Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Surfboard Number 001

Right from when I was a grommet up at Mt. Maunganui and seeing Jim Carney and Mike Murden shaping in their factories I was always keen to one day have a go at making a surfboard myself. 30 years later I finally got around to having a go. A Nelson friend Noah Hosie gave me an old board he had made down south years ago. After reading in MP’s biography about how he would take an old dunga and tear of the glass and reshape them into his revolutionary designs, I thought I would have a go at that myself. When last up The Mount and visiting old friend Daryn McBride I took a template off one of the boards he had there for his kids. Now I was into it... I drew the outline on Noah’s old board and took to it with a saw cutting off all the excess. Then I carefully peeled and scraped off the glass skin. By this stage I had been on You Tube getting a few tips on shaping. The old board was already quite thin so I didn’t have much room to play with while shaping, and it had a glass stringer which was very hard to shape without taking too much foam along side of it. I got there in the end and after a bit more You Tube it came time to get on with glassing. I glassed the bottom first using 6oz cloth, then the next day, after a bit of a tidy up I did the topside using 6oz with 3oz cloth for extra strength. When that had set, I gave it a sand to tidy things up then put on the sanding coats of resin on both sides. Once that had well set I gave things a good sand all over getting the boards surface smooth and nice and even. Then the tricky bit of getting the fins on and in the right place. After a bit of research I got them tacked into position, then went and glassed them on old style. Am not 100% sure of my fin placement, but they should be close enough and certainly aren’t going anywhere now. I never had a deck plug for the leggy so I made an old style one using rovings. So after a couple of weeks sneaking out after the kids are down, I had made my first ever surfboard... A 5’ x 17 1/2” x 1 1/2” Little Ripper! It was a great fun project, especially seeing it come along. Now it will be interesting to see how it goes!? ..........ooops oh yeah, I forgot to mention that its for my kids not me !!! haha. Regards and Happy Surfing. - Aaron Lyttle

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

..and the circus leaves town.

Aaaaaah thats right, yawn and stretch, breath a big sigh of relief as soon its time for all the holiday makers to leave town, heading home or back to school or whatever and leaving us poor  folk alone for yet another year of uncrowded waves.With no formidable swell forecast over the next week or so our flat spell will dissolve even the hardiest clingers-on . Sure it gets busy over summer but we all get rewarded again with the feeling of surfing the local breaks in the middle of the year with only a handful of guys out.
Remember theres always the east and west when the mouth starts to get dry.
(above): Somewhere south of Ward out east a couple of days ago. -photo:Jimmy Wright


Just When you thought it was over someone grabs you by the cucumber 🥒

What’s really going on .....