Seal coat on the bottom of the board. Next comes filler in the form of a wood flour mix to close the seams and a few divots I can't sand out and then 3.7 oz glass.

I am done with the basic shaping of my bamboo surfboard. Actually I should say bamboo, leftover plywood scrap and miscellaneous wood surfboard. I will continue to finish this board so I can ride it but really I sould scrap it and start afresh now that I have a clue as to what I should do. One of the struggles has been to make it as light as possible but have enough material in all spots. In places I have gone too thin so I will need to fill them with "filler". I'll give it all a final sand then glass it. It's pretty good but has some definitie problems. I'll need to ride it to see what I should do next!

Sometimes you see photos of something being glued up. Everything is neat and tidy. That's the ideal and is notthe case here. This is a tough exercise of clamping and holding in place. I've used gorilla glue, five minute epoxy and regular epoxy. I'm learning and experimenting with this project much more than I normally do. The joinery isn't real tight as the bamboo I have is squirrelly. It's the left overs from my outrigger build but it is progressing never the less. It looks like temperatures will remain decent so I can continue working.

The board is taking shape. It is not without problems. Even though I drew up cross sections I have spots where I just didn't place material deep enough into the hull to make the final contours. All in the name of saving weight. Of course this is a prototype and it isn't too hard to glue bits of material in where I need them, it will just alter to final look.

After one false start, the top of the board is going on. I am worried about what the final product will weigh, will I be able to acheive the shape I have in my mind, will the cold continue to test how well I can build?

Boatmen plying their trade on the Niger in Mali.

...............Totally unrelated to anything I'm working on but interesting non-the
-less. Gluing of the surfboard deck has been going slow so I'm organizing photos and uploading to my flickr site. These are from 2003 on the Niger River in Mali.

It's not quite ready to ride but getting there. Now fr the dificult part - getting the deck to work out right and then shaping the rails. All the issues will be at the rails.

What has happened to Creed?

"This blog is open to invited readers only
http://tiki38.blogspot.com/" is all you get these days.

I am totally making this up as I go and switching plans mid-stream! I have a good idea what the end shape of this board is suppose to be but the thought process is backwards; instead of carving the board out of a chunk of material I'm having to build it up with as little material as possible. I got in a good six hours in the garage today - excellent way to level the emotional keel FYI - changing my approach from what I had conceived last night. Instead of a central stringer with ribs coming off it, I've moved to twin stringers with central cross members to make a structural ladder. This has been shaped, had all the lightening holes cut in it and fitted with the cross members. I switched from gorilla glue which I used on the bottom to epoxy and glued the central structure in. It will sit until tomorrow afternoon before I can get back at it - plenty of time for the epoxy to cure and for me to come up with the next detail.

I returned to the shop today, It's been too cold to work out there but today the temperature came well up so I put in a good afternoon on my bamboo surfboard. The bottom is now glued up and the stringer/rail template and board shape templates are done. I was going to make the rails in cedar but after redrawing them with a neutral shape as opposed to rail up or rail down profiles and sitting on an upturned bucket with a cup of tea I decided to try for laminated bamboo rails. These will be harder to make but also more consistent with wanting to make this board out of bamboo. If the glue and bamboo has dried tomorrow, I'll rough finish the inside of the bottom of the board and start in on the stringer and the webs. It's good to be back in the shop!