wood covered surf board

Frank Fusco

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Mountain Home, Arkansas
While in Hawaii, we saw a beautiful surfboard made from wood strips covering it. My daughter-in-law asked if I could make one like that. I said "no".
While I have no intention of trying, just thinking about the project has proven challenging. I know the inside is hard foam. Laying and fastening the strips would be challenging. They couldn't have spaces in between and must conform precisely to the shape of the foam. Plus, the strips would have to be quite thin to keep weight down. The one we saw used beautiful woods and was equally beautifully finished. Enney ideas on how this might have been done? Sorry, I didn't take a picture.
 
(The other) Frank beat me to it.

Looks like I need to change my signature!

I'm with you Jeff, for fiberglass it sticks to anything, wood needs attachment. I found it interesting on one of the articles he talked about the pressure differential between the inside and outside of the board. I would not of thought of that and my board would have blown up when I hit the waves.
 
(The other) Frank beat me to it. I don't thing they are foam cores. I don't see how you would attach the wood to foam.

I agree. Attaching wood to foam would be difficult, I believe. (no experience there, cain't say fer certain, fer sure)
Frank T's first link seems the logical way to do something like this. Downsides are that it would be heavy to carry and if it leaked would fill with water. That is why I, pretty much, presumed that the wood was laid around foam. We saw several shops that had foam cores all over the place waiting to be made into boards with some kinda skin outer.
 
Perhaps it was a hollow wooden board, filled up with expanding foam after it was made.

BTW, the original boards - about twelve feet long - were just that - boards. A single piece of wood that had to be that big to have enough flotation ability to keep the rider afloat. Balsa and other very light woods were also used.

Later, they were hollow cores - sorta like a totally skinned over kayak. Think of them as streamlined torsion boxes.

The advent of the foam forms really revolutionized the sport.

There used to be (probably still is) a surfing museum on Oahu that had examples of the board 'evolution' from early native planks thru the modern stuff. It also had a really good tribute display to Duke Kamehameha - one of the early 'greats' of the sport.
 
Not wanting to sound esceptic, but are you completely sure it was wood stripes on top of foam? I'm asking because nowadays they use a lot of serigraphied ( I think is spelled that way) paper or plastic that mimics exactly wood grain even the rugosity.
You can see it on artificial flooring and on cars.:dunno:
 
Not wanting to sound esceptic, but are you completely sure it was wood stripes on top of foam? I'm asking because nowadays they use a lot of serigraphied ( I think is spelled that way) paper or plastic that mimics exactly wood grain even the rugosity.
You can see it on artificial flooring and on cars.:dunno:

It was wood. On top of what, I don't know. It was very attractive and expertly done, however it was made.
 
In my travels to Hawaii, it seems that Duke Kahanamoku (most renound of the surfers of yore) rode a solid wood surfboard. Perhaps there is no core but massive wood structure, you seek. Prior to the foam board theyt were longer and more massive to support the rider's weight and mass.

My guess is that you will have to go back to Paradise for more research.
 
Frank, it might be that what you saw wasn't a surfboard, but a paddle board.

I owned both types. Lived on the beach in Malibu in the '60s and surfed. When I got married, our honeymoon cottage was on the Venice canals here in Los Angeles. I went out and paddled most mornings for exercise. I had a 14-foot wooden paddleboard. It must have weighed 60 pounds. Marine grade mahogany plywood, hollow over some kind of frame.

A paddle board is usually 12 feet or so. Much longer than a surfboard. One end is rounded and shallow.That is the front end. The back end is pointed, and lies deep in the water, acting as a keel to maintain the board in a straight line. So the determining characteristics of a paddle board are: a)unusual length, b) blunt front end, c)pointed rear end. The wooden ones often had a drain plug made of brass epoxied near the tail.

Much later when I worked at LAX airport, I bought a fiberglass and foam paddleboard. Again the extraordinary length is the telltale sign of this type board. While people do make surfboards and paddleboards in their garage, they use a foam 'blank' (costing hundreds of dollars) and then coat it with resin and glass after shaping the foam.

A wooden paddleboard you might see is almost certainly an antique. Valuable and fragile. It would be a no brainer to make one, and if you write to one of the surfer magazines, they may have a source for plans. Surfboards are always shorter and have skeg (a kind of rudder) underneath. A person couldn't maneuver a surfboard with a skeg to stabilize the board's path while standing on it. This isn't important on a paddleboard because you steer by paddling. A paddler always has his hands in the water.

Wood surfboards were used in the 40's and 50's in Hawaii and on the West Coast, but are almost always found only in museums or on display in a surf shop.

Gary Curtis
 
No surfers here I guess.:huh: Attaching wood to foam can't be that difficult... that's how it's done.

Modern surfboards are typically 2 pieces of foam glued to a stringer, or a couple of stringers... strips of wood (1/8") down the middle.
 
Foam and wood together would make a board that is too heavy to be useful. A 1/8 inch wood skin over struts is enough to make it float. The only wood surfboards were solid (usually redwood) timbers and weighed a ton.

My wooden paddleboard had shaped solid wood nose and tail. The mahogany skin was tacked to the curved sides. then everything was given a thin resin coating. Water leaked in at the seams, thus the drain cock.

I've never seen a modern wood surfboard. In my earlier post I mispelled a word. I should have written, " a surfboard must have a skeg to allow the turns and manuevers." Paddle boards don't have them because they are propelled in straight lines.

In a surfboard, the glass overlay is cured so that it laminates to the foam core (known as a blank). Would couldn't do that because it would buckle and lift. Resulting cavities inevitably fill with water, turning the board into a heavy log that is useless.

Gary Curtis
 
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