Listen to Queen

     Been working on 007 a bit. Took a little bit of time to glue up this blank, as the foam so far has come from no less than four (4) different sources. The finished blank is above, with the outline drawn...

...and cut out. It's going to be a 5'2" x 21 3/4" x 3" (tentatively) mini-simmons. Initially I was going to make a short egg type thing, with a single-fin box and a Probox quad setup, but I after I realized I had enough foam I decided to do a mini-simmons. I've been wanted to do one since I started shaping, and there's no time like the present. I think I'm just going to go with a twin-fin setup at first, way back about 1 1/2 off of the tail or so, then maybe try a quad. Everyone of these I see has the fins way back, so I figure I'll start there.

     I'm no professional, but I don't recommend using nails to fix your surfboard, as it seems the person who owned this board prior to me did. Very odd.

If I were to tell you should not only listen to Queen very often, but also take them absolutely seriously, you might scoff. You might picture a very flamboyant Freddie Mercury, clad in an interesting white spandex outfit, jumping around he stage singing one of Queen's overplayed radio hits, and you might laugh. But if you do, I say you're the fool and have never heard Queen, Queen II, and Sheer Heart Attack. The only song you might recognize from these first three albums is "Killer Queen," the second track on the third album. You might not be familiar with the blistering Queen II album closer, "Seven Seas of Rhye," in the above video, or the beautiful "Nevermore," below, or the opener to Sheer Heart Attack, "Brighton Rock," also below. Please listen to these first three albums, straight through each one. You won't regret it.

  

Happy Thanksgiving!

The morning of Oct. 22, 2010

     Well, it's been a while, but I've been busy with a few things. First of all, I finished Frank's board, SF 006, a little over a month ago. It came out out pretty nice, Frank's comics ended up looking really good on there, that is before they got covered by his filthy wax. He also likes how the board rides, which is a matter of peripherality, but cool none the less. Here are some pictures:

Before...

...and after!

From RastaFish to Fangfish. This was a pretty interesting project,  and not only because I was excited about the shape we were doing for the board, which is 5'4" x 19 5/8" x 2 5/16" (or something like that) with a relaxed rocker (it did come from a fish) and a fairly full foil throughout, and a single wing thing going into those fangs at the tail. The cool thing about this was that this was Frank's first board when he started surfing seriously again within the past number of years, and so it suited him fine then, but as his skills progressed he left the board behind. Now, through the magic of evolution, the board has transmogrified into a shape that matches his current skill lever. Will the wonders of Nature never cease? No, they won't.

     So after Frank's board, I glassed a board for a friend of a friend. Now, with that completed, I've started on SF 007, a garbology project in that all the foam has come from the garbage. The main body is from a stripped longboard blank that I found in someone's garbage on Clay St. in Tuckerton, as reported here. I'm using rail cutoffs, which I think came from 004, to fill out the width, and part of a broken Boneyard surfboard I found in the trash on 25th St. in Surf City sometime during the summer of '09 to fill out the nose. I think I'm going to get something like 5'2" or so out of it. Maybe shorter.

Something very gnarly was done to this tail around the fin. While grinding this off, I found chopped strand mat, bondo, some strange black cloth, brown all purpose resin, and even some metal pins.

Gluing and fastening these rails was pretty fun. I felt like, and imagine it looked like, a person wrestling an alligator.

       Well, I started this post this morning, and am finishing it post-Thanksgiving Dinner. Jeannine and I hosted a decent crowd of 12 and have way too many leftovers. It was a lot of fun and a good time, and I really didn't get too full. Surf's up tomorrow, hopefully.


     Since today is Thanksgiving, I wanted to post Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," but since I couldn't find a satisfactory version online, and since dropio has discontinued their streaming audio service, I didn't. You should still listen to it though, as it is a classic. Instead, I decided to post almost the complete opposite. Here is Bardo Pond, with the first track off of their album Ticket Crystals, "Destroying Angel." Really a great song, and you should check out that album for an amazing version of "Cry Baby Cry," by some band called the Beatles.