Spank My Wookie

Friday night, I rolled up my sleeves and went forth to mow some more foam. It was definitely a night of firsts. It was my first time skinning the hard crust off the blank. I didn't realize that in order for the planer to work properly, I needed to make smooth, swift motions across the surface. Instead, I went slow and ended up gouging out a lot of foam. damn me! Luckily for me, I figured it out halfway through removing the crust on one side. So I ended up not destroying the rest of the board.

Here is what I ended up with:

So after marveling at it for a little bit, I got frothy at the mouth and went on to turn the rails. So on with more of the discovery phase. I knew I want to turn a harder bottom rail, that turned into a hard rail in the tail. I did my best guess on where to start, and just starting surforming off the edges. I didn't know how much I need to take off, but had a good guess of around 2 inches. I ended up with a somewhat uneven rail, because I wasn't sure how to keep it straight. Halfway through turning the bottom rails, I started to get a better idea of feeling out where I was on the rail, on how to keep myself more steady and thus turn a better rail.

When it came time to turn the top rails, I got a little better and it didn't turn out half as bad as I thought. Check out the pictures:

So that took me all the way to 1am. After some more top and bottom sanding, I called it a night. I still need to take some more off the top and bottom and smooth out the rails a bit. But over all, I think I'm stoked to have it come out the way it did. Sure, there was some dips, and lots of gouges, but man, I think I can go on to make another board!

Nice job Baldwin! When are you going to start taking orders for custom boards?

Posted by: Luke at March 10, 2007 05:46 PM

Just make sure that you use a small block plane to pare down the stringer to the level of the foam - otherwise, looks good.

Posted by: dmc at March 12, 2007 08:56 AM