Update

well, its been a while since my last post but i wasnt a lazy boy.

i would have never thought that building surfboards, or better put, starting to try to build surfboards in AUSTRIA, has so much to do with logistigs, organisation, more or less important choices, waiting for email replies for ages... the list goes on and on. i havent been in the shed for ages now. just sitting in front of the comp researching all the time.

it took me like 2 month sorting out where to get blanks from, looking for a way to get my shaped blanks glassed etc...
and how to get my shaped blanks to somebody on this continent to get glassed. i guess all of this sounds a bit complicated, well it actually is. but its just worth it. i wanna be able to build the best boards im capable of building and since im just at the beginning of maybe a life long journey, hey, whats 2 month compared to the rest of my life.

almost everything is on GO now.

I ordered 7 blanks ( 6`2A, 6`5A , 6`10A, 7`9H) from the very nice, helpful, caring and honest people at seabase UK. they are the european distributors of US blanks. after weeks of thoughts, research, "classes" at the swaylocks university, i decided to go for it and ordered the clark modified hitachi planer from seabase too. it just makes sense to me to buy the best tools avaliable to help me get the job done properly. i cant wait to get this huge box delivered. thanx again to the girls and guys from seabase. they helped me out heaps. (they have a new website running, the link is on the right under the "the goods" section)

some good friends are crazy enough to let me shape them boards. they buy the blanks and everything so i have blanks to shape and they will (hopefully) end up with relatively cheap custom surfboards. thanks for believing. means a lot to me.

well, its about 0 degrees celcius outside the window im sitting in front of right now. so if everything comes in time and the weather forecast is right, it will be a very "cool" :-) experience shaping the next couple boards in the heaterless shed.

watch out for new pics coming soon...

all the best

cheers,
chris

Update!

hi everyone!

my last post was ages ago but i wasnt a lazy boy.

its never an easy task to get startet.
i had to think a lot about how i want to shape, what i want to shape, with what i want to shape, to make the best quality surfboards im able to create.
EPS/epoxy, PU/PE, bosch or clark hitachi, glassing myself or letting glass someone else whos got the skills?...the list goes on and on.

sometimes i have the feeling that i should better build skis or snowboards because it would be way easier to accomplish that i guess here in the "land of all the waves"
it can get really frustrating at times but the motivation increases all the time and i wont give up. thats for sure.

after weeks and weeks of writing emails and waiting for replies from a couple shaping suupliers here in good `ol europe i finally found people who seem to be honest, caring and very very helpful.
seabase in england that is. thanks a lot everyone there, especially Pani!

seabase is the official distributor for US blanks and i like the rockers and plugs they have so i ordered 7 blanks from seabase.
in the 6`2A to the 7`9H range.

update!

hey everyone!

i hope you ve all been doing well!

its been some time since my last post. i wasnt lazy since then, i just tried to figure out a way of doing nice surfboards with the best materials i can get my hands on.

number 0ne!

the shed is finished. i decided on a nice green for the walls which came out quite nice.



railbanding....















getting it round...









my try on a single concave



my try on a vee



i`m stoked.

i want more..........

have a good one.
chris

did some home work too..

after a 5 hour hardware store tour, i came home with more than i had expected. some sandpaper, foam pads, and i even found a tape measure that has Inches on as well as cm`s. i never thought that it would be so hard to find an inch tape measure in our metric world.

and i got those as well:



my railbandtool. looks strange, but it seems to work quite well. i couldnt help myself, i just had to:





well.. the blanks are still in the kitchen.

i hope to get the shed ready as soon as possible to be able to sand some of those corners away.

will post again soon...

have a good one.
chris

WORKING THE SHED!

i ve been working on the shaping bay, formerly known as fathers garden shed, a lot the last days. with the help of my lovley girl and my father, we re almost there. i built my first stands and they came out quite nice i guess. the lines arent all straight but i dont really care. they re just racks. they came out pretty heavy and sturdy so it should be alright.





we put some XPS sheets on the walls of the shed to get some more stable weather conditions while im working, haha. they are violet and have a reflective surface, so we decided to paint them. blue, black, green????
we decided on some kind of green with a little blue in it.
one wall is completet and it looks good so far.

alright then, see ya soon....

chris

welcome!

my name is chris, im 26, photographer, living in vienna, austria, europe.
a really nice place to live, its all old buildings, nice little vilages, a lot of culture, green hills and no ocean in sight. hmm.

8 years ago i saw a film. it was about a young man named rick if i remember right, who was fom arizona, winning some kind of contest in a weird surfpool, going to hawaii later. that film, tough not the best of its kind, changed everything for me.
i had to learn how to surf. so i did in 2000, 2000kms away from home, after almost 2 days in the car, i said hello to the beachbreaks of SW france. the beach said 2 foot onshore and mushy. go home! but i didnt.

since then i try to get into the surf as often as possible, which is about 3-4 times a year.

surfing changed my life, and is constantly changing it. it is getting the center of my universe more and more, from trip to trip. it teaches me how little i really need to live a happy life. it forces me to travel a lot, seeing different things, meeting different people who live a completely different lifestyle.

have i said that i love surfboards? no? well, i do.

its a weird thing. since i dont get to really surf that often, i spend a lot of time on the internet, reading about surfing, looking at pictures of waves, preparing and researching for trips and of course look at surfboards a lot. man, there are some beautiful surfboards out there. im a big fan of 70`s style boards like fishes and singlefins and stuff like that. i love how they ride, and the volume helps me out a lot too when i havent been in the water for ages. its not really easy to get my hands on boards like that here in the middle of europe. so after nights and nights of looking for boards on the net i decided to give it a shot and just build my own ones.

after studying in the sacred halls of the swaylocks.com university for a year or so, i finally dare to go for it.

i ordered the blank from the very nice guys at atua.cores in bordeaux, france. they have a cnc hotwire kind of thing where they can cut out blanks with the desired rocker, foil and outline from a block of EPS.

here it is:
a soon to be diamond tail 5`11 x 20 1/2 x 2 3/4 singlefin.







at the moment im getting everything together. my father fortunately lets me use his garden shed for spreading the foam, thanks pop. i will build shaping racks and get the shed ready this week hopefully.

so long. if youre still here thanks for reading and have a good one.

chris