More Wood....

I started Splinters Surf as a way for me to design and build a couple of hollow wood surfboards and paddleboards for myself and few friends out of my garage.  But as I got nearer to the end of my first build I knew that this could be something some much bigger than that. Now I could lament about spiritualism, transcending cosmic plains and the transference of a piece of my soul to the board through my chisel.  But I won’t.  Instead I will tell you how cool it was to walk out into Cox bay with this board that I had built from planks of wood, catch the first wave I paddled into and ride back into the beach. 

Growing up I had such a romanticized idea of what I thought a surfboard shaper was, and it wasn’t until last Friday on Cox bay that I actually understood what it meant to shape a surfboard.  I remember when I was younger and my dad appeared in a TV documentary on fly fishing in Canada, called “Lords of the Flies”.  In one of his segments he was discussing how when you tie a trout fly you are able to create the ‘illusion’ of stonefly or dragonfly nymph to the trout you wish to catch.  When you are able to cast a spell on that trout with a fly that you tied with your own hands it somehow becomes this magical experience.  In a similar way, that feeling of being ‘stoked’ when I caught the first wave I paddled for on a board that I shaped with my own hands, was my own ‘magical experience’.

As hokey as it may sound, the thought of being able to build something that could affect those same feelings and experiences for someone else is pretty darn awesome.  Of course the handful of surfers and retailers that caught a glimpse of “Lydia” and asked me ‘How long for delivery?’ is also pretty cool….

So to share the proverbial ‘stoke’ I have designed an entire quiver of hollow wooden boards all of which are in or will be in production by June 2011.    

“Seabass”           

• 6’ 8” twin fin fish with a
• Flat rocker
• Carries its 2¾” thickness right to the rails

The Kingpin

• 9’ 0” longboard
• Performance oriented hull shape changing from concave in the nose to flat through its waist to a mild vee at the tail. 
• Set up as a 2+1.

“Lydia”

• The original old school, 9’ 6” longboard
• 60/40 rails
• Retro hull shape
• Set-up as a single fin

The Boom Stick

• An ‘homage’ to the westcoast logging industry
• 11’ 6” stand-up paddleboard
• 4” thick and almost 30” across

The Bonfire (designed by my 9 year old son)

• A low rocker skimboard,
• made from scraps and off cuts
• laminated to marine plywood, glassed and polished

"Lydia"....the other woman

Why Lydia you ask?  Well, I was doing my best at impersonating a wallflower at Erin's Christmas party when I overheard her speaking with a group of nurses.  She was commenting at how I spent 'too much time' with the 'surfboard' and referred to it as 'The Other Woman'.  I was stunned, shocked, perhaps even aghast.  I had taken such great care to ensure that it didn't come to this.  I did the dishes, fixed the kids lunches and even cleaned the bathrooms a few times so that my afternoons and evenings spent in the garage wouldn't be miscontrued as trying to avoid time with her.  Besides, I thought it was a great way for me to get out of Erin's hair while she studied.  But there it was, all that was beautiful about this wooden surfboard was dashed upon the rocks.  I felt dirty, the thought that Erin felt this surfboard would replace her.  I had to think quick.  There was no need for Erin to feel threatened by the surfboard.  So I blurted out, "Baby, you don't have to feel threatened by 'Lydia' she's just a friend."  I smiled at her, she rolled her eyes and chuckled, and smiled back.  Who could feel threatened by Lydia.  We didn't know any Lydia's.  I don't know of any movie stars or models named Lydia.  By naming the surfboard Lydia I somehow managed to remove any glamour or sexiness from this so-called 'other woman' therefore removing any guilt I once had with continuing to spend time with her.  But pictures say a thousand words and I think in her own special way she is both glamorous and sexy....

