For my first board, I was hoping to make a twin tip that’s a bit smaller than my usual ride to use in the storm winds of Puget Sound Fall and Winter months. This one is named after my good friend Ballard Krudop who passed away while I was finishing up.
I really had no idea what I was doing while making this board. I had watched videos and read posts online but I knew I wasn’t going to get it until I jumped in head first and worked my way through it.
Specs
- Designation: BPX1 – Beautiful Ballard
- Length: 140cm
- Width: 45cm
- Thickness: 1/4 inch
- Core: Marine Grade Plywood
- Deck Glass:
- 4oz Warp Glass
- 6oz S-Glass
- Bottom Glass:
- 4oz Warp Glass
- 6oz S-Glass
- Resin: Tap Marine Grade Epoxy
- Hardener: Tap Marine Grade Epoxy Slow Hardener
- Paint:
- Yellow Pigment during glassing
- Krylon Fusion spray paint under hot coat (yep, big mistake)
- Soundtrack Highlight:
- Jeff Beck – You Had It Coming
Building the Board
The template for this board was made with a scrap piece of half inch particle board. I made it by bending a batten around a nail in a board. Half inch is too thick for a template and makes routing around it a bit difficult.
After laying out the board, I routed around my template for each quadrant but did not go all the way through the plywood. I got this idea after watching a YouTube video where someone made a mess trying to fill a channel with urethane. I used epoxy pigmented black for the rails and once set, I cut out the outline with a jig saw and sanded it down to expose the rail.
While making the rails, I also set the inserts. The inserts in this board are simply stainless steel nuts. These work but you need to make sure you don’t push through the board when you’re attaching straps. I inserted bolts in the nuts to keep the threads clear from epoxy while setting them. Later while glassing, I filled them with wax to keep them clear.
For the rocker, I built an adjustable rocker table, I tried moistening the board with hot water and sticking it on the rocker table for a few days. While I did get rocker in the board, it straightened out a bit afterwards giving it a little less than I had hoped. I probably should have given it a better soak before letting it set.
After giving it some rocker, the next step was to glass. I really had no idea what I was doing when I was glassing this board which made it much harder than it should have been. I first wet out the board with epoxy, then I put down one layer of glass at a time. It’s hard not to laugh at myself while I write this thinking about all the trouble that was.
I attempted to color the board by adding yellow pigment to the epoxy. When I bought the pigment, I was told to use it sparingly since a little goes a long way. I used it too sparingly, however, so it cured transparent, baring my sins to the world. I thought maybe I could give the board a paint job before the hot coat so the hot coat would protect the paint. I used Krylon Fusion plastic paint. In case you were wondering, this was a terrible idea.
Now that I had the look I was satisfied with, it was time for the hot coat but first, I printed up the name and haiku for the board on rice paper. I put down a thin layer of epoxy, placed my text on the board then went on to coating the rest of the board.
For epoxy, you hear “hot coat” but really it’s just a layer of epoxy. That much I knew with this first board. What I didn’t know was how to apply a hot coat. I tried to spread a thin layer across the board but made two big mistakes. One is that my layer was too thin so the epoxy couldn’t pool. The other was that I handled the board quite a bit which meant I was leaving all sorts of oils on the board which would have caused fish eyes even if I had used enough epoxy. The hot coat didn’t turn out well at all.
The next step was my biggest punishment for ignorance. I fell into a cycle of sand, coat, sand, coat, sand, coat… My problem was that I didn’t sand aggressively enough and then I made the same mistakes coating that got me into this mess to begin with. It did get closer with each coating and eventually I called it good enough but the result was that this board got heavy with excess epoxy.
The final step was to polish the board with some polish I picked up at an autoshop. It was nice to get the board to a mirror finish before taking it out.
The Ride
My friends Isabel and Fred joined me on the inaugural voyage of the Beautiful Ballard. The day I took this board out was a day of firsts for me. Not only was this the first ride of this board, it was the first time for me at Double Bluff on Whidbey Island and the first time I was using my 10m Cabrinha Switchblade kite.
