a short GLUE commercial

...this past winter ...after much research, we found a waterproof glue that would laminate our decks as hard as a rock and watertight ...we tested it in the snow, the rain and the slush, whatever conditions we could find... it worked great...this summer we tested it in the highly corrosive saltwater ocean and it held up with flying colors...I used this glue for all the experimental Alaias built, some were treated with linseed oil, and one (the "one") was even left bare (no sealer).....with no issues...

...lately there's been some broken alaia pictures posted ... if you look real close, you will noticed the wood (cedar) cracked on the grain and not on the glue seem...proving glue (laminating) adds strength... here's a quick clip of the broken alaia being surfed less then 12 hours after the glue up repair... its a testament to this stuff.....(the video itself is a testament to poor surfing and terrible point and shoot photography, my apologize's)

board : 6'0 swallow 19.5x.75 100% cedar (no fins, no foam)

nice art studio..old potato barns are the way to go for a work space... uncle steve

uncle steve's alaia, with "bowhunter" logo he drew by hand

alaia demo

jon is in the blue hat kneeling that rectangle is a 6'8" blank ...if you look real close you can see two handplanes, and a bellyboard...the bellyboard is so cool, very native..really feels ancient

...just recently I was lucky enough to meet a design hero Jon Wegener, maker of the finless ancient wooden plank ...the ALAIA. He was allowing surfers to demo his watercrafts, which were lined-up at the beach ... swell was a bit angry for an alaia but it was a fun morning and it was interesting to talk to Jon... his boards are beautiful...

one last note;

the wood they use is paulowonia (due to my career path I have many textbooks on wood, right at my fingertips and I can't find the correct spelling for that type of wood...its rather rare for north america ) which is an Australian wood that is dense and light and doesn't absorb water, ... amazing...., but the really miraculous part is that its so buoyant, it made my cedar board seem like a waterlogged piece of driftwood. And the great news is that Jon will sell blanks of this wood... at a significant cheaper price then a shaped one.. interesting... so if you have interest skip cedar and go with paulowonia... also I am going to try and get veneers of this stuff and experiment using it for snowskates....very exciting...thank you Jon

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swell fun

casper

Steve's cigar box (make me one stevo)

..."good evening" "blah" (dracula voice)

check the carpeted wax box..what a kook..

Steve's new paipo

...got the call friday that my older brother was coming out to surf on sat., we live in two seperate states so our sessions are less frequent...he mentioned that he liked the staten island paipo, so I decided to reshape it and give it to him... So friday I spent a few hours shaping, even glued on tiny skegs from the leftover scraps....it was alot of fun

....he too surfs a casper...he even built a protective "coffin" or "cigarbox" to house it... which is hilarious and functional (check out pics)...we had three great surf sessions today...

super big thank you to:

Kirk at "a day at the beach" blog and 'Foam and Function.com' who gave me the greatest post on his blog....your support has been greatly appreciated...

and

Stevie lakeside and his bro for sending in those photos of the latest december deck in action...

...so if your interested in skateboarding on a saltwater halfpipe using mind-control to steer with a half a century of lineage you gotta see KIRK and ride a CASPER ... he also carries among other board's Mick Mackie Surfboards, Mick shapes surfboards with gorgeous lines. He even adds sidecuts on certain models inspired by the 70's winterstick, and his own personal love and experience riding snow, a true craftsman...his surfboard site has some all-time stunning snowboard pictures...very classic...my guess he is due to try a snowskate...whoever is down under with a bi-deck hook him up for a demo..

oh yeah, Kirk also carries freakin wayne lynch surfboards..(snowskaters think slater or curren in Australia) ....man I would love to check out his personal quiver...

thanks again

kevin

a couple of more shots from this past week

flatdeck fingerboard

2009-2010 mold : its a big boy...can yield decks as long as 45" x 10"

SUMMER

surf check..this picture has been cropped like crazy to protect the identity of the break, but it's not staged...ironically this surfer (farmer) grew up on a farm in the mid-west....

..this blank is nine and three quarters wide by forty-six inches long... (first deck out of the press for the new snowskate season finished dims...42x9 3/8+)

....snowskate production has begun for this upcoming season..deck #1 (top-deck) has been pressed and is lighter then last season...to ensure the highest quality, every veneer used is hand-picked, sanded, tacked clothed, glued, pressed, trimed, sanded, fine sanded, drilled, finished (graphics), signed, sealed (with 3 coats), buffed, and packaged in our shop... custom orders are encouraged...more to come as the season progresses (sizes and dimensions, project boards, etc.) ..I'm getting stoked

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this alaia was designed by jason and carved out by december...

