Some are stronger due to more layers of glass - or a heavier type of glass - and are naturally heavier. But for strength and durability, most foam boards can't be compared to Grain surfboards. Our boards are harder to ding or break, so comparing their weights is a little like comparing the weights of balloons to basketballs. We attribute this to the fact that a long board will have more internal space as a percentage of the total board volume than will a shorter board.
Over the years, we've developed a series of refinements that have allowed us to make some of our wood boards even lighter, though we've developed many of our designs to take advantage of additional weight, so we apply "lightening" techniques judiciously. As a reference, our 6'5" Seed is around 13lbs.
If measured in a lab you should be able to determine the fraction of an inch of difference a Grain board, floating at rest with no surfer on it, would be lower in the water.
Still, none of that is really relevant to the experience of surfing - which is all about how boards and surfers behave in a highly dynamic, propulsive environment. In the water, our boards do not have a noticeable heaviness to them until they are in trim when the glide kicks in - when "weight" turns to "drive".
They never feel corky, but they do have a different feeling of buoyancy when in motion than foam boards - we think that the air space inside creates tension in the board's skin and frames that gives it a more lively feel than something that is of equal density throughout like foam. The way weight is distributed in wood boards also helps them carry through turns better, which means it also requires slightly more energy to initiate those turns.
Though they have a decidedly soft feel in some surf conditions, many surfers report a certain amount of chop dampening because, though the boards are more lively than foam, they do not rise clear of the water as easily as a light-weight foam board would. But once they are planing, their added weight generates more momentum down the line.
However, because most of the board shaping is designed into the frame, this is a fairly time consuming process, so there will be some additional expense. We'll get your specs, then work up a rough outline and profile, emailing you screenshots from the 3D design software. You'll give us some feedback, then we'll make some adjustments and get to work on the rails and bottom contours if any.
It's our goal to keep you as involved in the design as you want to be, so you can feel free to give as much - or as little - input as you want.
We apply all the knowledge we have of special design details that are important to wood boards, and in the end, you'll have a design that you - and we - think is perfect. Sorry - we need to build a board before we can make it into a kit. Otherwise, how would we be confident that the kit was good enough to sell you?
There are two ways we add boards: one is when there is something we want to build. We are working on developing a number of new designs right now. The other is when a customer approaches us about a custom board. If we like the result, it can be added to our board line. We use several types of computer design software to assist us in the design process, and pass files to our CNC machinist to render into frames. One way is to stop by the shop. We usually have some boards there waiting for delivery or pick-up, and at the very least, we can pull some of the framesets, dry assemble them, and have a look.
Email us if you can't come by the shop and are seriously considering one of our shapes - we can get more info to you so you can make the best decision. Kits do not come with fins, but do come with fin boxes. Generally speaking, we use FCS for shorter boards and While that is what they come with, there is no reason you couldn't put in whatever system you like. Boards we build for you with glass-ons naturally have high quality fins, to your specifications if you have a preference, but all other boards and kits do not include fins.
We've found that kit builders have such varied tastes in fins that it's better for them to purchase them from their local surf or other vendor. We can add painted highlights, solids or patterns, apply your graphics, or laminate cloth onto the board if desired. What can't go on the board is another company's logo unless the company is your own , or references to pros or "signature models" unless the board is actually a signature model designed by or with another shaper or pro.
Lots of ultra-violet light read: sunlight will affect epoxy and, in extreme cases of exposure, cause yellowing and oxidation or whitening of the glass fibers. At one time, we used to apply a coat of super-hard polyurethane UV-resistant coating in two to three coats as added insurance on boards built for customers. Kit builders will sometimes choose to apply a quality marine spar varnish in three coats, hand-wetsanded to grit, and polished with a buffing wheel.
The result is a soft, satiny feel with enough reflective flare to make the wood shine. But in reality, there is very little benefit to UV protection. Because the epoxies that we use are formulated for marine use on vessels that sit out in glarey, hot sun all day, every day.
But most surfers tuck their boards right back in the bag when they're done, or get them into shade to keep their wax from melting. So the negative impact of the UV on the boards' epoxy finishes is so slight that we put no UV protection on any of our boards, and have noted zero negative impact.
We have built one before, but we just decided - for a number of reasons - it's not our cup-o-tea. Kind of like why Harley Davidson doesn't make cars. But we're happy to direct you to some other companies making beautiful wood SUP's. A quick Google search will pull them up.
This is of course the big question If you have been surfing for a while, you can probably look at our board line and suss it out yourself. We've added to each board page a 3D viewer that lets you see much more of the board designs than before, and we'll be supplementing that with design notes, a zoom function, and more board specs.
All that is designed to make it easy for experienced surfers to see if we make the board they want. If you are newer to surfing, you could talk to other surfers who know your style and level of experience, and know your home break. Most surfers will also think about the kind of surfing that they would like to do, but which their current board s don't really allow.
Board design is more art than science, and experienced advice from people familiar with your situation should be important in your decision. In all cases, your size and weight and typical wave will be considerations that will be factors.
We'd be glad to help you make some decisions, feel free to contact us. One thing we can do is make some adjustments to boards in our line if you have specific things that you want done. For instance, we can harden rails, turn them down or soften them.
It's easy to lengthen boards by a few inches, or harden or round out the nose, although these alterations may change the board's performance a bit. If you are an experienced woodworker, and don't have plans to surf for the next couple of months and have a good place to work garage, shop, basement and a load of time to spare, then you should definitely get a kit! If any or all of these are not part of your situation, or if you are the type of person that finds it easy to start projects but a bit harder to get them done, then think twice about the kits - you may be happier ordering a board from us.
Another consideration is your expectations for the board itself. We are positive that almost anyone can build a great board using a Home Grown kit. Plus, with imperfections that come from inexperience, every surfer using his or her own Home Grown board will be tremendously proud of the beautiful thing they created.
But if you are one of those people who want it as perfect as an organic thing can be, and you don't feel confident in your woodworking skills, then you may be happier with a board we build for you. If the cost of the board is an issue for you, think of it this way: you could use the fifty to eighty hours that you would have spent building a kit to put in a little overtime earning some kale you can use towards a board built by us especially for you. Each kit comes with all the material you need to build your own board including: board frame, cedar planks and rail strips, wood scraps sized for tail blocks, and minor structural blocking , fin box, leash plug, waterproof glue, fiberglass, and more.
Epoxy, squeegee, mixing buckets and rubber gloves are sent directly from our supplier to save shipping costs. A detailed page instruction manual tells you how to assemble it all. Our kits are put together by hand in Maine from locally grown, sustainably harvested northern white cedar. The rail strips are already milled with a nose and cove that allows them to work around the rails see the manual.
You don't have to be a woodworker at all to successfully assemble a kit as long as you can use care and take your time. It is true, however, that woodworkers will find some parts of this process second nature. For those who are just don't believe us when we say "you can do it", we can help make it all work for you here at the shop if you attend one of our workshops.
The most critical parts of assembling a Grain Home Grown Surfboard Kit are getting good mating between glued parts, eyeballing fair lines as you shape the assembled parts, and getting a good epoxy lamination. Many of the parts are pre-machined so that most of the cutting and fitting needed is already done, and kit builders have only to trim off excess after assembly is complete. The epoxy lamination is not difficult and the Entropy Epoxy we use in the kits is very forgiving and sets up slowly to give you plenty of time.
If you are not a woodworker, take time to make sure your tools are sharp, go slowly and read the manual a section at a time before you begin so that you can better anticipate the impact of what you may be doing on the following steps.
And follow this old wood-working adage: "measure twice, cut once". It is far easier to take wood off - especially with a soft wood like cedar - than it is to put it back. So go slowly and avoid the use of too many power tools. The image you have of board shapers striding up and down the shaping bay with power planers and 8" disk sanders is better expelled from your mind as it is tremendously easy to take off more wood than you would like.
Stick with hand planes, spokeshaves if you have one and hand- sanding blocks if you have any doubts. Stop very often and admire your work - very closely from the nose and side - with one eye closed so that you can detect problems as they are developing rather than when they are too advanced to fix easily.
Finally, keep in mind that when you are done, there will be a few things you will have wished you had done differently. All hand-made things have a few imperfections and that is part of their appeal. One day, you will be sitting on that board waiting for the next set, and you'll look down at the clear seawater washing over a beautiful grain pattern and you will be amped that it looks great and surfs and you made it yourself! What could be better? This depends to some degree on your personal ingenuity Do not neglect the critical basics: Dust masks, safety glasses and surgical or rubber gloves.
There are also lots of things that you can do to reduce the number of new tools that you need to buy. Instead of spring clamps, old four-inch PVC pipe can be recycled into clamps. Instead of purchasing bar clamps, there are several ways to build your own or create a clamping table.
With a little ingenuity, you can find ways to clamp that don't require bar clamps at all. Email or call if you're on a budget and need help improvising. Many people have friends that are woodworkers who are happy to lend a few things and can help with sharpening your tools if you need it. We've found that most people - surfers or not - are intrigued by the process of building these boards and are happy to get involved.
And even for apathetic friends, all it takes is a few extra cold ones to share. If you are planning to buy tools, do yourself and the planet a favor and purchase the highest quality tools you can afford from local sources. The farther away are the suppliers of the things we use every day, the more it harms the planet. And tools of good quality will last several lifetimes which means that your granddaughter or grandson may inherit not only the surfboard you build today but also the tools you used to build it The actual hours that you spend building your board will depend on your skill level, the complexity of the board design you are building, and choices you may make about customizing the board's finish, but you can count on anywhere between fifty and eighty hours.
