Testing my GoPro wrist strap

Finally pulled together the test footage I've collected with my home-made GoPro wrist strap this summer. It's most certainly not a cinema quality effort but I have learnt a fair bit from it! In short I can say the following:

• Video is rarely successful when you're facing the sun
• Longboarding on clean waves seems to give the smoothest footage
• Bodyboarding requires an extension to raise the camera higher if you want to avoid splashback
• Mixing resolutions and frame-rates results in some major headaches when it comes to exporting your film!
• To get the best quality some nice weather helps.
• The wide angle lens makes the waves seem a lot smaller honest!

Last Roy Stewart board update

Home straight for this board now so this will be the last build update before it's finished! All the uneven joins have been levelled now and all the epoxy filler sanded back. Find have been finished and places have been marked out on the base for them. All that's left hopefully is to drill out some holes to mount the fins in, sand the whole board up to a fine grit, burn on some design and oil her up. One productive weekend should be all it takes but as usual that can't be promised!

Photo book, 14 months in the making

I know I haven't updated this in a while but I have been keeping myself busy honest! Few things I've been working on should be coming to fruition soon so will update when I've got some snaps. On the plus side though, the increasingly dark nights and god awful weather has meant I've finally gotten round to finishing my photo book of my exploits in Africa last August, it's currently winging its way over to me at the moment! I'm aware it has nothing to do with surfing but I'm very proud!

Africa 2011

Latest Wooden Sim Update

Home stretch now I think, board is all glued together now so hopefully it's watertight. Roughed the outline out, rails are still squared up at the moment. Dropped a bit of a bollock when it comes to the nose, didn't include enough wood in the nose to shape it as flat as I intended so had to make it slightly longer and with more of a pulled in nose than I planned. Looks to resemble more like a Firewire Sweet Potato than a mini sim now but to be honest I was planning to pull the nose in for my next evolution of the Jubilee Sim so not necessarily a bad thing, did give me a scare though! 

At any rate, essentially what I have at the moment, after many hours of work, is a surfboard blank! 

Also knocked up some fin blanks, these will need to be shaped then marked out on the board so I can route out some slots for them and glue in place. Then all that's left is to shape out the rails and give it a final sanding and oiling. Would still like to be able to surf this in my summer suit so time is running out!

Trying my hand at something new

I can be easily influenced and YouTube has been a terrible influence on me. At any rate after watching this video by Original Skateboards I felt my life was lacking a longboard and being that I had some spare ply kicking about I figured how hard could it be to build one of those? As it turns out probably not too difficult assuming you have the right tools. I didn't have the right tools and most certainly did not have the right wood! 

With a bottle of wood glue, some misshapen sheets of ply, a load of bricks, a jig-saw and plenty of mistakes I eventually had a board that resembled a longboard. Some heavy sanding, a disastrous attempt at making my own grip tape using sand and varnish later and the addition of a pair of trucks and a set of wheels later and she was complete.

As much to my surprise the board has snapped under usage yet and the combination of soft wheels and a pretty flexible (though fat) deck means this board is actually a pretty comfortable ride and quite the little carver even if she's not the easiest on the eye.

Undeterred though I've now gotten my hands on 7 sheets of maple ply, a bottle of Titebond III and a sheet of XPS foam (I have a cunning plan) so the mark II version should be much improved, watch this space!