New Year New Board

Now that The Coffee Table has been completed I've finally got a bit of time to get started on the balsa bodyboard that's been on the cards for the last few months. Namely a solid balsa bodyboard with some dark wood stringers.

I managed to get hold of five balsa planks from a supplier of wood for wooden aircraft which I teamed up with some unspecified hardwood that I bought at local DIY store Homebase. As sod would have it the hardwood planks were slightly too short to simply be cut in half and were slightly too narrow to be used as was so I ended up having to buy 5 planks, split one in to four then cut and glue the strips to match the balsa planks.

The original plan was to create a chambered balsa paipo based on the design of my Catch Surf Beater board, primarily because the five planks teamed up roughly matched the size of the Beater board, however as board wasn't especially thick I decided that the benefits in weight reduction weren't worth the reduction in structural integrity so a solid beast she shall remain.

The shape of the board is based on The Jubilee Sim board with a slightly more pulled in nose and slightly straighter outline. One thing that I'm looking forward to with this board is playing around with concaves and channels that would be a lot more complicated to replicate with a hollow wooden board.

The deck of this board for example will have a very pronounced concave to allow for comfortable lying position and am also planning on integrating a hand rail around the edge to allow greater control. The deck on the other hand will have a mix of concaves, belly and channels, again similar to the Beater board. My intention is for the board to be primarily finless but will be creating two small single FCS plug compatible fins for some extra control should it be necessary.

At any rate this is a board that I'm very much looking forward to seeing come to fruition, she hasn't been a cheap acquisition so far so I need to take my time in the build to keep her as perfect as possible but I get the feeling she's going to be quite a looker when she's finished!