What was immediately apparent about the board was its weight. My poor job hot coating made it much too heavy. I also learned later that plywood needs to be sealed because epoxy wicks between the layers (it took me one more board to learn that lesson). As a result, the only thing that keeps this board from sinking are the footpads.
The rocker on this board turned out to be a bit flat for the chop at Double Bluff. This wasn’t an issue with the board but took some getting used to.
Once I did get up and riding the experience was amazing. Being a heavy board, it was unwieldy and any mistake wasn’t going to go unpunished. But I was up and riding on a board I made myself. My buddy Ballard was known to throw out a “Boy Howdy!” at times like these and I found myself doing the same. That along with whooping, hollering and at one time singing uncontrollably while I was bouncing on the waves of Double Bluff on MY board.
So now, if you took a good look at the picture of me and the Beautiful Ballard at the top of this post you may have noticed something wrong. I’m missing a foot pad. While riding the board, one of my foot pads came loose. During a water start one my right footpad came off the board. Fortunately I was in chest deep water not far from the beach. After trying to unsuccessfully reach down to retrieve my footpad from my foot, I ended up very carefully plodding through the water trying to keep the footpad on my foot until I got to the beach.
When I got to the beach, the kiteboarder who helped me land came up to me and said in a thick Romanian accent, “Llllaaawktite”.
“Huh?”
“Llllaawktite!”
“Oh, Loctite!” This was the day I met my friends Vadim and Ileana and learned about the magical properties of using Loctite to secure your foot straps.
Giving my first board a spin was one of the best days of my life. It felt like I had my friend Ballard along for one last raucous adventure. I couldn’t think of a better way to say goodbye and mourn a good friend. My friends should take note for when it’s my turn to feed the Ghost Shrimp in the Sound.
I only rode the board one more time after that. Not only was it heavy but seemed like the paint was causing it to chip. It now lives mounted on my wall.
About Ballard
I met Ballard Krudop while we were Peace Corps volunteers in Suriname. Below is from a post I made shortly after his passing that I think best sums up his impact on my life. What’s mine has changed but the fire still burns. Rest easy my brother:
Sometimes after I go full tea snob on someone, I get asked how I got into drinking tea. That’s when I tell a story about my friend Ballard. Ballard had quit smoking, stopped drinking and had everything under control but during a visit I noticed he was smoking a pipe from time to time. While walking down a path to the cabin during a trip to his place in Alabama, I decided to razz him about the pipe. He turned to me and said, “Well John, I haven’t had a drop to drink in months, sex is a fleeting memory and God knows when I last had a cigarette. I’m doing some clean living, but, you know, I need something that’s mine and this here pipe, this is MINE!”
We had a laugh and that was the last I harassed him about the pipe but those words really stuck with me. For years afterwards, I searched for something that was mine. For a long time, this manifested in some sort of goal chasing that always ended in some sort of stress and disappointment. Doing work on top of work was completely missing the point. Years later, I had acquired some loose leaf tea and decided to try to get it right. I had fun learning about different types of tea and brewing them into a sublime cup. One day while taking a moment from a hectic day of work to brew a perfect cup, it hit me. I had found something that’s mine. Ballard’s pipe was a little ritual to take the focus away from all the BS in life just for a moment. A reason to sneak around to the back porch and just take a few tokes for a cool minute. A moment to call his own.
This realization was the start of me learning to better sift out what’s really important and all the crap that, well, really isn’t mine. I tried to hassle Ballard and instead he turned all Southern Yoda on my ass. With a few jolly words, delivered with a drawl and a smile, he profoundly changed my life.
Ballard passed away on Friday. He’s one of those folks that made me happy to know was out there in the world, rocking out with his guitar, cruising, and having a laugh for all of us. I’m sad for those he’s left behind. I thought I would be sad to see his light leave this world but it hasn’t. You couldn’t be within earshot of Ballard without becoming his friend and he didn’t shine a light, he lit a fire in folks. There are so many of us out there who are better for having known him, including my kids who have talked about Farmer Ballard ever since they met him. The light he lit in all of us is going to shine for a good long time.