7'9 Stepdeck - Almond Fine Surfboards

I've been inspired by some of the midlengths that I've seen in the water recently. Cyrus has been making himself some fun looking 2+1 boards. I traded boards in the water with Knost a few weeks ago, and really enjoyed the midlength he shaped for himself, and I haven't been able to shake these boards out of my head.

With that in mind, Griffin and I put our heads together the other day to come up with something new and interesting. We started with the original log rhythm template as our foundation (21 1/2" wide log) We narrowed it to 20 3/4"

I really wanted to keep plenty of volume and rail through the middle of the board (50/50), but then transition to a modern edge in the tail. I don't really like displacement hulls, personally, but I do like boards that glide and trim effortlessly, so the extra volume is intended to make this board glide like a log, but turn and respond like a midlength.

We ended up pulling in the nose, because we agreed we didn't need so much foam up there for what we wanted this board to do. So we actually used the tail template of the Pinwheel model (longboard we did for Japan) for the new nose. In order to further eliminate foam in the nose of the board, we gave it a step. A nice heart-shaped step.

in, http://lifeisjustswell.blogspot.com/

I'm Back

in, http://theshapingroom.blogspot.com/

Grafikboards - Application method "B"

in, http://grafikboards.com/grafikboards/Installation.html

Grafikboards - Application method "A"

in, http://grafikboards.com/grafikboards/Installation.html

Another Bing Restoration

Here is another great series of photo's of a Bing that had been well used!

This is a very nice restoration of Bing #445 done by Dave Platt of Killcare Beach in the state of New South Wales on the east coast of Australia. Killcare Beach is 100 miles north of Sydney!

The owner of this board wanted to get back into surfing. He is the second owner. A mate of his purchased it while on a trip to the US. It was in pretty poor condition. The stringer is 2" balsa or I should say was balsa. It was completely rotted and had to be replaced. It has a timber fin with inlays. This was also restored. The board was sanded to expose all the dings and old repairs. The remains of the balsa stringer were removed. This meant cutting down each side of the stringer with a diamond saw and scraping the rotted timber out. The foam is in excellent condition. Probably protected by the glue used to glue up the stringer. The dings were reglassed and sanded. All the low spots and rails have been faired with a 75% Q-cell 25% aerosil mix. Two layers of 6oz laminated over. The stringer has been rebuilt. End grain balsa was used. Blocks were laminated together and milled into 10mm thick planks. These were glued together two at a time in the board to fit the rocker. Once the stringer was fully glued together it was removed, the edges cleaned up and glued into the board. Two layers of 8oz-boat cloth were laminated over the stringer with Vinylester resin. The original timber fin has been rebuilt and reset. All the old glass was removed. The timber was carefully sanded to remove all the excess glass and resin and to expose the inlay work The trailing edge had to be replaced. Western Red Cedar was used. Two sealing coats of resin were applied. Then two layers of 8oz laminated to one side with 10mm of cloth overhanging. This side was hotcoated. The overhang was used to mould the continuous rovings used to form the clear bead around the fin. Once cured the bead was sanded and two layers of 8oz were applied to the fin. Hotcoated and sanded ready for setting onto the board. Once the fin was set the board was hotcoated and sanded ready for the pigment work. The stringer and rails were masked and the pigment coats brushed on. I use a mixture of surfboard lam resin and neutral spray gelcoat. 75% resin 25% gelcoat and 3% surfacing agent. The gelcoat is designed to cling to vertical surfaces. This helps on the rails to minimise sagging and separation. The gelcoat ups the geltime slightly without having to use higher catalyst percentages. The board was sanded ready for glossing. Pinlines were masked and brushed on using the same resin/gelcoat mix. The pinlines were lightly sanded and the board was glossed. The gloss coats were wet and dry sanded with 600, 1200 and 1500 and the machine polished.

This custom Bing was ordered September 26, 1961

Bing #455 as found.

Looks like a candidate for the burn pile!

What a mess!

Deck has been sanded.

Pigmented bottom.

Pigmented deck, ready for pinlines.

Glossed deck

Back to showroom condition!

The original fin, back in it's original condition. Nice work Dave!

in, http://www.classicbingsurfboards.com

Ozzie Bound

Almonds headed to Australia courtesy of California Surf Imports.

Many of them have a final destination of Six Ounce Board Store.

Plus one log each for our good friends, Simon Perini & Keiron "Seamouse" Lewis.

in, http://lifeisjustswell.blogspot.com/

Dano and KIDS NEWPORT BEACH

Grafikboards

GrafikBoards is a new project by a group of very talented people from Portugal. Grafikboards is basically a printing service for the surfing industry, but not the common kind. They print in a very thin fabric anything you can dream of, from high quality photo to a simple single color or black and white graphic. Fabric is then glassed on board like a normal logo.

100% custom and easy to apply for perfect results.

Check out their website at: http://www.grafikboards.com

Here’s a great example. Daniel Costa, from Essential Surfboards (http://retromovement.blogspot.com/ ), uses one of his personal photos on the nose of a longboard. Can’t get more custom than this!

Photos by Dan Costa Photography



 





original photo

in, http://magic-quiver.blogspot.com/

7"10' Skip Frye

Original Gephart steers this insanely fast vintage 7'10 Skip Frye

in, http://revolversurf.blogspot.com/