A Fed Bear Is A Dead Bear: Marilyn's longboard

Marilyn's longboard!

So I haven't documented making this board at all til now, but as you can see... it's shaped! this one is for my friend Marilyn (did I spell that right?). She wanted a big longboard that floats super well and catches waves with ease, so that's what this guy is. It's 9'2" long and 3.25 inches thick in the middle, so this guy will float! Details on it - it's 22.75 inches wide at the wide point, which is 3 inches back from the center point of the board lengthwise.

The board is pretty similar to a noserider, with lots of the same features and design concepts, as noseriders are meant to be floaty and trim nicely. The rails are pretty round, 50/50 or 60/40 ish, throughout the middle, which will keep it floaty, and be forgiving on turning and not all quick and sensitive/unforgiving, so this will help out Marilyn. In the back 2 feet or so, the rails are still 50/50 ish, but the board is thinner, so they are a bit more knifey. I kept the rails rounded up on the bottom in the back so that the water will suction up the rails, and essentially pull the back end down into the water more. The other end of the spectrum of this would be to have the rails have a harder down edge which would then cause the water to break away from teh board easily, no suction force would really occur, and it would facilitate turning a lot easier/be more high-performance longboard style. No high performance turning features seemed necessary for Marilyn as that's not what she's looking for. The front of the board has beveled up rails on teh underside, since i went ahead and put in a 1/2" deep concave up in the nose of the board in case Marilyn feels like walking the nose someday, or if anyone else is riding it and wants to give it a shot; the board will help facilitate that. The concave on the underside of the nose causes turbulence as teh water passes under, which creates an upward force from the water, creating lift, so when you're up on the nose, it doesn't just nosedive. The concave side edges just help the rider have some control and steer while on the nose, and give the board some traction. The rounded up edges in the back of the board that create suction, and suck the back end down, also helping keep the nose from nosediving as it creates some lift in the front end, even when the rider is not back on the tail end. I kept the bottom center of the board flat to just keep it stable and steady. in the tail end on the bottom, there's a slight V shape, or reverse concave, which will help facilitate some turns and make it easier to lean to one side of the board when the rider does want to turn. The top of the board is flat. simple. not much else to the board. The tail and nose rocker are pretty standard, not too flat or kicked or anything, as Marilyn doesn't want to be nosediving too easy or having some odd feature that doesn't help her out.

Umm, the board is an EPS foam board, and was my first time using this stuff. It's 100 percent recycled foam is the same foam as the styrafoam beer coolers you buy for one use and then toss. Hopefully they got tossed into a recycling can and are now a surfboard. This company takes that foam and steams it (no chemicals, another plus), and compresses it to a rough surfboard shape. Then it's in the shop and being sold. Same shaping techniques go into this foam as with PU foam, except this stuff is a bit harder to work with. It tears a bit easier as the beads of foam are bigger than standard polyurethane foam, so you just have to go slower in the end and it takes more finishing time. Fine with me, but a bit more difficult still. Oh and it's lighter and more buoyant than normal PU foam (barely), but will again facilitate to Marilyn more.

So these pics show that the board is shaped and taped up and ready to be glassed! Hopefully doing this tomoorrow, I just need a helper and Mel's got these finals and work going on, so we'll see! Ummmmm, more progress to come. Oh yea, foam is obviously way way way quicker than wood (started this foam board about 2 or 3 weeks ago and been just working on it off and on, ha).