I caught up with the famous Bob Green (bgreen on this forum), as he had recently shaped a paipo. Bob can probably explain a bit about the origins and design principles he was aiming at achieving. so I have volunteered to glass the board and thought it would be worth showing a few of the steps in that process.
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Thanks Harry for both the thread and the offer of glassing. Not so sure about the famous bit.
Ok, the back story. I was walking to my car after a surf and see a guy with a broken longboard. He was trying to break the fins out. He asked if I wanted the tail half, I declined, as I didn't think my wife would be too keen, on more board stuff. The next day, I had a surf and here is the tail section still lying by the bin. I stand the broken board against my board and they are the same height, so I thought recycling the board would be a good project.
A couple of issues. The end of the broken section was quite thick, which would make for a too chunky tail, so I scooped out the deck and made a thinner tail. I've never had a board with a crescent shaped tail, so I thought, why not. The bottom, was a copy of another board, with a rail chine and wings, so it could be ridden finless. Double concave and a slight vee in the tail. This was my first shaping attempt, made difficult by the foam being soft/poor quality, the deeper I sanded. In some places the foam came off evenly, in other places it gouged and didn't sand smoothly.
Either way, it is an experiment and recycled what would have become landfill.
I also installed a leash plug at 12" from the nose (Bob's request), I have added a couple of photos of the install process. I will probably post this up on my instagram with a timelapse video at some stage if you are interested ( insta handle: hg_mercurysurf)
Looks like the board will fall apart before the plug comes out. My plugs usually are 90 degrees to the stringer, so it will be interesting to see if this direction works better. The more important experimental part is the tail. Lots to ponder over on this one.
Ted wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 10:08 pm
Looks like fun! Just hide it out back so wifey won't notice.
My wife will be ok with the finished board. She wasn't enthused about half a broken board from the side of the road. The aesthetics will be all due to Harry, my shaping errors will be well concealed.
I had about 10 days surfing to test the board. It went way better than I thought it would: catches waves easily, handles a steep drop, holds an edge in the barrel and turns well. One thing I was less sure about was that it didn't seem to plane as well as my other boards. However, when I rode a wave with more power on the takeoff I found it planed well. I reckon the board needs a more powerful/larger wave to really get going. Overall, a success. An interesting feature was the fine nose. I noticed on waves with a really steep takeoff that it had a bit of flex if I pulled up on it. I look forward to more testing. Thanks again Harry.
