Monday, 26 May 2014

Jonesys longest wave and the start of the longboard


Took a trip to Morocco in March, neatly timed to coincide with possibly the only flat spell in an epic winter. Fortunately on the Thursday I was there the swell picked up enough to warrant giving Immsouane point a look. After a decidedly dodgy descent into the town, engine breaking to compensate for burnt out breaks, we were confronted with 2 foot waves and a healthy crowd of longboarders. Figuring the Jubilee Sim would struggle to compete I decided to rent a longboard from a local shop, a Nat Young designed Bic (putting aside my usual disdain for Bic's). By the time I'd gotten in the water the swell had picked up to head height and the crowd had tripled in size. Nonetheless by sitting a little outside there were plenty of rides to collect of leg shaping length. Finally got to live out my ambition of a wave so long it's easier to come into the beach and walk back to the take-off point. This video is the longest of several minute long rides and pretty much inspired me to get home and build myself a longboard.


I'd already pretty much decided on the artwork long before the board came to mind, being a fan of the work of Two Crows surfboards for a long time, basically going to go wild with some resin tints and see how it goes.


And as for the actual board itself I'm going to try and copy the design aspects of the Walden magic model, he seems to talk a good game and I always like to try something different, what's the worst that could happen?

Thursday, 8 May 2014

Making Some Space With Another Board For Sale

Well I've been a bit slack with the blogging for a while, that darned vicious cycle of not updating but determined to get back in the game and got a lot of updates to catch up on. Now that the days are getting longer and I can get more work done I've decided to make some space in the garage by getting rid of some of my doublers so for anybody interested in a paipo the little yellow balsa number is up on eBay this week! Riding on the back of my new longboard incidentally. 




Sunday, 16 February 2014

Another Cobra Update

I can tend to suffer somewhat from a loss of attention, new ideas can quickly steal my attention away in a strange new direction. This has been the case recently, though the idea is not quite ready to be shared here yet though. Meanwhile the Cobra's have steadily been making progress, albeit slowly thanks in part to the atrocious weather we've had recently.

The frame is now glued down, nose block has been attached and rail strips are progressing nicely and importantly nothing too bad has gone wrong yet! In other news, the Shelby Cobra now has it's engine block painted and installed. Longest I've ever spent on an model kit.





Monday, 3 February 2014

Handplane handbags

Something about the winter that makes building some handplanes far more appealing, it's probably the fact that it takes a lot less time than a surfboard so I don't have to stay out in the cold for so long. I can be a bit of a wimp.

This year, inspired by an article on http://www.korduroy.tv/, I decided to knock up some little waterproof handbags to carry them. This is the first attempt, made out of one of my old shirts; yes I take my fashion very seriously.


Sunday, 26 January 2014

Short trip through the Italian and Swiss Alps in a Lotus Elise

Well only four months after my trip to the Alps in the Lotus I've finally pulled all my clips together. If anybody is looking for a trip away from the ocean I can highly recommend bombing around some mountain passes in a sports car!