Waveyarder SUP Takes Shape

There aren't many of us that can build a SUP from scratch with wood. Andy Gere is one of the few who has designed, crafted and is almost finished building this labor of love, his first standup paddleboard. Here are the first two post on my blog from last November and December. What follows is the status of the Waveyarder now...in Andy's own words.

Shaping the rails, old school style. I'm going 60-40 ish for the front 2/3s, transitioning to down rails near the tail. I've tucked them under a bit per advice from Doug Haut.

It helps to have something that works as a reference nearby. The key is slow and steady, and try to match the rail bands shaped on each side.

The shaping stands really work well. On edge here for some fine tuning.

After dry fitting the deck planks, I decided to pre-feather them to make it easier to bend them when gluing the deck down. The spokeshave is a tool I really like.

Where does the deck end, and the rail begin? That's the idea...

I gave the innards a quick coat of polyurethane, to prevent any moisture from swelling the planks or ribs. The under side of the deck gets a coat of epoxy rolled on, to seal and strengthen it from the inside.

I taped off the rails to keep the epoxy squeeze out from staining the rails. It worked, but more on this in a later post.

Clamp-O-Rama! I refit the rocker table with all-thread at each station, so no more pesky shims. I used thinner top clamps this time, to get them to bend around the rails. This worked well in most places, getting the feather edge of the top planks to glue down tight to the feathered rails. Wedges were used to force the deck down to the fishbone, which was liberally coated with thickened epoxy, as were the rails inside of the tape line. Lot's of epoxy=strong bond. Nancy helped me steam the planks using the wet towel and cloths iron technique as we tightened each clamp. We worked outward from the center, and despite the over-dry redwood and wicked compound curves, none of the planks split.

Spring clamps secured the nose and tail, and bar clamps helped get the edges down in between the station clamps. It worked pretty well, but there are a few spots with minor gaps along the edge. Nothing some more time with the block plane and sander won't cure.

Clamps off, ready to start feathering the deck to the rails. There's a step of at least 1/8 inch all the way around. I left more at the nose and tail, since these will get lopped off in favor of nose and tail blocks anyway.

See the surfboard, be the surfboard. Yeah, I got up there and paddled a few strokes...

Stay tuned for more,

Giapetto out.