There was blood, sweat, but no tears!

Today was, in my opinion, the hard part. The glue down of the frame to the planking. This board in particular was a challenge because of the deep double concave in the tail.

After much thought and testing, I reached out to the guys at Grain Surfboards and Mike from Grain was kind enough to help me out. His suggestion was to steam the wood using a big wet towel and an iron. From my experiments with this, this seems to keep more heat/moisture in the wood than other steaming methods I have tried. So, a big thank you to Mike!

So, tonight I enlisted in the help of my sweetie, Melanie and we started steaming and gluing and bending and pressing the frame into the wood. She now knows a lot more about putting a clamp down on a wooden surfboard.... So anther big thank you to Melanie!

Anyway, the planking is pressed into the frame with a generous layer of 5200 and my contours look awesome. Next part is to let it cure for a couple days and then start b/c stripping the rails.

Bonzer glued down from the tail:


Soft, curved Bonzer underbelly...


Red cedar curves:


View from the nose: