Hello all,

If you want to see the build of a wood stand up paddleboard go to this link: http://www.grainsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3240

The board is of my own design, and will soon be available from woodsurfboardsupply.com as the "Malco". (The name happened when I tried to save the CAD file as "Malcolm" and ran out of room. The name stuck!) The board came about after a discussion about the fact that most SUP's out there today were designed by board shapers that mostly have surfing experience. I wanted to design a SUP that would minimize the bow wake for paddling to achieve a fast hull speed, have decent rocker for open water paddling, but still surf well. The hull outline was designed with paddling in mind, and the bottom was given a bit of concave to allow it to plane easily when surfing. I did a lot with placement of buoyancy to make this board still handle well when surfing, but to give it a nice flat ride when paddling. I put some rocker to both the nose and tail for paddling open water. It also has a very slight vee to the tail. This works well with a concave bow and it also works well for paddling as it adds a bit of tracking. When surfing the nose has enough buoyancy for nose riding. Should be a fun little board... well... not really a little board at 11 feet and change, but still fun.

Brad at woodsurfboardsupply.com programmed his CNC router and I'm building the first board from the first frame. The deck will have two book-matched flamed maple stripes, a beautiful cocobolo rosewood center strip, and balsa and mahogany for the rails. The bottom will be mostly balsa for weight reduction and will have thin mahogany strips for accents. I am planning on doing an inlay of the Virgin Islands flag in wood and abalone shell on the deck. We will see how that goes. If I get frustrated it will just have "VI" on the nose in abalone! I'll post some finished pics here and maybe the inlay pics since it will be of interest to kayak builders, but the main build will be documented on the wood surfboard forum at the link I posted above. I just thought it would interest some folks here. If you built a wood kayak then one of these will be a cakewalk. The frame actually stays inside the board so you can glue all the strips right to the frame. The frame weighs only a few pounds so it's actually lighter this way than glassing the inside, and provides a more stable platform for standing up and attacking waves.

All the best,

Malcolm