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we had some great summer waves this past week with more coming??..i hope everyone is getting choice weather and riding conditions....congrats to Sean for making the semi's, never bindings for that ocean bluff ripper....and on a personal note the alaia bug isn't going away...

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ALAIA #2

...love mixing surfing in with snowskating. So my take would be to put some kick into the nose, so it could ride on snow some day....(an alaia doesn't really need flip in the nose, surprisingly it doesn't really want to pearl)

super wide about 22" x 6'6" and radius sidecut just like a snowboard, or "sub", I stole the sidecut from an old belowzero snowboard...this has been done already in the surfboard and alaia world, nothing new ..(check out mick makie's boards or wegener's alaia's)

bottom

....and "Voila", first wave drove it into the sand on the shorebreak and snapped my nose...typical rookie maneuver, fueling the fire to the people on the beach who thought I was crazy for paddling out on a picnic table top.... but like every surfer who snaps the nose off on a good day, I just ripped the rest off, and kept surfing. matter of fact it was my best session on an alaia to date....luckily this was just a test model (snapping the nose took me back to the eighties when I made a mock burton backyard, and snapped the nose off that one too..)

...snub nose 5'9" alaia after the break, it rode well in junk waves on sunday, however it has since been modified, much more to come....

...alaia's have officially scratched me where I itch.. I will settled down soon and start making some snowskates, but until the next real swell, (so I can test some designs) I am hooked on these planks.. For any woodworkers or diy'ers who might be interested in making one but are on the fence ..I say, "do it." They are a blast. both in the build and the ride...my humble hints, make it thick and real wide. It may not be sexy looking wide, but it is much easier to catch the wave....but make a narrow one also to compare...(cedar is cheap, somewhat "waterproof" and soft to carve)..also wegener brothers hand build perfect ones that are for sale..

..not so rad

...very intrigued by the whole alaia surfing these days.

for any snowskaters who checks this blog (and doesn't know) alaia is one of the original boards surfed by ancient Hawaiian's. Basicly its a thin, sub-ten foot plank with no fins, and a slight roll to it (see pic).... Tom Wegener has brought this shape back into the limelight, and his brother Jon is making them stateside... (very grateful for all their research and hard work)......to make a very long story short, I figured I could make one out of a scrap of plywood, (which I blogged about earlier)....It was heavy and narrow, about 16" wide by 7 and half feet long...used it twice and couldn't get it to go..., so figured it was a wall hanger ( for a barn) ...but the other day it came to me...screw trucks into it, and skate it .....simple..

... then my idea morphed into a video: skate it on a hill by the beach, do a "one take" shot walk over the dune, remove trucks and surf it....dual purpose board.... but the sand bar sucked at the hilly spot, .however two mornings later the surf was right so I paddle out on the alaia ...miraculously I caught one wave pretty quickly and then I went "cold
"...(not very shocking), but it was a classic morning with only three friends out and its was a blast to paddle around ... Unfortunately, I was able to catch my one wave in front of my little digital camera on the beach which was pointed out to sea... The zoom is terrible and the footage is horrible, but the song is pretty catchy, and I could finish the video... a few ideas have spawned from this test run, could there be a one board for three endeavors? SURFBOARD/SKATEBOARD/SNOWSKATE... man I hope so. So if your interested watch the clip, and I apologize for the lousy footage... if you make it to the secret video, you will ironically will see my friend catch a left on lance and Son surf board actually shaped by Jon wegener... also if you have more interest check out the hydrodynamic link, they have some beautiful footage of alaia surfing... thanks to all

Positives:

I felt like a shipwrecked pirate clinging to a piece of flotsam..its pretty cool

ALAIA : ancient and finless....the orginal hawaiian snurfer

...finally sealed this board up (made from a scrap of 3/4 " plywood laying around the shop)...
this is the orginal "bindingless" board

....it takes wave knowledge, desire, edge work, and commitment to surf these things....we have a perfect groundswell coming for it this weekend, now I have to find knowledge and edge work.....

poached the tail from Dimitrije Milovich's Winterstick, love to blend snow skating and surfing....someday I would like to make snow surfboards for deep powder...take off where hodaddy left off....

*surf update* ..one of the founding fathers of december reported catching an all time spot with just three other guys out, on an all time day this week...after living and surfing half moon bay (18 sec period groundswells) for over a decade, he doesn't throw the "epics" or "all-times" around that much so i knew i missed it...

ancient alaia

been working on a finless ancient Hawaiian ALAIA board....a real pleasure to work on...

(alaia surfer pic is from old balsa surfers site, thank you)