Glassed, 2 x 6oz sanded, fill coated, sand and sand and sand - pin lines done. Still a bit crooked but getting better!. Now to drill in and fit the leash plug and do the fin box install.

Waiting for a new blank that i'm hoping will be here in a few days...... Uncle Rods new board, a 6'4" hydro simmons - one of Grant's - cheers dude - again!
Anyway, had a chunk of foam from when i made the last paipo and thought i'd make another. Decided to use the Agave stalk I've had leaning against the shed for the last 12 months, cool stuff but lousy to work. very hard on the outside, and softer than flax stalk inside. all okay when you glue it in, but as soon as you start foiling and exposing the center you have huge sdifferences in density, put that next to the foam and its very gently gently with the sandpaper. pics have come out a bit dark - i'll take some more as progress continues.
little patch up in the crack of that buttcrack i forgot about! 

Well the big Paipo is finished, as par normal when doing anything new i learned a hell of a lot. First mistake was believing what i read on the web that poyfilla is the nz version of what the americans call spackle, a white surfboard filler. I dinged the blank, filled with polyfilla - laminating coat - polyfilla goes brown. Looked like an 80yr old with bad sunspots- ugly. I thought i could do the distressed look art work as a cover up and as i only had black pigment - black it would be. More ugly! Black is a difficult color. And my skills low. I like nice clean boards so it was a tad disappointing, never mind it wont affect its surf-ability just aesthetically not what i wanted.My mates haven't seen it but are calling it my flutter board (little foam board that kids in nz use to learn to swim) No one knows about the poem underneath, can't wait for the abuse - Will be a good laugh. I've ordered a pad for it from Casey at Cove Pads, will hopefully arrive in the next week.

Well decided to do something different..... I've thought about making a bodyboard/paipo for some time, and as well i wanted to try building a board using the "normal" foam and glass method. Looked on the web at a lot of  different boards. Jeff Chamberlains mega platter looked intriguing, its a prone board of  XXX proportions, pretty sure its 6'3" x 29" - a BIG slab of foam. but apparently a great ride, able to make big sections and fast....... got on AKU and decided a rough shape oversized of around 5'4" x 26", didn't really know what i wanted to do so this was just a rough shaped block with no details. Wanted to incorporate Grant Newby's hydro hull and a scooped deck. Didn't get out the power plane (chicken) instead went for the sureform and sandpaper. A word of caution to those not in the know....... do this far from the house as this crap gets everywhere. and you WILL have grief when you bring it inside the house.

Sketched out the basic shape and started slashing and scrubbing away.
While cutting my facets for the hull entry i really like the look of the chine running into the back of the board - so left a long chine down the rail, i really have no idea if this will be an advantage of liability - time will tell....

Going to quad fin it, used Hanalei fin companys quad layout and have fin boxes (probox) and fins coming.
I think i'll glass it in 3 layers of 6oz and epoxy. its stringerless so i'm a tad concerned about strength.

waipu cove fish fry

Had a great day at the waipu cove fish fry, beautiful weather, nice small wave. A heap of people of all ages out enjoying themselves,  from 10' logs through to simmons and paipo - cool

Myself, Grant Newby and Thomas Bauer a timber board builder from the netherlands.

A quick pic of some of the boards

Watched these two very stoked gentleman walk up the beach and had to take a picture, awesome to see

Logo stamp

Even gone and made myself a logo. Stamp

Wanted something like a passport stamp - its sort of like that

just thought i'd add about the timber i'm using. paulownia is about the best, light - almost as light as balsa, waterproof, very strong by weight. but expensive and hard to find. i found a stand of old japanese cedar (cryptomeria japonica) growing on the farm which where planted in the early days of exotic timber trees trialed around new zealand. its very light, quite durable and waterproof. hey they've been making buildings out of it in japan for a few thousand years. best of all it was free. $450 got it all slabbed up (2 trees) and i then mill it in a mates joinery factory, not as easy to work as paulownia, but i do like the grain, this board is sheathed in flat sawn boards and the next one is using quarter sawn. it will be interesting to see the difference

then decided to get a bit more educated about this surfboard building/designing/shaping.
someone told me to contact a guy in aussie who made timber boards - was a pretty big fella as well - and is approachable. what more could i ask for.... sent off an email comes back he's from the same small northland town as me, although a few years different in our ages. learnt to surf as a kid with my uncle, and knows most of the same people as myself (dargaville ain't a big place) Grant Newby is his name and i've been dredging and pleading  him for info ever sense. lucky he's a good bugger!
grant uses mainly an EPS foam core and vacuum forms 4-6mm paulownia timber skins onto his boards, using polyurethane glue (like gorilla glue) builds out a rail, shapes,sands and coats the boards in lanolin (sheeps wool oil) which seals and protects the boards, but also has the added advantage of going sticky in salt water - no wax! sounds simple ......
now onto my first "grant board," another longboard and i have to admit its been a learning curve but a fun build

grant has given me one of his files for this board, designed on aku shaper, then a dfx file has to be made. which is the file that the polystyrene guys use to hot wire the blank, its also the tricky bit as aku is a BRD file. it then has to have a change of measurements (rails etc deleted) and be changed to a DFX file for the hotwire machine. i as yet have not found a techie mate or any other way to change brd-dfx - workin on it.....
board then has the stringer glued in, parabolic stringer around the outside. ready for the akushaper !

very cool bit of kit - thanks to glen at primal for doing it for me

board cut to finished shape, time to add skins and railbands
don't know why but i didn't take any pics of the board in the bag - next time. amazing process. tiny little vac pump but the force over the entire bag is incredible.

 now to add rail bands - four 5mm bands per side to give enough meat to shape the rail profile

shape it up and its done. i decided to epoxy this board

next  -  finbox.....

quiver

glassing - what a major, did it to cold, to thick orange peel - split. this board has more epoxy on it than timber thickness. but i got there, decided to twinzer it, don't know why really, most simmons style are twins - thought I'd turbocharge it - yeah right!

decided to build another - bigger - yep fat old bastard. more float necessary!
got onto the aku shaper thing and played around with some of the simmons style boards - mine not quite a mini simmons .... more of a midi simmons.
again a hollow board, and again pillaging chads timeless surfboards triangle rail method.
paulownia and japanese cedar this time

anyway boards - looked on the web - found a heap. decided on a 9' timeless surfboards set of plans that i could buy and download off the web...  rocker tables - clamps clamps and more clamps. but it came out pretty cool - hooked