This time will be applied to the project in smallish chunks as you must wait for glue to dry before moving on to subsequent steps. Swallow tails are the split tail found on our fish models. They are more work to build than the squash tails featured in our other boards, but are not terribly complicated to do In fairing off the top of the tail block that is mostly inside the board.
The manual is explicit on this point, so read it carefully. In fitting the fiberglass cloth up into the narrow part of the swallow tail. A small patch can be added before the main lamination to ensure full coverage.
You can check back while the epoxy is setting up to be sure that the cloth around this tight area is not bubbling up. Not really. Good glassing is a question of careful surface preparation, basic hand-eye coordination, understanding when to apply pressure to the squeegee, and timing.
It's actually pretty easy if you follow a few basic principles to download here. The main complication is that that you will be laminating over a compound-curve surface - in other words, it is a surface that changes in all three dimensions as you move the squeegee up and down the board.
If you would like to, do a little practice Prepare the wood scraps as you would the board you want to laminate, and apply some scraps of cloth.
If you want an even better sense, bend the wood scrap over something curved before doing the practice lamination - that will give you a better idea of laminating a curved surface. Naturally, it becomes easier with practice, but more experience improves how quickly you can do it more than it does the quality of your work. Which is to say, work slowly and be thorough and the glassing will go well.
In addition, there are a number of resources online that can help you get a better handle on some of the variables and some hints and tips. Check out these helpful glassing videos by Entropy Resins. There are actually a lot of options you can choose with one main restriction: The actual shape of the board is defined by the precision- cut internal frame.
Even with that, there is some latitude in shaping the rails - particularly near the bottom as long you don't remove too much material. It is still possible to manipulate the shape a little if you have some ideas that you want to try out.
For instance, you can extend the length of the board a bit by adding a longer tailblock. Or you could decide that you want a pintail instead of the squashtail that is designed into many of our boards. You can even put some very limited concaves in the bottom by cutting the appropriate frames if you want and are very careful. It's also pretty easy to make the nose of the board a bit finer or blunter if you want. There are some other possibilities which we can talk about if you have specific ideas.
The way you "plank" the board also allows some latitude. You can put inlays of other woods, or paint colors or accent stripes, etc. It is also possible to add custom paint tints, art or even fabrics during the lamination and epoxy coats. Print out logos or other art that you want onto acetate using your inkjet or laser printer and laminate them on as well.
The manual is a step-by-step description of how to assemble a Home Grown kit. It is loaded with pictures that show lots of detail, and it is under regular revision as we have time and think of more information that would be useful to kit builders. We are looking for comments and feedback as to how easy it is to follow the manual's steps so let us know what is lacking!
That depends on whether you live alone. Your board may take as much as two full work weeks to build IF you were working on it non- stop. Chances are you are more likely to do a little at a time every day - plus weekends - for a couple of months.
Good luck with that. You might also disclose to your loved one that you will be generating an incredible amount of wood shavings, saw dust and sanding dust which, though aromatic, is not good to breathe. Let's not even talk about the epoxy resin which will drip off the sides of the cloth onto whatever floor covering you forgot to spread a drop-cloth over. You will need enough room for a rocker table longer than the length of your board, with at least two feet of space around all sides, plus some surface to assemble parts on like a workbench or table and places to put tools and supplies.
If you are only building one kit, you may choose to break down your rocker table once the top is on the board and build some shaping stands from the parts which will help you recover some floor space as well as get the board up at a good working height for shaping, glassing and finishing.
Good lighting is essential - when you begin shaping and sanding, you will want it at the same level as the board itself so that you can see imperfections. Kits are shipped in two boxes. One box is 7" by 7" by whatever length the board is and holds all the wood, the frame, hardware, internal blocking, manual and fiberglass. The epoxy, cups, gloves squeegees, etc. In the contiguous US, we charge flat-rate shipping for kits under 7'6" and it's included in the price.
Those kits are shipped with UPS. Boards over 7'6" have to go freight so we will get you a shipping quote once your order is placed. For foreign destinations, Hawaii and Alaska, charges vary. See our FAQs on international shipping if you need to. A little The excitement that comes from making it yourself is what we were after! We have thought a lot about how to support other aspiring builders, especially those looking to build a few boards a year for friends and family. Check out our " Build Your Quive r" plan for discounts on your second, third or fourth board or kit.
For those looking to genuinely 'make a go of it', stay tuned. If you are interested on whether there is any news on this front, send us an email asking if there are developments. We are all interested in seeing more wooden surfboards out there so we will continue to think about this pretty carefully. One of the things that we're constantly trying to do is find new ways to evolve wood board building techniques. So over the years, we've been developing an increasingly sophisticated little bag of board-building tricks some of which vary from board to board.
