'Building the Dragon Board' article by Roy Stuart from Australian Amateur Boatbuilder magazine.

by: Roy Stuart as featured in the Australian Amateur Boatbuilder 2004



Riding a huge timber surfboard is a great way to surf. The pilot of an Olo longboard is able to open up virgin territory and ride previously unsurfable breaks. Even normally crowded surf spots can provide epic solo sessions in conditions which are outside the range of normal surfing equipment.



A really big board like the olo is able to connect scattered breaking wave sections together so efficiently that surf which appears to  irregular or blown out, often proves to be easily cruisable.



Gliding on big unbroken swells is another relaxing pastime, and if the craft well designed it can also slot into hollow waves when they occur:

Shown here is the 13'9" Dragonboard, part of a quiver which includes a 12' and a  17' model. All three of these boards have proven themselves over the years to be capable of riding just about any wave that comes along.



The extreme pintail design is usually associated with paddle boards, but is really he best possible tail shape for an Olo. By providing the most planshape curve over the longest distance , the circular arc rail line of the extreme pintail allows better manoeverability than a board with a more parallel outline. These boards are ridden from the middle of the board without walking up and down.

Early hollow plywood boards built in Australia show similar planshapes to the Dragonboard.

The Dragon differs in that it has more rocker curve, a much more substantial fin, a lower centre of gravity, a round rail, and fore and aft flexibility.

By departing from the usual system of fore and aft taper (viewing the board from the side), in favour of a parallel profile, the board gains a swooping deck curve which exactly matches the bottom curve, giving a lower riding position and far better control than the ponderously thick,  flat decked  types.



Construction wise the machine is a simple four layered  'sandwich' built over a mould.



The plans shown here have been developed from the original Roy Stuart balsa pp system to allow the boards to be built from heavier timbers. Using a double diagonal internal layer torsion box construction  we get a strong flexible hollow structure. Plywood can be substituted for the fore and aft planking on the deck and bottom if a more tradtional look is desired.



Unlike foam or balsawood surfboards, with a board built from a harder timber ( Redwood, Cedar, lightweight pine and Paulownia are favourites) glassing with cloth is optional.



Turning a continuous round rail is the only shaping that is required.

There are possible variations on these construction layouts and the board dimensions can  be quite easily altered over a surprisingly wide range. The thickness of the board can be tuned for more buoyancy and less sensitivity.

The bottom curve can be increased by up to two inches for hollower waves and more manoeverability, or reduced by the same amount for maximum paddle speed, wave catching and glide.

By building the board as drawn, however, satisfaction is guaranteed.



To a builder with a boat or two to his credit, the board building procedure should be self explanatory. For first timers there are step by step instructions at this link.

Not for sale: The original 13'9" Dragon Board

The original redwood Dragon Board built in the year of the Dragon 2000.

 In original museum condition, an iconic surfboard, one of a kind collectors item, and a living part of New Zealand's rich surfing history. This  Dragon Board has been featured in Slide Magazine, Australian Amateur Boatbuilder magazine, Pacific Longboarder magazine, and New Zealand's Swell TV when ridden at the 2002 New Zealand nationals at Raglan.

Since 2003 the board has been stored in a temperature controlled surfing museum.



The design is a development of the highly successful Future Primitive 12 footer, and is a return to the displacement tailed pintails of antiquity and more recently Tom Blake's hollow wooden boards of the 1930's. The 13'9" length as chosen as a tribute to Tom Blake's legendary 13-9 'Lifeguard' model  

" Roy Stewart's colossal artistic personality,  design genius and unflinching commitment to universal hydrodynamic principles are applied relentlessly in his quest for Pure Surfing.

He has the courage to question and distill the spirit of surfing and understand it as the source of his work.  "What is essential to surfing?" is a question he asks himself constantly.  Flight, maximum speed,  an aspiration to perfect efficiency, and unity with the energy  of  the wave is what his work pursues.

Roy's  boards are beautiful because they are true organic works whose purpose, apearance, structure, material, method of construction, performance and even symbolic potential are tightly woven into a cohesive but infinitely flexible whole, conceived after great analytical and synthetic effort of the imagination in an attempt to create as nature does. 

Elegance defines Roy Stewart surfboards : the use of foil sections for templates; having considerable area with significant rocker forward, creating an optimum configuration to  get up and planing as soon as possible;  a narrow tail for maximum control and rail to rail ease which works mostly in displacement, supplemented  by the  efficiently generated lift from the fins in a brilliant balance of the best of many worlds.

It is nourishing to see his true dynamic, three dimensional understanding of the elements involved in wave riding

   Being one with the wave  is  the essence of surfing, it is radical,  it  goes to the root, and  it is heir to Duke Kahanamoku's spirit.  Roy Stewart's  boards are unsettling, but the spirit behind them, their source, what he is saying through them that surfing should be, is  even more so. His  boards caused a stir in Hawaii by expressing surfing's lost  vital essence, the one which the great Duke valued more highly than his olympic gold medals. "





With thanks to  Pablo Diaz for his writing