Telling the tale of Northwest Kiteboarding one board at a time!
Bottom contours have various purposes, Greenlight Surf Supply has an excellent guide along with guides to all aspects of surfboard design. My experience riding a strapless kiteboard is that having a little concave in the bottom helps with lift while planing, adds a little grip when edging and reduces slapping when going fast. For the Read More …
I love making boards and the board making step I love the most is shaping the rails on a surfboard. This is the step that takes it from a block of foam to something that really feels like a board. To kick things off, we mark where we are going to shape the board. First Read More …
So this is where we’re at now: Our next step is to take the deck down a little. For this, let’s start with the planer. The one I’m using is this one from Wen. There are modified versions which are much more expensive but after reading around, until you get proficient with a planer, using Read More …
Now that the blank is ready, we can mark the template. For this board, I made a half template and mirrored it across the stringer. Some folks have different nose and tail templates for mixing and matching. With the template marked, I cut it out with a hand saw. As you get near the end, Read More …
There is one step left to finish up our home brewed blank and that’s to cut the foam to the stringer. We made the stringer and hotwire guides together to ensure the had the same profile. Now we’ll use those guides to cut the foam. Because I’m putting much nose in this board above the Read More …
For the X6, I’m going for a little wider than my commercial boards but narrower than the Sensei Sebastian. I’m looking to find a middle ground between stability and maneuverability. I’m also looking to get long parallel rails, keeping the board as square as I dare. At first I was thinking about a rounded nose Read More …
While making the stringer, I also cut two pieces of MDF to use as guides for the hotwire cutter. I tried to tape them together and cut both at once with my hot new BladeRunner but it was a bit much for the BladeRunner, so it was slow going. I pulled them apart and cut Read More …
The BPX6 is in progress! Lots of work done this weekend so I’ll be breaking it up over a couple of posts over the week. I’m also planning to get a review of the Rockwell BladeRunner X2 up as well as a more in depth guide to making templates. This party got started by using Read More …