Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Tip T!me

Man if you are into nose and you haven't seen this video, pull up a chair and press play. The new generation is insane... 
Have you realized that it's leap year this year? I just did about 5 minutes ago. Sweet
Gave me an extra day to get everyone's board done. If you have a board on order in Santa Cruz, it's either in the glass room or further along at this point! 
A small order of business before pulling out to the Hawaii shop was working on this, the last of the boards from the fire. Couldn't get all the soot off, a little extra red helped... or did it. Either way, someone's getting a deal
Jessica's board is looking great, wish the camera would pick up that bottom color better though. Can't figure out the stupid flash either. Welzie's way better than me when it comes to making the camera work... funny cause I'm supposed to be the electronics guy
Here's another of my current favorites going through the shop- Brian's little Rocket. 5'6"... I want one blown up to my size! 6'? Sweet -Carl

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

New Boards and New Art

A few boards heading out of the shop as a couple more start to get glassed. Jumped into some new art as well. The Mural has a pretty good coat so I figured I would dump the resin somewhere else.-n

Jason and his new Yardstick. Sugar Mill Cream.
Old friend Sara getting her first two crows surfboard.

 A little art happening. I had some wood laying around from the last series and thought I would get back into it. It's been a while since a did a few pieces. Feels good.
 Another piece in the process.
 A couple mini simmons getting laminated. Gus' yellow one and another Neopolitan Ice ream sandwich. Chocolate Strawberry and vanilla.
 "toots" travel board getting the deck glassed.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Seth Bowman, Shaping, Cloud board

Great picture sent in to us by Seth Bowman surfing at his favorite photo studio on the W/S of Santa Cruz. He's riding his new camo-freestyle 9'6" you can see it in this post here.
 Nothing too interesting going on in the SC shop, just foam mowing and more foam mowing. I'm heading out to Hawaii on thursday, so all mainland orders will be in the glassing room before I leave.
 Pretty cool 3 color lam on Jessica's board... you can't really tell in the picture but the tail is a cream opaque. The shape is a 9'4" pintail lady log. Really looks good.

 Another shot of the nose. Looks like clouds on mushrooms or something. ;) -Carl


Sunday, February 26, 2012

Greenough edge spoon part 5: Finishing

This is a continuation of parts 1,2,3&4
Once the shell was moulded, adding the foam was next. It's a 2 part mixture that once mixed, you have about 30 seconds to mix and pour. Once poured it rapidly foams up, so I made a cardboard dam to kind of hold it in place and keep it from running all over the place as it went off. The foam is the same stuff that conventional surfboards are made of, polyurethane. 
 A lot of shaping later- mostly with a handgrinder and sandpaper, the board really takes shape. 
 Then the board got layed up with heavy uni-directional fiberglass, the strength was mostly needed in the nose to tail direction. Instead of building up layer and layer of normal 6oz, 20oz uni was used.
 Here's the fin, made of an old Noserider fin. Rad
 The board completed and sanded. Note the base on the fin. Made for easy mounting though the deck with a couple bolts.
 Front view.
 9 lbs total at the end, with hardly any foam in it. The first time I threw it in the water it sank so that it sat vertical in the water and just the tip of the nose was floating above the surface. Shocker. -Carl

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Greenough edge spoon part 4: Making the shell

This is a continuation of parts 1,2&3
Making a spoon isn't too bad once you have the mould. It begins with waxing the mould with special wax to aide in removing the finished shell. It is done very liberally, the last thing you want to happen is have the shell stick to the mould and ruin it. Once the mould is properly prepared, glass and resin are laid in, 4 layers of 6oz in this case. Pretty fun stuff because you're actually building the board at this point. 

 Taking the time to do it right.
After the resin kicked, a little trim work around the edges before the shell gets popped out with compressed air. 
 Look at that. A perfect beginning to a board. Bottoms already done!
 You can get a feel for the foil of these boards in this shot. Stoked. -Carl

Friday, February 24, 2012

Greenough edge spoon part 3: Mould making

I wish I had taken more shots of the mould making process. I got really sucked into it and all I could think about was completing the project and blew right through it. My mind gets like that when I'm covering new ground- tunnel vision. The mould was build with polyester resin and fiberglass layed over the plug that you saw built in the previous post. The basic process was polishing out the plug, coating it in mould release wax, buffing it, repeating the wax process about 5 times and then coating the whole deal in a mould release film that hopefully would aid in the separation of the plug and mould. This picture shows the first layer of glass going on...
 Here's what it looked like all layed up. There's about a solid 3/16"-1/4" of fiberglass and resin covering the whole plug at this point.
 A little bracing- I was so deep in hour wise on this project at this point I wasn't going to take any chances with possible twisting of the mould or anything like that. 
\
The moment of truth. This really doesn't tell the story of myself and a friend prying and fighting to peel the mould from the plug until our fingers were bloody from the shards of fiberglass. It took over an hour to pry it loose using compressed air and wedges. But it looked amazing when we finally pried it loose. 
 A little trimming of the edges and a trip outside to the sun. Beautiful if you ask me. All that work sanding, painting and polishing the plug really paid off in the end when the mould was finished!
Next up, laying up the spoon! More tomorrow... The fun part! :) -Carl


