I'm making a surfboard!
No, I don't actually surf. At least not yet. But we go to Hawaii a lot and a guy has to have a board, right?
I didn't kayak either until I built my first Pygmy Coho over 25 years ago. Now I love kayaking. Hopefully the same thing will happen with the surfboard.
The board is a kit from Grain Surfboards. I chose the Waterlog in the 10' version. I'm super tall and heavy and probably should have selected one of their larger boards, but this is the largest board they have that both Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines will let my check (They have a 10' 5" limit).
I didn't get any pics of the kit box, but it's just a long (10' plus) box with sticks in it. The epoxy kit comes separately.
I also bought the "rocker table" that is CNC cut to precisely curve the board as you build it. I highly recommend buying a rocker table if you build one.
The kit comes with white cedar planks that you glue on edge to make the top and bottom panels. However, if you wish, you can mill your own panels for a different look. I used two different boards of Western Red cedar for the top panel. I also added pin-striping using thin strips of Peruvian walnut.
Here is the bottom panel all glued and taped. The manual (which they make you download instead of shipping a printed copy) gives a nice procedure for doing this and it worked well.
The kit comes with CNC cut frames and a keel that form the internal structure of the board. You have to spend some time cleaning them up. You can't see it in this picture, but I also added strips of .25" cedar to the tops of most of the frames like they suggest in the manual, but I did it before installing them (the manual has you do it much later in the build but I thought it would be easier to do it beforehand... and it was).
Here's the keel and a couple frames for a test fit on the rocker table. Setting up the rocker table took two full days. Gluing the panels took another two days. While waiting for epoxy to dry I tinkered on the frames and got them ready to go.
There are two keel puzzle joints on the Waterlog keel. I epoxied them.
My bottom panel is leaning up against the wine rack and my top panel is on the rocker table. I had just cut them out. This was one week after receiving the kit.
Here's the completed keel and frames. You can see the extra gluing surface pieces I added to the tops of most of the frames. I left the aft three because I'll be adding blocks of wood there for the fin box, leash, and vent.
The manual suggests that you hot glue down pieces of scrap wood along the keel so that when you install the skeleton the keel is perfectly straight and sits between the small blocks. This trick worked well.
Here's the skeleton epoxied down and clamped to the rocker table. You really have to force the frames down onto the panel and the rocker table because the bottom is concave in the forward part and then convex in the aft part. The frames and keel matched the rocker table exactly.
By the way, I'm using epoxy instead of the polyurethane glue they sent with the kit. I called and talked to Mike about this and he thought it would be fine. I have a lot of WEST System 105/205 sitting around and am very used to using it. The polyurethane glue they sent only have an "open time" of 5-8 minutes and there was zero chance that I could get this glued and clamped in that time. Epoxy has a very long working time. This took close to two hours to get it glued and clamped. Epoxy is stronger than polyurethane too, although more brittle.
That's it so far! Next I'll start on the rails.
The manual is in PDF format and is 150 pages. These steps so far are only through page 34! The instructions for the rails takes up most of the rest of the manual. And this manual doesn't even cover the fiberglassing! They have a separate manual for that. Most of the boats I've built have thinner manuals than this. It's very in-depth though and covers all their models, not just the Waterlog.
I'll update this when I can.
Aloha!
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