New Board and Other Photos

     Been a while, but when there's no news, there's good news, as they say. The good news comes in twos, because A) there has been quite a lot of swell lately, and B)I finished this board, 012, a couple weeks ago, the night before it got really good one morning.

     This board, like Henry, is literally stronger than the storm. As my shop flooded during Sandy, the shaped blank for 012 took float and got a few good gouges, dings and dents, and took on a good amount of water . I let it sit for quite a while and almost abandoned it entirely before I looked at it one day and figured I'd better finish it. So I did....

....And I'm loving it. The low rocker, the big twin keels, the flat bottom to V out the back all translate into fast fast fast. It holds a high line on steep speedy barreling waves, but it also maintains a lot of speed in mushy flats to connect to inside sections such as those the south end has been exhibiting at certain tides lately.  And it goes backside pretty nicely too!

 Here's the only picture of it in action so far. See, I love it so much it makes me dance!

 Beautiful lugs on a classic Carlton. Not mine, unfortunately.

 Indiana's geese are NOT to be crosssed!

Bad Pictures of Sun-drenched Surfboards

     Frank's got a fish, finally! The pictures I took were bad, because I didn't adjust for the direct sunlight shining on it, but the board came out pretty good. Can't wait 'til Frank surfs it, maybe Sunday. And I can't wait 'til I surf it, either.

     Frank, of GraveYard Atlantic fame, did all the artwork for the board. It came out pretty nice, although not enough skulls, in my opinion.

     If I post too many pictures of Henry, too bad. He's the most handsome dog on the planet. Lucky for him he is, or else he'd probably be out of here by now.

So close, yet...

Leonard Cohen - "Leaving Greensleeves," the last track off his 1974 album New Skin For An Old Ceremony.

I sanded the hotcoat today, it went OK. As you can see above, some of it did not go OK. The deck and bottom were both fine, even the problem areas from before just flattened right out look fine unless you look closely and notice the different shade on the foam beneath.

But I did run into problems on the deck half of the rails. It seems the gloss got too thin on the rails because it took so long for it to gel, and as I was hand sanding the rails it went through to the paint. It only took one pass with 320 grit to do this, which means they must have been very, very thin.

This is the port-stern corner of the diamond, the only spot I noticed being a problem prior to sanding and the one which was definitely the worst. The paint poked through in a number of places, a lot of them small but enough to warrant redoing the whole rail. So that's what I decided to do.

First I roughed up the whole edge of the board, and about an inch up onto the deck. I then brushed gloss on, trying to simulate how you would do a gloss coat for the whole board, running the board lengthwise and crosswise, and I tried to fan it up onto the deck so it will (hopefully) blend when I sand it. Right as it gelled (which this gloss did in almost perfect time, a little long but nothing like the original) I pulled the tape on the underneath so it would hopefully run a little bit, so as to smooth out the hard edge left usually left by tape and hopefully make it blend better. I've found that making boards, for me and these first few anyway, is good practice for ding repair because I frequently find myself trying to make some mess-up look like it should.

Neutral Milk Hotel - "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea," the third track from the album of the same name. I love this album, and have probably listened to it about a thousand times, literally. But I hadn't listened to it in a while, at least a month and a half, and like always it blew me away. I thought about putting the whole album up here, but refrained. I don't know why I chose this song, maybe because I covered it as SotRM one time. But maybe I'll put more on sometime. OK, I think I will right now.

Neutral Milk Hotel - "Ghost," track number nine off In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I love the drums in this song.