"Launched!" If that's appropriate for a surfboard. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It floats right and is about the right volume for my weight and size. I'll get out to the west coast near Neah Bay in a month or so to give it a try. I buffed the roughness out of the finish so I'll need a good coat of winter wax on the deck if I plan on staying upright. The lake where I tested it today is fed by snow melt so the water was brain freeze cold.

No pictures tonight but I'm sitting here at my desk with my board resting on two boxes of business cards, one on the desk the other on a file cabinet. The bottom is done and it's high gloss glass - absolute velvet! When you see it you'll want it! Final weight is 17 lbs or 7.7 kilos. If the bottom is cured by tomorrow, I'll give to top a scrape down and then gloss it out. Very sweet.

I've added a section of glass right where your feet mostly land when you push up onto the board (heard a little crackling sound when I jumped on the board with it lying on a sleeping bag. The whole thing needs a couple of days to cure up good then a final sand and a topcoat and it should be good to go for the fin mount.

A quick video of me glassing the top of the board

The above sequence show how I'm going to mount the fin to the board. I added a chunk of wood to the inside of the hull to make a fin box. This is what I routed into to make a slot for the fin. The jig worked perfect so I got the fin straight and center. I'll either glass it in or find a way to lock it in so it can be removed. The front of the fin has a section that ges into a slot so it's locke din place. I'll need to lock the back in place. The real trick is to make it stiff enough that it doesn't rock from side to side.

I've glassed the bottom of the board. I sanded and scraped the filler coat for about 5 hours last night and this morning. The temperature barely came up to epoxy coating temps but I preheated the resin. The coat flowed beautifully. I let it sit a couple of hours then trimmed it back where I'd wrapped the glass around onto the top. The board is now inside my house so it can cure overnight. A little early celebration is due with some sushi!

I was pretty busy the last couple of days so I didn't get to post about the nylon gaff slider I made. The gaff slider has been chewing up the mast and as I is made of white oak epoxied together it had split. The new one is now done. I made it out of a block of nylon scrap I got from a local plastics supplier. Nylon is hard to work with regular wood power tools as it tends to melt and gum up the works. Pictured above is the old and the replacement slider.

There was a real feeling of spring in the air today (sorry Neil if you're reading this!) even some of the spring flowers are starting to poke up out of the ground. It sparked my need to get back to work on Tsunamichaser. I have a bunch of tasks I need to get done besides a few more degrees and I'll be sailing - probably March. I didn't work on the surfboard as the epoxy filler I did yesterday needs a couple of days to harden before I start to sand it pre glassing. I'm fairing/filling with wood flour thickened epoxy which is a bear to sand especially if it has'nt totally set up. As I was heading to my bamboo supplier to get material for a house project need, I decided to swing by my local Laird Plastic outlet to pick up a block of scrap (ended up being nylon) to make a replacement mast slider for the Dutch gaff. The photo above shows how the original one has cracked (oak) and the leather and plastic pads haven't help its movement much or its wear on the mast. The plan is to cut one out of a single block of nylon stock and see if that works better. The next thing will be to take down the mast so I can refinish the wear the slider has caused on the mast. It would be a good thing to drop the mast anyway as I haven't checked the mast head since I launched.

Slowly the board emerges!

Bottomside

Topside

There is great tension in this board. It is a balancing act between composition, beauty, strength and lightness(or heaviness if you're a pessimist). The process has been testing though never frustrating - no throwing of tools or stuff ever. If I was making this out of clay or foam, I'd take a piece bigger than required and then proceed to carve away at it. In this case I start with air add as little material as I can near the perimeter in a clunky manner then carve away at it with the hope of having a thin intact shell without too much extra left on the inside or worse nothing at all but air again. I have had to fill spots no doubt and I know some places are very thin but over all the result is what I expect for the first time. I took some basic numbers from Essential Surfing but from tere I have been on my own. I wonder how it will ride. No doubt there are unequal distributions end to end and laterally. No computer robot carved this. I would shape with power planer, surfform, belt sander and other tools in a sort of trance. Then close my eyes and run my hands down the lines feeling my way to the final shape. The bamboo has not been easy to work but I am learning. Remember I used the scrap from my Ulua outrigger. I can't wait to get my hands on some really good stuff. Just sitting here typing is giving me new ideas about how I can form the next board.

...............so while I am in motion I quickly formed up a skeg. I should have showed the sequence. I shaped it in Visio first. I liked what I drew so I printed it, spay adhesived it to a scrap of plywood carved it, did the basic shaping and completed it on walk to school to pick up my daughter. I use to show up there all hostile at the end of day dressed corporate. Now I get stares when I show covered in sawdust my pants as much epoxy as denim. But hey I'm happier and I never throw anything unless it's a frisbee or a load of chopped greens destined for the wok. Not that I don't have to skip across the surface of that corporate sea to get to those greens but that's ok. I'm part actor anyway. Speaking of actors my grandmother was one during the silent film era. I knew her as a wonderful and lively old woman who could still play in a sandbox but the one I wonder more about was the wheelmaker as seen below. My great grandfather. I think if had been around I would have been underfoot in his shop. We have moved far from this. It is interesting that unlike the stiff formal photos I have of other family members from the time, this man Niels Nielsen chose to be photographed in his shop. Would he really have choked up on his mallet that way or was it a concession to the photographers long exposure?

Just a link tonight to another's writings - multihulls