What’s a California carpenter to do when the chips are down, and surf is up?  When he’s got too much time on his hands, and a garage full of wood scraps?  What else – build a wooden surfboard! 

Like a lot of carpenters, I tend to save more scraps than I will ever use in this lifetime.  So when I set out to build a surfboard for the first time ever, I didn’t buy a chunk of foam.  Instead I rummaged through my scrap pile, and began making plans.

Redwood 2-by lumber left over from a custom gate looked like it could be shaped into rails.  Some 1/8″ oak veneer plywood from a cabinet resurface looked perfect for ribs – with a little stiffening from some thin strips of cedar and a dose of I-joist technology, that is.  A cedar fenceboard run through the table saw also yielded a few planking strips, and some old redwood bender board looked handy too. 

Hey, how about this nice Honduras Mahogany from that custom entry door?  A bit heavy, but not in tiny doses.  Maybe just a little 1/4″ accent strip, eh?  There we go.  And now, all these little pieces of redwood, alder, pine, poplar, whatever and what-not, bet I could piece in a fancy deck design to use them up!  OK, now it’ll need some fins.  There’s some beauties available, ready-made.  But why waste those perfectly good scraps of plywood?  And this closet-pole dowel looks just the right size to anchor those fin-attachment plugs!

So there it was, from scrap-pile to surf-craft.  But before I could hit the beach, I had to surf the internet for some finishing solutions.  A few very helpful forums for wood surfboard builders (one website calls ’em “a splinter group”) provided the answers to help a novice fiberglasser get through the tricky process.  A simple brass screw in a threaded insert made for a low-tech pressure relief valve, in case the weather gets warm while sitting in drydock.

First time out in the surf proved the vessel a worthy seacraft, except for one performance drawback – operator error!  Other than that, I consider it the finest piece of driftwood ever to wash up on the beach, with a kook in tow!

You can see over 300 photos of this project at http://eyemagination.smugmug.com/Craftsmanship/hollow-wooden-surfboard/10118158_6wPHf#696186038_Q3gUQ

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