Hi,
Here you will find the evolution of my winter project: Hollow surfboard!!!
I have just ordered the wood (balsa) from http://www.specializedbalsa.com/. They are apparently a good source of quality balsa, I hope that everything will be ok.
Yep! A hollow balsa surfboard, I have always wanted to produce my own board, the One that will match the most my "style of riding"...
Hehe, well no, I am not a very good surfer... Let say that I don't have any peculiar fears of the water. So I go, and once I am trapped in a wave I just try my best to look good in front of my buddies!
The board will be a kind of shortboard-funny-shape. I mostly design it following the Dominator from Firewire. I had a chance to test one of those and it was a revelation! That board is incredible. It's light, flex, buoyant, catch waves like a dream... if only they were cheaper!
I will post the shape later.
In order to design it I used the software from
Aku-Shaper. It is very easy and free. Feel free to download it and play with it. It's a Java based software so it's working on any kind of computer (PC, Mac, Linux distribution...). When you have what you want you can bring your template within the nearest shaper equipped with the machine and they will be certainly happy to create a blank for you or you can use another piece of software called HBTM (Hollow Board Template Maker). This little program (also Java based) will create from your "Aku-template" all what you will need to make your board. The guy who created it I think is a French fella (thumbs up! ca fait plaisir!) you can find him on some wood surf forum under the name of JedAil. Here the link to the
software. The way it work is cool you just have to load your template file (.brd) from Aku-Shaper into the HBTM and shazam you will be able to create a PDF with all what you need to cut your wood. That's really cool as it save you hours and hours of painful calculations and drawing.
Ok let's waiting for the balsa to be delivered and we will start!
