Well, its been a little slow on here so I figured I would post something different. I have been wanting to build a hollow wood surfboard for about a year now. But since I don't surf, this will actually be a stand up paddle board. I am going to use a parallel profile which means the whole board is the same thickness. It will have 2" of rocker in the front and 1" in the rear. It will be 5" thick, almost 9 feet long and 3 feet wide. Short, fat, and wide. This should be interesting

It will also have hollow birds mouth rails. I hope. Based on my paddle shafts that I have made (thanks Pogo) I have realised that joint is some what flexible. If it works that will be great, if not that's ok. I will have to resort to a normal surfboard rail system.

Here is the stringer


And the stringer with its ribs


And then lightened up a bit

Adding some 1/4" strips to the stringer




Here is a sample of the experimental rail system

You are a paddle board building dude ,Looks good ,will follow this with interest.
Ron

Thanks Ron. I have been some what influenced by this surfboard builder. He builds his boards by hand and uses a paralleled profile design. Now my board does not follow his building techniques but his youtube videos are nonetheless very interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aepwiziw ... er&list=UL

Worked on the board for a couple hours today. Got it secured down to the table. Took a little while to get all these ribs squared up and level.





Taped a thin strip on it just to see the line, looks good. Now I can glue the ribs in place. Cant wait to start on the deck. I have a bunch of short blocks of cedar so I think I will do a feather design on the deck.

I am looking forward to the radius side rail. Keep up the innovation neon.

Steve

I finally got the deck all glued together.

Got to use a planner for the first time in my life today! It worked really good. This is going to save so much time.



I had to build the deck in three separate pieces so they could fit thru the planner. Right off the bat I ran into problems with one of the outer feather panels. One of them cracked along the grain when I picked it up. OOPS! Had to glue it back together. I was pretty nervous planning the feather panels but every thing worked out ok.



Hoping to get some glass on the bottom of the deck and get it glued to the frame this weekend.

Thats looking good.
The planers are awesome, I can imagine being without one now
Ron

Got a layer of 4oz glass on the bottom of the deck and put a coat of epoxy on the top, then gave it a rough trim out.



Also got the fillets done on the frame, maybe Sunday I can glue the deck onto it. Hopefully things move along a little quicker after that is done.

I like that deck
Ron

Got the deck glued on yesterday. Should be interesting getting off the table since I used a nail gun to secure it. Cool thing is I will get my table back! I hope this project will move along a little quicker from here on out.

Neon
Yakers use waders in cold weather how do paddle boarders handle the cold water?
Ron

Well, now here's the deal. You probably wont catch me out on a paddle board in really cold weather. If the sun is out and its a nice 70 degree winter day I can take a fall in the water and get warmed up pretty quick. But if its 50 degrees, windy and no sun I would be in bad shape lol! I guess a wet suit would be the best thing.

This board will prolly be a wet feet board because it is so small. The Jem board is a completely dry ride, most of the time anyway I only fell off twice this year and it was both on the same day. The first one was at the boat ramp right at the start of the trip, the second time was totally alcohol related. I tried to turn around to feed the ducks and just lost it. I can tell you that in the winter I move around a lot more cautiously and take less risk than in the summer.

Makes me cold to think about taking a dip in this cold weather.
Thanks for the reply.
Ron

Off the table!

Pretty soon all of this work will be covered up. Need to give the ribs a few coats of epoxy. Thinking about pine for the bottom. I wonder what it would look like with pine rails?

I was wondering if would be doable to make the interior framework out of styrofoam?

I dont see why foam would not work. You got me to thinking again...

I have not been able to work on the board this week, been crazy. It always is this time of year. Have the next 2 weeks off hopefully I can make some good progress . It would be nice to start the new year off building rails

I'm sure you are wondering how ..other than a series of miters ...you are going to do the rail like the pic. posted...might end up framing out the sides and doing thin strips to form the bull-nose side rails...

Thin strips would work fine. In fact that may be the easiest. I will have to add some framework for them.

Cut some strips yesterday!


Got the center section all glued together. Now what I need to remember is not to glue the next set of strips together so tomorrow I can split this into 3 sections so I can run them thru the planer.


So what did I do? Started gluing the next set of strips on!!! I got mad lol. Luckily I caught my mistake in time.

Also got the glued a strip of wood to the bottom of the deck. This will help me trim the deck to its final shape and also be used to mount the rails to. For some reason my camera is taking blue pictures now. Going to have to figure that out.

Figured out why my camera was taking blue pictures. pulled the staples out today.


Ran each of the 3 sections thru the planer. I am getting better with that thing. Planed both sides and they are perfect. I wanted to see how close to a 1/4" thick I could get. Got within 6 thousands of an inch. Good enough for me Its amazing how much wood shavings that machine makes. First I just let the shavings blast out of the back, one board and the shop looked like a hamster cage. So then I tried my shop vac but it just couldn't hang with the planer. I finally wound up using the dust collection bag off of the table saw. The only thing is I have to empty it every few passes. I now have a whole trash can full of cedar wood shavings. For whatever the reason I have decided to save them. The panels look pretty good, fixin to glue them together.