With a voice as big as the sea!

     Merry Christmas! It's that wonderful day where tiny tots' eyes get all a-glow. Whatever, but I hope everyone is having / had a great Christmas. I'm excited to try my new 7mm X-cel round toe booties out, the past few three hour sessions with my old holey booties have gotten a little chilly towards the end, and by a little chilly I mean completely numbing. But yeah, they lasted a while, long enough, and anyway, the smell is terrible.

     Above is my Christmas quiver. Actually, it's a bunch of ornaments I made with foam rail cut-offs and 4 oz glass (one layer on each side, to save weight).

The resin tints were tricky. Just kidding, that's just spray paint. It was kind of fun doing these, a little like laying up a fin panel or glassing a wood fin (even though I've never done the latter, but it from what I've read it seems like it). And speaking of wood fin...

...a flex fin for added drive out of turns. That will come in handy when hanging off the Christmas tree. Maybe next year I'll make more. Taking custom orders now. Wait time, about 12 months....

Success!

Just woke up a little bit ago and had to pull the tape before I even had my coffee. It worked! I love the look of solid color but with the stringer still showing. And the boxes where the lam is going to go?

Not one edge bled! Even thought if it did it wouldn't have been a big deal, I plan on putting a resin pinline box around each one, but it's nice that A) I don't have to do a half inch wide one to cover bleeding, and B) if I get to that point and there's a swell coming and I just want finish it so I can surf it, I know I can skip it if I want. But I probably won't.

Airbrushing was a lot of work. Many passes and coats and taping, but in the end I guess it wasn't that much work, especially when you don't count the extra work of mixing extra paint halfway through, and considering how nice the outcome looks. Not that I'm out of the woods yet though, I still have to hope there's no crystallization problems with the paint and resin. Some people coat their whole painted blank in a thin coat of clear resin to seal it in, but I don't really want to do that for two reasons: A) I figure if I do that and there are no problems, then I'll never know if just glassing over the unsealed blank would've caused a problems. If, when I glass it without sealing the blank, there are problems, then I'll try it next time. B) I just don't feel like it. A pretty good reason if ever there was one.

Busy in my workshop, like another of my namesake this time of year...

I'm talking about Kris Kringle, of course. Christmas is almost here, and it looks like I won't have SF 003 done by then, nor will we get the excellent Christmas morning swell that was predicted (although Sunday is shaping up nicely). In between baking cookies, shoveling snow out of the driveway (finally) and working on secret Christmas surprises, I was finally able to paint 003 today. I did another practice run on part of the broken board I found in the trash on 25th street after one of the big late-summer swells.

It's streaky, but I didn't want to waste paint, so I just decided to go with it, after do a final vacuum-run over the board. Oh yeah, I taped the stringer and lam spot yesterday. I vacuumed those especially well, so the tape would stick and no paint would (hopefully) bleed underneath.

So yeah, I vacuumed the board and got it all ready and decided to finally just go for it. Doing things like this for the first time always teeters between exciting and stressful for the first time. It's exciting because it's new, and no matter how it comes out I'm learning something. However, since this is airbrushing (which I've never done before) on a blank that I've worked to shape and care about, it's a little stressful because what if it gets messed up. But yeah, I'd say it's more on the exciting side, but still....

 

The first picture above is the first coat on the deck, the bottom is the second. I did the deck first because most of it will be eventually covered with wax, so I figured if anything needed to be worked out that would be the best place to start. You can see on the first coat it's a little uneven. You can see the overlap lines and everything. I was kind of wondering about it, but then I did the second coat and you can see it start to blend already.

Hey, smart guy, this is what happens when you get the bright idea to put the board (or whatever it is you happen to be spraying) too close to the surface underneath of it. The spray rebounded off the floor and made these lovely marks on the bottom. It ended up getting covered over fine, but good to keep in mind.

There's the bottom after two or three coats. Almost there, just one coat needed on each, but it was at this point I realized I would need more paint. I had gone through a lot more than I thought I would, probably because of the practice beforehand, as well as my never having done this, and not really knowing how much it would take in the first place. Fortunately, I was able to mix up some more and get a dead-on match. The spray job ended up coming out pretty clean, and even those pits in the blank from air-bubbles are barely noticeable, except where I tried to fill a couple with that sugar/resin mixture. I guess I didn't get all the resin off the foam, so it looks a little darker. Oh well, it's only a couple small spots near the tail.

