Mike Connor has just picked up his all Paulownia Pig. Like myself he built the foam one as a trial horse at Christmas to see how she went. All good and lots of fun so a wood one was next.A classic shape that suits wood for sure.
Mike Connor has finished the "Bush Pig" and headed for the Gold Coast for glassing. The board is all made from Paulownia , frame, skins and rails. A classic shape that is well suited to this construction method and should be a great ride. Mike will be one of the speakers at the Gold Coast Surf Museum on Saturday night 7th of August. The board will be there as well for sure.
Last summer Mike Connor and I shaped and glassed a board each to test out some design ideas.
Mike went with the classic pig shape of the 60's. He loves the feel of it and decided it was the ideal test board to then build in wood. 9ft 6" x 23 1/2" x 3 1/8".
Here she is nearly ready to head off to the glasser next week to be ready for the wooden board day.
All Paulownia and a touch of Cedar.
Ready to be trimmed up and shaped.
Plastic wrap is a great for holding things with odd angles and shapes that you can't clamp real easy.
Tail blocks on the same way.
All hands on deck to get the rails glued on and in place.
The more clamps the better some times...Make sure that you have a breather hole drilled at this point ,as once that bottom skin goes on , she all becomes a sealed unit and will be under pressure with any temperature changes . I have seen boards let go and concaves turn into nose bubbles. Not pretty and very disappointing after all the hard work you have gone through.Also be sure that you have holes in your frames linking all chambers of the board for the same reason.
Well the bottom skin was all glued down and clamped up on the Alley Slider.
Got the trim router onto the fish and knocked off the overhang on the rails top and bottom. The rail band acts as a guide. The glues makes for a bumpy outline .
One side nearly cleaned up.
Small sharp block plane is the answer.
The home made shaping stand comes in handy here.
Pretty good now , all the glue gone and planed down to the clean pre shaped foam. A nice sand and check the outline is flowing and true. This is a very telling part of things so far. Up till now in the build it has all been internal and a structural focus. But now what you do is there for all to see. If you are to run a cedar pin line say, then it will be highly visible as to how smooth that outline is.It is now also that you get a true sense of what the board will weigh , look and feel like as it is now a 3D version of all the 2D pieces of the jigsaw puzzle you have been handling.
Well she is a big board and with an 8mm deck skin we needed 75 clamps to pull her down snug. We could have gotten away with less but if you have them it all helps.
Pretty well trussed up. Make sure you have everything level and square prior to the deck going on as once it goes on , that is it.
The foam in the tail gives you so much more glue area to hold the thin pieces in place.
The larger pieces of foam will be for the FCS fin plugs to go into and the foam in front of the butt crack will be to take the leg rope plug.The other foam will be to glue the V of timber onto that forms the fish tail block.
Yes winter is here once those westerly winds start blowing off the hills inland from Byron Bay.The wooden blocks down from the nose is for the goretex breather to go into.
Big board , big bugger hanging onto it.
This feels like a sweet little board and a great little experiment to share with some mates.
Strong as this little one.
The bottom going on the fish with it's slightly rolled V under the nose to a flat section under the front foot and a double concave and V out through the tail.
Mike resawing some great looking Paulownia for decks and railbands.
The 10ft "Alley Slider" deck skin being sanded down to 8mm on the 600mm wide drum sander.This means that when it is glued down I will not have to touch it with sandpaper at all.
Mike finishing the first run of glue up the stringer to get the deck down on the 5ft 10" fish.
Every guy needs a mate to keep him company in the shed all day. This is Waddy short for Wadkin ( a brand of bandsaws ) He is a Jack Russell and a great little guy.
Getting a few planks through the thicknesser , ready to be glued up side by side to form deck skins up to 600mm wide.
The fish with the deck on with its concave out through the tail.
6mm deck pulled down no worries.
Mike had a visit from a mate of his John Buckham who builds guitars . Just unreal looking and sounding guitars, where would you start to build one of these ? Anyway he was off to the Guitar show in Brisbane and spent the night catching up and playing a few tunes on his great sounding instruments.
Mike is a wood worker , that builds everything from wooden barns to ukuleles and has a shed full of tools and gear to get the job done right.He also has an even bigger shed full of timbers from all over the world that if it caught fire now god for bid it would still be warm at Christmas.
Mike in the corner , the engine room where it is all planed and the finer things are kept.
This old bandsaw has over 20ft / 6m of blade and takes forever to wind down when you turn it off. All this gear makes doing the job a lot easier for sure. So if you need some wood to do a job or sized to suit what you are doing get hold of Mike.
The fish went together just as easily with the tail just flowing out and the nose needing some foam down the track to pull it all together.
With the tabs coming through the rail band holding everything in place and then when you glue it up it is as strong as can be.
The foam added to the tail gives more surface area to glue the thin pieces together. Easy to work with ,very little weight and easy to shape and tidy up.
Same in the nose as it is impossible to bend 6mm round this shape. At the end of the day the deck and bottom skins coming together will mean there is very little left to sandwich between them.
Didn't take long to glue it all up and have a strong stable platform to work from. It is best to keep working on the frame with it locked down to a straight edge as you work so that as you add things and it stiffens up it is nice and straight and level.
Mike and I have been looking at a better way to build our boards which is not unusual for those of you that have already built a board or two. You will know that your head is filled with ideas. So there is only one thing to do and that is to get to it and put the theory into practice. Well we have and last week we started building the boards. First of all we wanted to be able to CNC the frames to get the accuracy in what we are trying to achieve. Mike machined all the Paulownia panels to be routed and above you will see the result. Probably the biggest single step forward is cutting the frames accurately so that they just fit together.
Here is my 5ft 10" fish all popped out of the sheet and spliced together as planned.
Just pull the nose in to hold the rail line with some soft wire.
The same with my 10ft "Alley Slider" old school log . No glue yet. The curved stringer each side of the central stringer preload the whole frame so as to hold everything in place.
The frames have knobs on the ends that fit neatly out flush with the edge of the rail bands and this helps hold it all together.
The frame is placed on a solid straight edge to line everything up , although it is pretty straight given the number of contact points in the frame design. Still no glue holding anything together yet.