“The Journey, not the arrival matters.” –T.S. Elliot

In the past I have lamented about the beauty of wood, how it can be shaped, and molded and finished.  I still find it amazing that you can transform a tree into a chair or a salad bowl, or in this case, a surfboard.  But wood is fallible, it can check and warp, snap and burn.  For my brother and his wife they became all too aware of the failings of wood.  Less than two weeks ago, Trevor, and his wife Erin (strange but true), lost everything in a house fire.  Not to worry, they both got out without a scratch, but the shock of losing everything in an instant still lingers.  But with every tragedy, comes hope and eventually happiness.  They have been amazed with the generosity of the people.  Within hours they had donations of furniture, clothes, gift cards and even accommodation.  Later in the week, amidst the rubble and debris both managed to find a few items left relatively unscathed; letters, some scattered photos, and a bamboo fly rod.  Now with insurance they can get new furniture, cutlery and television set, but mementos and keepsakes can never be replaced.  These objects have so much sentiment and emotion attached to them that money just can’t buy.  But tokens of the past serve only to remind us of those events that we felt were important to us or our families, the items themselves had really nothing to the do with the path we took.  Memories of those events are still as strong and as important to our lives as they were when their respective ‘memento’ was sitting on our mantle or hanging on the wall. 

I know that’s the real reason why I loved building this surfboard and can’t wait to build another.  Without sounding too much like Yoda, it’s not the surfboard, but how I got there and the emotion I experienced along the way that was really important.  It’s the look on your faces when you see the board up close that I get a kick out of.  It’s the time I spent with Stu and Lana laboring over the details of board or the late night/early morning when I stripped the clamps off the board with Glen that was really significant. Even last Friday night, when I glassed the board with my wife Erin looking on and counting down the minutes I had left till the epoxy set up was memorable.  I would have to say that the best part about building the board was the time I spent building the board.  So maybe I should build a few more….

For the love of wood...

So in order to build one of these things you need wood, lots of wood.  Ok, maybe not a lot of wood, but it seems like a lot because it’s frigging thin and in some case more than 12 feet long.  Now I have a wood guy.  And, I am sure some of you have your own special ‘guy’ that is able to hook you up with something or some service, at a great price.  And those of us who have a ‘wood guy’ or a ‘car guy’ or a ‘cable guy’, have a hard time giving that guy’s name to someone else for so many reasons.  The primary reason being the fear of him no longer giving you the smoking deal you have been accustomed to because he is giving all of your friends deals since you were stupid enough to give out ‘your guy’s’ name.  So I will only tell you this about my wood guy, he’s cheap, he has reclaimed wood that’s been sourced locally, and he is located somewhere in the 250 area code.

Now I have been building furniture, among other things, for a long time and I hate planing wood.  But, in order to make these surf and paddleboards the wood has to be no more than ¼ inch thick.  So when you purchase 3/8” thick lumber you inevitably create a lot of shaving and sawdust during the process of milling down those thicker boards.  Now, when I first looked into making a wood surfboard I did so believing that this was a “green” and “eco-friendly” endeavor.  And, I guess technically it is.  Trees can re-grow so it’s sustainable, and since the blank is wood, not foam, there is less reliance on petrochemical by-products (we still can’t get away without using fiberglass and polyurethanes).  But the fact remains that I am left with a ton of wood shavings and scraps no matter how frugal I am with materials.  So what that means is right now I have about 3 garbage bags of shavings , and ½ a chord of cedar kindling, so if you own a hamster or use a wood stove have I got a deal for you.

Sawdust and bundled kindling

The actual build is pretty straightforward.  It’s pretty much like building an airplane wing.  There are a number of ribs and a center spar and on that ‘skeleton’ we attach the top and bottom decks, along with the rails to create the surfboard blank.

Ribs and spar prior to being glued up

Ribs and spar ready for decking

Perhaps the most finicky part was railing the board.  The process is borrowed from ship building and is called the ‘strip and feather’ method.  Ideally each rail strip has a tongue and a groove (we in the biz call it a bead and cove).  These are interlocked around the rib to shape the rails of the board.  The tedium comes with waiting for glue to cure each time you lay up one rail strip.  Some quick math for you…

Ribs glued to bottom deck, starting the railing process

…11 rails strips per rail (left and right), 1 hour to lay up 2 rails (one on each side), 2 hours for glue to cure, that right 33 hours to rail a board…this time commitment comes on the heels of me inadvertently using the ‘slow cure’ adhesive, not the ‘fast cure’ to glue the bottom deck to the ribs and spar.  Slow cure requires 7 days to cure, fast cure requires 24 hours.  Note to self, use only the fast cure from now on…