At home in the music/paint-drying room until after Christmas, at least. I've read that with dark colors like this, you can run into major crystallization problems when you laminate the board. I'm hoping to avoid that so I'm going to let it dry for few days. I wouldn't have time until Saturday anyway, and the Sunday it looks like more waves. Maybe Sunday evening. For now, I'm just happy to be making progress on the board. Now, we'll see when I wake up and pull the tape off if the paint bled or not. But to wake up, I've got to go to sleep.

Why do you doubt your senses?

     That same question, uttered in a ghostly howl to Ebenezer Scrooge on the he was visited by three (3) spirits and found the true meaning of Christmas, runs through my mind now as I think back to today's surf session. As I stood on the Wooden Jetty in Holgate, waves crashing below me, I could see the rocks in the water and I knew it would be a hard jump. As I studied it more, the more I thought it was a bad idea. But then, something just kept telling me to go for it, man, your good sense tells you to go somewhere else, but what do your senses know, anyway?. So I doubted my senses and now I assess the damage: A) Dinged SF 002. Doesn't look too bad, as it's only in the built up hard edge on the side, so there's no foam damage or anything, but still sucks. B) Some cuts in my new wetsuit (nothing major, they don't go all the way through and they can be easily fixed with glue, but it's still a bummer), and, worst of all, C) The Future FAM1 fin set I had borrowed via the Fin Tree at Faria's is now short one center fin, meaning that I have bought the set of fins, for the excellent deal of 2 for the price of 3. Neat. So that was one pricey way to save a few paddle strokes and some time, on a day when time meant pretty much nothing, and a few extra paddle strokes never hurt anyone.
     On the plus side, the waves this morning were amazing. We were the first ones there, around 8 AM, and looked out over the snow to beautiful peeling lefts with huge tubes. And no one was out. We trudged through the snow and paddled out at the First Street jetty, drifted down a little, caught a few short ones. Then the moment came, south of the Wooden Jetty, when I caught what may have been my longest ride ever. Maybe. It was a long, long left that started south of the jetty, went past the rock-pile, and just kept going, and going, and going, with a nice, easy face that let me just take it easy, carve and glide along. Man.
     The next wave I had from that point ended up being even better, bigger and fast and longer. The waves breaking between First and Wooden Jetty were huge with gigantic, hollow barrels, and fast, but they didn't last as long as the waves south of Wooden Jetty. Plus, after two hours of having the waves to ourselves, about 10 guys came out almost all at once, but they were intent on fighting the current and hanging on to that first street wave. I found it more fun to drift down, catch one if it came to me, but then wind up at Wooden with it all to myself, and then get another long, superfun left.
     After the jetty-jumping incident, I went in and grabbed my fish. It was only now that I began to get cold, as I stood in the ice and snow and all the water in my wetsuit cooled down, up until then everything was fine. But anyway, so I grabbed my fish, drifted down, and caught two more beautiful lefts before we called it quits. Out for three hours, with the waves to ourselves for two, that's what I call an early Christmas gift, and even with the extra expenses and damage, it was still well worth it. Now, if the swell predictions are right, we're in store for a post-Christmas surf as well....

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

     ...everywhere you go. Especially outside, where we've got a few inches of snow already, and they're calling for a lot more. It also looks like an early Christmas gift is coming in the form of an excellent swell brought on by this holiday nor'easter. It looks like it's going to be pretty nice, and an excellent test for all the new wetsuit stuff I've gotten, because up until now the weather has been mostly mild, and the water has hovered in the mid-50s. But tomorrow morning will be a different story: snow, water temps in the 40s, and wind in the 20s. It'll be beautiful.
     On the board front, I received the stuff I was waiting for on Friday. Really, I had everything to start but the 1/8" tape for the stringer, and I've been trying to figure out a graphic for the board, which I've done, but now I've got to figure out placement so I can tape off for it before painting, which I think I've done, but I'm still not sure. I wanted to start painting the blank this weekend, but I don't think I'm going to, what with waves all day tomorrow and Christmas preparations today. But we'll see, I think I'll at least get it taped off today. At this point I don't expect to get it done by Christmas, but definitely by the new year. Hopefully....

Holiday Swell Predictions

No waves to speak of today, we went over but the tide was too high. Figures, when I have work, the waves are ridiculous, but when I have off, the waves are tiny. On the plus side, I did get to shape a bunch of blanks today, mostly for small wave riding. Here they are, ready for glassing.

I really can't wait to finish the board I'm working on now, just waiting for the order from Fiberglass Supply to come. It's scheduled for Friday delivery. I don't know if I'll be able to finish it by the amazing Christmas morning swell we're going to definitely get, but that's alright, there are plenty of other boards that need to be ridden. I'll have it done by the unbelievable New Years Morning swell, when there may or may not be snow.

