Tree to Sea: November 2005

A little more publicity...

This one came out of the blue Lycos Top 50 blogs for November 25th 2005

Revisiting a fish - Part III

OK, just to finish up this thread...

Here's an earlier shot I found that I think is cool. It shows the Striper getting her planks clamped.

Here you can see one of the pre-glass fins in place, the other fin slot routered out, and how the swallow tail rails are constructed. Wetting down the wood helps us see the fine details in seams.

Here she is just about ready for final rail shaping.

Here it's ready for finishing. There is Mikey's longboard on the left there too.

All glassed and ready - I'm going surfing.

GSB (etc) gets some press...

Check out these three links:

GSB featured in N'EAST Magazine story on the revival of the wooden surfboard download the pdf here.

Richie B is caught in the act on Martha's Vineyard. Check out the cover shot and story in Martha's Vineyard Magazine.(photos taken by Nick Lavecchia - and please forgive the "not wooden board." This photo was taken a few years ago).

Maybe a little off topic but what the heck, news is news Real Screen Magazine article

Revisiting a fish - Part II

Now, where was I... Oh right

Here I'm laying the planks I've ripped out onto the frames. Your looking at the base towards the tail. In this early method, we used to have the keel (or stringer) extend up between the two primary (innermost) planks. We'd leave them proud and then plane them down to the deck surface later. Besides the nice stringer line, this method just adds an extra seam to seal and worry about. We've since solved the problem by keeping the whole frame structure inside the planks. Also visible in this picture are the fin reinforcements that span the last two frames.

In this photo, the planks are all glued down (making a long story short) and I'm jigsawing the tail.

On this fish, I experimented with a lamination technique for railing out the wings. Sorry the photo is kind of blurry, but what you see here are 24 layers of thinly-slied red cedar strips. They are glued up and clamped into a gluing jig. Once the glue sets, the curve is retained. Me thinks it worked pretty good.

Here you see those very same wings glude and clamped onto the tail. Working on curved surfaces, with no opposing surface to clamp is very tricky. We have to be clever. In this photo you see a broom handle inserted through the frame. Clamping it to the table gives me a surface to wrap the bungees.

Here begins the arduous task of rail glue up. Notice the wetsuit drying in the background (hey we gotta test these things!) - and there is Mikey too - lofting up the next longboard. A real production line.

More to come...

Surprise swell - Morning sesh

I got a call at about midnight last night. It was Nick and Mike calling from the bluff that overlooks one of our local breaks. It was dark of course, but the two were pretty excited. They held the phone up so I could hear the surf pounding on the rocks below. This was a surprise because no reports called for anything over waist high. The news pretty much sealed the following day's fate - from dawn to dusk. I just got out of the water and note the time of this posting.

All waxed up and heading out from Grainsurboards World Headquarters

Nine times out of ten, we are stopped and asked about our boards. We love it.

A great way to start my day - walling up nicely inside.

This felt REAL good - check out that fish.

Mikey looking up at a wall - nice face!

The last cutback of the morning.

Where you want to be.

We have these pictures because Nick was kind enough to skip a session (that's a lot to ask of a surfer) and shoot photos. If he wasn't behind the camera, he would have been carving it up with us. Here's a shot of nick on the Waterlog (the GSB 10-footer) from earlier this fall. Thanks Nick!

Stay tuned for the PM session photos from Mike - they are nice...

Revisitng a fish - Part I

I happen to come accross a CD today with a bunch of photos I took while building a Striper 6'4". I took these with my cell phone, so the quality isn't that great, but they do shed a little light on the construction process.

This shot shows the keel with the slots cut for the frames. Notice how the slots are tapered to mate the frames. This is actually an early method that we no longer use. Now we use a lap joint instead.

Here I'm hand shaping the frames with a handplane. This is a tricky process because we're having to really visualize a final shape far removed from actually having it in hand. It's tough, trust me.