went wrong while glassing it and the shape worked the opposite of how I thought it would.  I affectionately call it the mistake, but that's a good thing.  I learned a ton about what works in finless boards or bottom and rail contours in general really.  It's basically a copy of one of my alaias, thickened out in foam and the biggest difference is that it caught waves like a dream. I feel like if I can get a foam alaia dialed I won't want to surf anything else.

What I learned....

1. First off, those square rails dont stick unless they're super thin, but bodyboarders seem to be onto something with chines by making the flat side face the wave.  I'm putting some chines in to straiten the outline a bit.

2. The concave doesn't work unless the bumps are closer to the rail-near your toe and heel.  The bump of the concave is really a fin.  It's not really about creating lift under the board to get it out of the water, it's about water flowing out towards the rail and driving the rail into the wave face.  If it were a hard edge it  would create turbulence-no stick.  Nice big rounded bump seems to work best, and right near the rail.  I've done that on thinner alias and it worked like a dream, especially on steep faces.

3. The straitest part of the rail is what sticks the best.  On this board the part that held an edge was the forward part of the board so I ended up going tail first a lot unless I camped out on the tail.

The bottom of the tail conveniently delaminated in my icy cold shop, so I'm reshaping it next week.

board art compliments of Matty Pickles

thin tail, add chines, move concave...