Thursday, February 23, 2012

Greenough edge spoon part 2: Bondo time

This is a continuation of greenough edge spoon part 1
After the foam plug was shaped and glassed, it was time to build up the edge (and ignore the work staked in my doorway) ...Bondo was my choice to build it up. Bondo is just Polyester resin (Good old surfboard resin) mixed with cheap filler. It's great stuff if you want to make a mod  to a board, it goes on quick,  builds well and drys fast. I drew a couple guide lines to get things started...
 Mmmmm Bondo!
 Probably about a gallon of the stuff went on the bottom... heavy
 Lot's of filing with the old surforms
 And lots and lots of sanding
 This red stuff is sort of a thick primer that fills in all the nicks and scratches that you can't get out with the Bondo
 Here's the finished product ready to get painted. Did I mention this is only the plug for a mould? Crazy amount of work
 Yep... all painted. Pretty awesome. Looks like a UFO. Next part of the series will cover making the mould. Check back- Carl
<--End part 2

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Greenough edge spoon part 1

In 2006 I got really hooked for awhile on learning about George Greenough's edge spoons. Not to be confused with Velo, the board that everyone knows so well. You know, that iconic red railed see-through spoon that the world copied the fin off of in the mid 60's? A lot of people still ride that fin to this day, it is known as the stage 4a. It seems though that few bother to follow the genius of Greenough past Velo into the 70's and further. Very few realize that he turned away from the concept of flexible fins by the early 70's- a concept that his name is synonymous with. Because of over crowding at his local breaks, by the early 1970's George had drastically modified his boards to work better in less than idea surf. They were called edge spoons and George would continue to build the concept into pretty much everything he made, including sailboards. 
You can see in the picture above the distinct edge that was added to later spoons. This was to help them plane better than the original Velo style spoons. Careful tuning of the edge allowed for a board that would work in in much worse conditions than the Velo spoons. 
     I stumbled on these boards in 2006 and couldn't stop reading about them for many reasons. One being the fact they are so forgotten by verbal history books of the surfing/shaping community. Another was the wonder if George had been onto something and never bothered to mention it to anyone after seeing what happened when the world got their eyes on Velo. 
      I've got a tendency to get obsessive over things that make my mind turn and it wasn't long before I was gluing random scraps of EPS block foam together to make a rough blank for a edge spoon. 
 The template was built to include the rocker and was designed after pouring over everything I could find on the internet.
 Nothing like a nice rocker template to get you honed in just right. I've always felt that rocker is one, if not the most crucial part of a surfboard to get right. Who knows if it's just a residual feeling from my mentors, but it always plays a big part in my surfboard design.
 Here's rough template cut out.
 The first bands always set the tune for the rest of the shape. Because I had never seen an edgespoon in person, I decided to follow what I thought was the logical progress for George. Build a spoon such as Velo first, then add the edge later.
 Here's the shape all smoothed out almost ready for glass. I only needed to shape the bottom of the board, because it is used to make a mould for the fiberglass shell that becomes the spoon.
 And here it is with a single layer of glass on it. The seams are from the different pieces of foam that got glued together to make the rough blank. I took so many pictures of this project that consumed so much time, hundreds of hours, that this will have to be a multi-part project. Tune back later for the next part.
End part one ---> Carl

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Another day goes by

"Carl? Carrrrl??" Welzie making a call to the mothership at the Wet Art show. Surely one of those phones can connect him. 
 Insanity aside, here's a preview for Andy of his 7'1" Frankenspud copy...
 Close up shot of Robins new EPS/Epoxy Log... just a teaser. Those drips are from the hotcoat on the deck, they get ground off before the bottom is hotcoated. A thorough sanding comes next.
 David came by this evening and grabbed this green tinted log and was one of the first in Santa Cruz to get one of the new Black&White fins.

 And getting close to completion of Brian's second board, he's getting that all black asymmetrical that you've seen before. This one is a little 5'6" Quad with a Rocket Tail. Can't wait to see these all black boards finished up. -Carl