Railed board and fin block installed

Once the board is railed blocking is added for the vent plug and fin box.  I did this while waiting for glue to dry.  The vent plug is so the board doesn’t blow apart.   Since it’s hollow there will be a difference in pressure inside and outside the board that needs to equalize or else….KABOOM… I am putting in a fin box because a glassed on fin doesn’t seem practical and kind of scares me a little.  Speaking of fins, Christmas came early when I received the call from Scott at Island Longboards that my fins were in.  I found some replica’s of the Velzy style wooden skeg fins that are thick and weigh a ton and look frigging cool so since this board is fairly retro I figured we should keep the fins pretty classic as well.

Sweet wood fins

Chances are if you are reading this and it’s not New Years Eve yet, I am probably still waiting for glue to cure.  The top deck is on and clamped up and the petrochemical by-products are doing their thing.  In addition to adhering the deck to the frame these petrochemicals may also cause impotence with prolonged exposure.  Thank god I have two kids...

Toy guns to Surfboards

I would like to welcome you and thank you for coming to my blog.  I have always wanted a blog and only just now found something I feel was 'blog worthy'.  I have decided to build not one, but several hollow wood surfboards and paddleboards in my garage and it's my hope that this blog will chronicle the process.  But knowing me, it's likely (and also my hope) that it ends up being more than just that.

For the love of wood...

Most of you know that I have a secret, OK not so secret, love affair with wood.  It all began when I was just a boy and my parents wouldn't let me buy or even play with toy guns.  So I stuck it to them and built a M111A sub machine gun out of wood scraps when I was 9.  But it wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I really honed my craft.  I obsessed over tools for quite a while and amassed quite a nice quiver of clamps, planes, chisels and power tools.  It was a great hobby that went completely awry, and out of that hobby 'Splinters' was created.  And, it's this side 'gig' of mine that has provided me an outlet for this obsession I have with all things wood.  It's my own 'dark passenger' only its really not so dark.  In fact a lot of good things have come out of it like this...


"The McDowell Beach Chair" (2010)



"Uncle Chips" Sideboard (2010)

Surfing the Great Lakes...

It was in grade 10, when my interest for toy guns had waned and my interest in grade 11 girls had waxed, that I saw the movie "North Shore".  Kid from the mid-west heads to Hawaii to surf the big waves.  It really spoke to me.  Especially since I grew up in the Toronto suburbs and the idea of surfing in the tropics seemed so cool, so awesome, so totally Rad!  But I think it was the movie "Point Break" that really sparked my interest in the surfing culture, so much so that the year it was released I did my OAC (grade 13 in Ontario) Physics paper on the hydrodynamics of surfing.  The following year when it was released on video, I wrote my first year Social Psych paper on the surfing sub-culture.  But again as a kid in Ontario, surfing just wasn't an option.  So I windsurfed.  And it kicked ass and in 1992 the chicks dug it. 

Here's where it all comes together....

Fast forward to the present and I have tried surfing, I own a surfboard, it's big, it's plastic, it's named Bertha.  I have ridden a wave on it and I have even turned it once or twice.  It's quite a haul to drag the entire family to Tofino to surf selfishly on the west coast.  But this summer hanging out with the Hoars in Kelowna there it was...


1987 Alpha 190 sailboard and 1968 grey owl canoe paddle

Paddleboarding. I know, it's just like me to jump on the bandwagon but it's fun and when Breckin spent 8 hours a day doing it, I knew we had to have one (or several).  So it was right then and there that I decided to build one (OK maybe not right then and there, but whatever).  But to build a 12 foot paddleboard seemed a little scary.  Especially since my buddy Glen (fellow bandwagon jumper, and cottage cowboy), also wanted one.  Now, to build two 12 footers seemed over the top.  I needed to practice on something smaller, less intimidating.  Enter Stu and Lana.  Two local surfers, among other things, that could help me with the process of building a smaller board.  So with the Internet I was able to find software to design a board in 3D and one afternoon we designed a 9' 6"  old school longboard.  The only thing left to do was build the goddamn thing.