History   |   Lumber   |   Milling   |   Glue Up   |   Shaping   | Making Fins History As a ten year old growing up in Orange County in the mid 50's I helped a neighbor unload a car full of lumber into his garage. It turned out to be a load of balsa wood and I got to help with building the first surfboard I had ever seen from start-to-finish. Sweeping up the mess and fetching tools was mostly my contribution. Upon smelling the freshly cut wood and polyester resin I was hooked. It was four years later that I began surfing and my first surfboard naturally was a used balsa wood Hobie. Through the years I've owned countless foam surfboards that rode well but never compared to the beauty of wood. I've always pursued woodworking as an avocation after taking wood shop in junior high and high school, later majoring in Wood Technology at Fullerton College and Industrial Arts at California State University Long Beach. For most of the last 31 years I worked for a local fire department before retiring. Along the way my 'day's-off' time was spent surfing San Onofre, Church's and Trestles, working with friends or family on various endeavors, building or fabricating whatever needed to be built or fabricated.   The fantasy of making and riding my own balsa wood surfboard would come and go and frequent visits to lumber yards never yielded a source for imported balsa wood.  I made this a reality after finally acquiring a source for wood and building my first wood surfboard in 1990. I now work alone in a small shop without much distraction drawing from my experiences, influences and formal technical training, applying my skills in the making of fine wood surfboards. This work has become my passion!  I build one surfboard at a time from rough lumber for the surfboard collector wanting a pristine "wall hanger" and/or occasional sweet riding balsa wood classic for those few epic days at a local point break or secret spot. However, those who acquire a wood surfboard for a collection will no doubt never ride it, becoming a focal point proudly displayed on a living room wall. This is a small operation where only wood surfboards are made by hand from imported rough balsa wood lumber. I recently began making a fitted satin-finished hardwood wallhanger rack that compliments each surfboard. The wallhanger rack is designed for interior wall, or suspended-from-ceiling display. Presently, I have two balsa wood surfboards available. They are displayed at Rocky's Surf City here in San Clemente [100 South El Camino Real, San Clemente, CA 92672, (949) 361-2946]. Each of these boards come complete with a fitted hardwood wallhanger rack. On your next visit to Southern California please stop in for a visit. [ Back to the top ] Lumber Waiting and waiting, and finally taking delivery of a bundle of balsa wood lumber. It's such a rush but now the work begins. Not all lumber is the same. Color and weight varies from board to board, bundle to bundle. It seems that no matter how selective and fussy I am when choosing lumber, the task begins all over again when it comes to matching "sticks" for a particular surfboard. Weight is the enemy but color and grain configuration are a prerequisite for my needs. A 9-foot Balsa with several stringers weighs about 30 lbs. after glassing with a gloss and polish finish and a single glassed on wood fin. [ Back to the top ] Milling Until rough-sawn lumber is surface planed it's anyone's guess what each stick looks like. Surface planing is also the first step taken to ensure perfect glue joints between sticks and stringers. Rocker isn't an accident. To ensure a specific rocker, each segment is cut using a rocker/thickness template. This hasn't always been the case however. Throughout the early 20th century wood surfboard rocker was limited to whatever a flat, glued up blank would yield. I have nothing but the utmost respect for those noble, skilled hand tool craftsmen who pioneered surfboard design and construction in the early years. They used a hand plane, drawknife and other hand tools to cut rocker into their surfboards, shaping such beautiful sought-after vintage and classic surfboards that now command a very respectable price. [ Back to the top ] Glue Up A 'glue up' isn't a quick and dirty, drippy process using glue and clamps to adhere several lengths of lumber and stringers together, side-by-side, all at one time, when building a blank. One segment at a time is glued to another; clamped and allowed to dry several hours. Then the clamps are released, glue is applied to another segment, and re-clamped for several hours. This process is repeated again and again until all of the components of a surfboard are glued together, completing the blank. This is very time-consuming and too impractical for most woodworking operations where profit margin is critical. I'm not into this for the money, anyway. I'm too busy enjoying what I do. This ensures good joinery and an accurate blank without the slightest hint of twist or wind that would otherwise need to be shaped out later. Of all my wood shop teachers, Ray Tolman is the one who taught me everything I needed to know to do woodworking without cutting corners or making "shit-shop" projects. Mr. Tolman, who taught at Fullerton College is held in high esteem by all those who studied under his direction. It recently discovered Ray Tolman alive and well, operating a woodworking shop in Evergreen, Colorado. He manufactures music stands. If that is also your interest please check his website at www.tolmanmusicstands.com. At