Addendum (12/18/2009): Turns out there were some waves to speak of. Went over in the afternoon that day, around 2:30 or so, and there were actually some fun waves. Not big, maybe waist, stomach high at most, but with my longboard they were pretty fun. I took SF 002 out as well, and while I had some decent rides, I'm beginning to realize that while the board works well for smaller waves, it needs smaller waves with some power. I wanted to give it a good amount of rocker for looseness, but I think it ended up with a little too much tail rocker so that when a weak wave piddles out it kind of just stalls. Which is to be expected of a lot of shortboards I guess, and that's why there are other kinds of boards (like my Hobie Phil Edwards model, which I still can't get over how fun it was that day). But still, 002 is a fun board and I can't wait to get it out in some more waves and try it out. I'm toying with the idea of glassing in two (2) more boxes and trying it with a quad setup. We'll see....

Winds: W 20 - 30, gusts to 40.

This picture of my rowboat sitting on the bottom of the bay is relevant to surfing because this blow-out tide is caused by the extremely hard offshore winds we've had the since Thursday. The wind blows all the water in the Barnegat Bay out of the Barnegat Inlet and the Little Egg Inlet (I'm guessing probably more out of the Barnegat Inlet because of the wind direction), and then it creates these extremely low tides. This same wind is the reason that the really great waves we had on Wednesday (which I missed) got a lot smaller for Thursday (which I also missed) and then were non-existent by Friday (nothing left to miss). Oh well, there will be more.

 

On Thursday I pretty much finished shaping the blank, fine-tuned it and everything. I noticed in this blank (and the last one I did, both U.S. Blanks) that there are small pits in the blank which must've been little air bubbles inside the foam. It didn't matter so much on the last one, which I had planned on glassing clear from the beginning, but it might matter on this board, because I'm going to airbrush the blank and those spots will show up darker. I think what I'm going to try tomorrow is a tip from Swaylock's: fill the spots with a mix of granulated sugar with a little bit of resin. Supposedly this mixture will show the least out of all the remedies. I did get the 9" Greg Liddle flex fin in the mail today, which is a Christmas fin (but I'm allowed to use it before). I can't wait to try it out on a couple boards, but I especially can't wait to finish this board and try it, which hopefully will be before Christmas. The rest of the glassing stuff should come this week, so I'm figuring a little more airbrush practice tomorrow, fill those air bubbles, maybe try to paint the blank during the week, and hopefully glass next weekend, wave pending. Speaking of waves, looks like we'll have something Monday, which hopefully I'll be able to catch before and after work. We'll see....

After looking at these pictures, I can't help but feel really grateful to get to see and be surrounded by this stuff every single day. The people who evacuate the Island after Labor Day don't know what they're missing. Let's keep it that way.

In the air there's a feeling of Christmas...

This was Thursday afternoon. It's always bigger than it looks from the beach. The drift was strong but got a really nice long overhead right at lightspeed. It was definitely the biggest wave I've caught on SF 002 and the speed caught me off guard, especially since I'm always a little shaky backside. It was fun though, and made the whole session worthwhile. After the third walk back up the beach and drift, I look behind me inside and all of a sudden there are about 10 - 15 guys, right there, where before there weren't. I don't know where they came from but after that I knew I had to go. I can't take crowds like that, especially when the wave was only breaking really good right off the jetty. Oh well. It was fun.

I've been meaning to take the old black and white SLR out and mess around with it again, and I figured this blog would be a good occasion for it. So I did. I really like messing around with it. The pictures just have a feel to them that you lose with a digital camera. Plus, I like the anticipation of taking them and then having to wait to get the roll developed, as opposed to the instant gratification of the digital camera. Of course, when you get your prints back and only 12 of the 24 exposures come back, and you know that some of the ones that were lost were really good or at least interesting or at least you wanted to see how they came out, it's kind of a let down. I think there's something wrong with the camera. We'll see with this next roll. Anyway, here are some more pictures.

Those stupid lines in these pictures are the result of the scanner, not the camera. Surf tomorrow morning, hopefully, because it's looking pretty flat for the week after that. I've got the spray gun stuff though, so hopefully I can begin practicing with that and get that blank painted this week, and maybe glassed within the next two, because I'm itching to ride it. Picked up a bunch of ornaments and lights and things today and just watched A Muppet Christmas Carol and now it's starting to feel like Christmas. I think the warm weather we've been having made it feel less so. But tonight we got flurries and a few even stuck. It's a marshmallow world in the winter....

Hot Tube Rides

More government funded Strange Flora R & D coming tomorrow, but as for today....






                                                           ...Hot Tube Rides...







This video size looks sloppy, but I don't want to delete it, so I won't.



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