Spiral V

I was really excited when I saw this as Martin Geary made me a 6’6”  spiral V round pintail back in 1979.

Here is an Outer Limits  7’0” Spiral V single wing pin from “Gearbox” in great condition with a textured deck, for renovation…

    

Last shape of 2011

Hugh’s 6’10” Atlantic POD… Bernoulli concaves and cheeky tail. I LOVED shaping this board.

    

Rising Sun

    

Domo Arigato.

    

From left to right: 6’4” original FreakFish; 5’11” Rising Sun FreakFish; 5’8” Spinner EVO4; 6’0” Fukushima Porpoise EVO4; double wall HD custom cardboard 0203 box, 1” EPS sheeting, recycled bubble wrap and plastic for internal packaging from Zuma Jays… strapping from NS... thanks to all for their help with these… especially Jason, Daz, Adam, Chris and Nigels… but mostly to Hajime for the order.

Domo Arigato.

+ 40

THE 5 ol guys who opened my eyes… from left to right: Steve, Tres, Tim Elsner, Bruno, and Mark… somewhere in N. Sumatra.

Thanks.

Big 40

Great article in my favourite online magazine, Drift

Some people in life simply inspire, and for me Malcolm is one of those.

Love, respect, peace.

Reuse recycle…

Was getting ready to pack up the 4 boards for Japan and thought it would be good to reuse/recycle some old packaging rather than buy new… so offset my carbon trail to Bude with the help of Nigel at Zuma Jay’s who kindly supplied enough used bubble wrap to do all four boards and pack the rails and fins.

Nilposte

Ok so nil posts for a while… my excuse is that you must all be bored with seeing the Rising Sun by now… so many processes! SO i decided to wait until it was finished to post the final set.
After the deconstruction i did some inkwork, including some brush pinlines. It then sat around for a while waiting for some gloss and then finally had its fins tickled with the buffing pad. The rest of the polishing will happen next week before it all gets packed up for the journey East.
For me it has been a real journey, working with resin in an artistic way I hadn’t tried before. It was time consuming but I have to say I love the effect, and I have the pleasure of knowing all the hours that went into it.
So rather than post another Rising Sun from another angle – here’s something from a way back… me surfing one somewhere in the Caribbean BACK IN 1997…
  

Deconstruct

Deconstruction complete… a little ink-work to follow and the Rising Sun will be ready for gloss.

Spot the dots

Every now and again one of Malcolm’s customers orders a board with an opaque resin tint… sometimes this obscures the fin placement dots; fortunately the positions are well known to me.

Here’s a lovely opaque orange Bonzer 3 light vehicle... fins in the right place (another beer please Mr Penwarden).

More resin…

Todays resinations…Black resin pinlines, then a copper bronze resin-wash… ready for some serious deconstruction and inkwork next week…

 

To gloss or not?

The Rising Sun resin band is coming together nicely, just lots of time consuming stages with waits in between… today saw the the copper bronze cigar bands go on (love metallic pigments!), tomorrow some textural translucent copper bronze, and hopefully black pinlines, time allowing.

I’m loving how it is looking and now even a bit nervous about “deconstructing” it… and NOT glossing it… really?

  

Rising Sun resin band…

 

Rising Sun resin band underway... I always underestimate how long these take; this one is particularly complex... red complete, copper bronze to add, followed by some “deconstruction”, a little ink, and pinlines to finish... its going to be a few more days!

EVO3 from Glass Tiger

This was Mark’s first bonzer longboard, done a while back and one of the first boards we collaborated on… although my help was pretty much limited to the EVO3 bonzer template, angles and positioning.

Beautiful wood – walnut fins I think (correct me if I’m wrong Mark).

Mark and I still have a board in the pipeline, a kevlar carbon FreakFish but he’s been pretty busy so you won’t be seeing it anytime soon unless I get some wood and a vacuum bag!

Rising-Sun

I am so excited about this board – there is a lot going on with it and it represents some tweaks that I have wanted to add for a while, the hull nose, carbon reinforced rail in the tail, extra 10% inside foil on the rear fins, and Bernoulli concaves… next it gets really fun as I am starting the Rising Sun artwork, which will be a deconstructed resin-band-inkwork combo… maybe pinlines too. Domo arigato Hajime.

  

Bonzer kayak

A while ago a guy named David Willer contacted me about making a bonzer kayak and wanted some help on fins angles hulls etc. – here’s what he made and where you can see more… http://willersurfcraft.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-production-black-swan-by-murky.html 

Beautiful craftsmanship.

Foils of The Rising Sun

These are Hajime’s fins for his Rising Sun FreakFish. American Ash bonzer runners together with aircraft ply and glass layup for the rear FreakFish cut-aways… 

A complex foil to hand shape, but rewarding.

   

Slip slide glide

Just caught Lee’s blog post on the Joker… lovely to have a review by a well respected longboarder, and someone who has never ridden a bonzer before as it brings a totally new perspective to some of the traits I now take for granted. Thanks Lee.

What got me started…

Moi | Stevie J | Bruno | Mark | Tim E… and a little article in Surfer back in 1970 something!

Banyak boat trip. Bonzers only (and 2 McCoy Nugget singlefins)…

My first ever bonzer wave on Stevie J’s 6’4” Gary Hanel 5 fin performance swallow… couldn’t believe how fast the thing was! Shame the pic is so blurred but you get the idea.