This has been great for the boards, a benefit to our customers and challenging for us. The hell of it is that some of our newer boards are just more complicated to build and that makes it harder for us to properly support Home-Grown builders who would do them as kits. Even fitting all the different variations into our manual would be a problem. As time goes on, we'll look for ways to get past this on some of the models, perhaps simplifying the designs for kits, launching the "kits" only as part of a class where we can gauge the ability of home-builders to execute the designs or creating a set of manuals where each one is specific to the kit purchased.
Each of these choices has its own downside, so as we work through this, we just feel that it's more responsible to hold some of the designs back from the kit line. The good news is that every board is available custom-built at Grain and that'll make your new board that much more unique than boards available anywhere else.
We'll also help you build any of our boards if you're interested in in a private one-on-one Fantasy Camp. You sure can.
We want to support those who would like to use more local materials, recycled wood or stuff they have left over from other projects. You can order lots of the kit components right on our online store and we are adding more all the time. If you don't see what you want there, just give us a call and we'll try to get you what you need. The only exception is the Builder's Manual which only comes with the kit. Most people that are considering this option already have some experience in building wood surfboards - for example they have already built a HomeGrown Surfboard Kit.
You sure can! For a long time, we just didn't offer these, but now you can get them for every board we offer in the kit line. We intend these plans for people that either understand the basics of this construction method, have already built a kit or taken a class, or are simply interested in inventing some of the process themselves. If you think you may need more guidance, you might consider taking a class or getting a kit first because the manual that comes with our plans is an abbreviated one.
Kits usually ship within a week or two. We don't maintain a huge inventory of materials for the kits, so we often have to mill stock for your kit after the order is placed, and this takes time!
Delivery time for boards is harder to predict because there is so much labor involved and we get backlogged pretty easily when we get a rush of orders. Ask when you call or email about the timing for delivery. If you have a deadline such as when the board is a gift make sure you place your order as far ahead as you can manage - at least a couple of months - to have a good chance that we will get it done on time.
If you're going to order a board, we should really talk But to get in our queue right away, you can go right to the Board Page and place a deposit for the board you want. We'll email or call just as soon as we can to finalize the details. Or if you have questions, or if you are international customer, just call or email to start a dialog about your dream board.
Kits are available online from our own online store where you can also get tools or supplies, most board components, and apparel. You can also call or email us directly to order kits, tools and clothes but we may have to ring you back if we are in the middle of glassing or surfing Sorry, but the store can handle orders only from the USA. If you are in another country, check out our FAQs for International Orders, and then give us a call or email to order.
We think so. We are pretty sure that we can ship anywhere. Costs vary widely, though it often has less to do with how far you are from Maine than it does with the remoteness of the final destination. Our ' Build Your Quiver ' plan saves you money on your second and third build, whether it's building a kit at home or joining us for a workshop in Maine, New York, or on the road. Note: Before you decide on a surfboard kit from someone else, make sure you understand the total cost of the component materials you'll have to source and buy separately, as well as the time it will take to fill in the gaps of knowledge that aren't covered in their manual.
Usually, we'll get them out within a week or two, but allow three weeks, let us know if there's a rush, and please be patient - once in a while we have a shortage of materials and have to wait for something to come in. You can find tools and other board building supplies and materials you might need, including our precision cut rocker lift sets in our online store.
The good folks at both of these places offer all of HomeGrown Kit designs using local woods. If you're anywhere else in the world, note that we may not be able to send you epoxy due to international haz-mat shipping regulations. If this is the case, we'll happily credit you back for the epoxies and any supplies we cant send and we'll do our best to help you find a local epoxy supplier in your part of the world.
Home build feeling to much to take on? Join us in Maine, New York or meet us on the road and let us walk you through the process in one of our 4-day workshops. You'll do the building, but we'll be at your side to make sure it all comes together just right. We disagree. So we've found a bunch of ways that we can help you build your own at home. We began offering workshops for people who thought that taking on the building process at home might be a little more than they wanted to take on solo.
But it's turned out that lots of our students come for other things besides a new surfboard. And whether they come for the experience of working beside Grain's board builders in our shops in Maine, New York or on the road, for the chance to meet new friends among the other students and our crew, or for getting a chance to try out any of our boards, everyone leaves with a board they built themselves.
And that's pretty great. Check out our workshops H ERE. Most of the boards in our line are offered as complete DIY kits, designed for you to tackle at home. Kits contains all of the material you need to build your board, plus a page instruction that walks you though each step of the process. More information our kits can be found HERE. If you don't need the guidance and support that comes with a full surfboard kit, we've developed a complete set of plans printed on plotter paper that will get you well on your way to a great board.
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