one time in Ray's career he was a custom furniture maker in Santa Monica. He employed only the best journeyman woodworkers, building furnishings for the rich and famous, including Marilyn Monroe. Mr. Tolman always stressed the importance of good joinery, close attention to detail and tight glue ups, saying "You can never have too many bar clamps, even in the smallest of shops." [ Back to the top ] Shaping I won't apologize for not having shaped twenty thousand surfboards in my career before I began building balsa wood surfboards. It was just a matter of opportunity. For many years I've watched a long-time surfing friend, and one of the leading surfboard shapers, do his magic. Every board he shaped was incredible. I've ridden many and each board I ordered I was allowed to watch being shaped while we talked at length. On one occasion I inquired if he would shape a balsa wood surfboard for me, or at least teach me to shape. That was a mistake! After a long silence and critical stare he set his tools down, exhaled through his nose and politely declined, pointing to the door for me to leave. I often wonder if he realized I was absorbing some of the basics of shaping 1A over the years while watching him work. I was shattered! The look on his face was as if I, his most trusted friend from our early years of surfing Doheny, had just snaked from him the wave of the day. Where could I run and hide? That was a turning point for me. Suddenly I was jealous that I didn't have that talent, and a little humiliated for crossing the line. As I strolled out of his shaping room for the last time I turned and said, "then I'll have to go somewhere else to learn to do my own magic!". We have remained friends, however, but we never discuss the subject of surfboard making. After beating my head against the wall, ruining numerous blanks over the years, bribing my so-called friends to just try out one of my crummy boards, asking dumb-ass questions of people who would rather not share their many years of shaping experience with the likes of me, I finally connected with a big-hearted master shaper! He too has been a friend for many years, and to me a spiritual giant. It never occurred to me he would be a willing teacher of his shaping expertise. We never traded waves due to our age difference, but he shares his methods of shaping, and I for the most part, will always be a student, and he my mentor, much like Ray Tolman was when I studied woodworking in college. I now pride myself shaping beautiful balsa wood surfboards as if my long-time friends and teachers are looking over my shoulder, giving critical advice but not admitting that they're stoked that I can apply what they have taught me.  By the time I have pulled lumber from storage, done the initial machine milling and bandsawing, carefully chosen each stick for a particular board, glued the blank and completed shaping, I've invested close to 35-plus hours. Another 4-5 hours of hand sanding and the blank is ready for the glasser. Back to the top ] Making Fins I build my own fins from whatever hardwood that color matches the stringer and/or balsa wood combination I've chosen for a particular surfboard. Making surfboard fins is actually not difficult as long as you don't mind the mess, and the noise and dust from all of the sanding. This must be done outside unless you have a dust collection system. I've been making fins this way since Mr. Meyer's high school wood shop class at Orange High School in the mid-sixties. The wood shop teacher let us unruley 'surfer-types' make surfboard fins in class for extra credit. The scrap hardwood was put to good use that otherwise was thrown out, so it was good for the environment too. Most surfboard fins made in schools at that time were made up with at least five or six different hardwoods as we were all copying something we saw on a board at the beach or in the surf magazines. I tore the fin off of my first balsa Hobie and replaced it right away, and did the same thing on my Wardy several times, just to glass on the latest fad-fin design. Soon I was doing the same for friends, along with taking on pigment jobs and ding repair. I even had an informal partnership with a friend. We pigmented friends' surfboards in his garage and made gas money for rides to the beach. My friends and I thought making a surfboard heavier with a thick coat of pigment was a better nose rider. It definiely made running away from Camp Pendleton MPs at Trestles more difficult so some of us resorted to storing our heavy, antiquated boards in a tree between Lowers and Church One weekend they all were stolen. There are several hardwoods from which I try to make fins because they either match up with a board I'm working on, were generally preferred in the 1960's so I consider them "classic fin-making hardwoods", or a particular tropical exotic hardwood like Spalted Mango or Curley Koa. I also use Walnut, Mahogany, Basswood, and Ash. Once the fin is glued up, cut out, and foiled, I do final sanding by hand. Then the entire wood surface area is "pasted" with a styrene-thinned hot batch of laminating resin and set aside to dry for a day for two in preparation for being laminated. The clear glass bead is laid up, and both sides of the fin are glassed with two layers of 6 ounce cloth, and later hot coated with sanding resin. More hand-sanding is done in preparation to be glassed onto the surfboard. Sounds easier than it really is, and a little messy too.   [ Back to the top ]

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