The magic feeder, finished.

5’7 x 20 x 2 1/8
Finished the magic feeder last week and tried it for the first time this sunday.
Great board, it works better than my other Eisbach boards.

Mission accomplished

One year ago i wrote about our goal of shaping a few boards for each of us. This year I built four boards, one still needs some finishing, the other has to be glassed. Phips, Raphi and Trish were not lazy either and build themselves a couple nice boards as well and will test them in Sri Lanka and Indo soon. Hope to post some nice pics of them surfing nice and clean waves soon. Here are some boards of the crew…

6’0 Short Board

I just shaped a 6’0 x 20 x 2.5 shortboard and began glassing. The shape is inspired by the Mini Driver by …lost and it will be ridden in the ocean. With 30 liters of volume it should paddle ok and still be good for duckdiving. It features a single to double concave, not too thick rails and medium rocker.

Autumn quiver testing

No waves in italy yet, but some beautiful october weather in Munich. Time to test boards and fin set ups. Introducing: The modified mini driver by Phips. With the widened tail it has more an egg feeling to it. Featuring heavy double concaves, moderate rocker, sharp rails and a five fin set-up its really fast, making it quite a challenge to maneuver it on the small eisbach wave. I guess it will work really good in the ocean, but does look good on the Eisbach as well:

The Magic Feeder

The more people get infected by the shaping virus at the eisbach, the steeper the learning curve gets. With every board we learn something different, its really a lot of fun. The board we call „Magic Feeder“ is based on the …lost Bottom Feeder. But Phips decided to go with a winged diamond tail instead of the original outline. Also the rail contour is really different: a quite thick rail but with an sharp edge running from tail almost up to the nose. The board is fast, yet forgiving and has an unique feeling to it: it seems to float above the water, maybe because of the sharp rails. In fact I liked it so much i tried to copy it. I have yet to glass it so I’m not shure if i managed to transfer the desired properties to my board…I will post some pics of the original Magic Feeder soon. Dimensions are 5’7 x 20″x 2,4 with 28 liters.

DIY Surfboard Bike Rack

A few month ago I stumbled across this video about a DIY surfboard bike rack.
Of course I had to build it. I want to share some information in case someone wants to build his own. The video gives you a good idea of how to build the rack.
As you won’t find pvc fittings and pipes in a german hardware store, try online stores as pvc-welt.de instead.
Don’t be fooled by the expression 1″ pipe that is used in the video, the outer diameter is around 1.3″, matching the 32 mm pipe available at pvc-welt.de.
You end up spending around 40€ including rubber straps and pipe clamps.
I didn’t glue the pipes into the t-joints that sit on the bike frame to make the rack quickly removable. the rubber straps that also hold the surfboard in place keep the rack from slipping out of the t-joints. Total building time is around 1 hour.

Some projects going on…

Finally we gain some monumentum in board building…
– two 5’6 bottom feeder copies
– XPS replacement for my trusty Eisbach board, which is rotting away under my feet.
– some fins
– a mini longboard
…
I’ll post some pics of my new Eisbach board soon.

board #7 finished

Here’s my latest creation, a 5’9 x 21.5 x 2.5.
Its a stringerless XPS with 5 fin option.
After shaping it was coated with a mix of epoxy, grey pigment and microballoons. This added around 400g of weight, but was needed for cosmetic reasons (would have been pink otherwise). After that the drawing was put on the board by leo, then it was glassed with 2x 6oz (160g/m²) twill glass. It ended up being quite heavy compared to a hpsb with around 3700g, but it has a lot of volume and seems to be super durable.
I guess i could have gone with one layer of 6 oz at the bottom. Finish was done by dry-sanding with 120 grid, moving on to water-sanding with 320, 400, 600, 1000 and final polishing. Skipping 220 was not a good idea, some scratches left, but I’m happy with the finish.
It’s inspired by boards like the …lost bottom feeder for having fun in small waves both in the ocean and the river. I tried it at a small river wave and it works good!

Second Italy Trip

As the forecast was looking promising, I found myself travelling to italy once again two weeks after my first surf trip to italy. After an eight-hour ride in the vw bus we parked right at the beach front in L-Town. Still not shure if the swell would pick up, we went to bed. At six o’clock we woke up to see some great waves. Twenty minutes later we were in the water… Some of the locals rode barrels this day… The swell continued to deliver clean waves for the next two days. Sometimes blown out during the day, but always glassy in the morning, we were surfing as much as we could. Beside the great surf we had to deal with some car problems, but the italian mechanics didn’t let us down and fixed the car in time. The swell dropped slowly the next two days. When we left, the waves were small, but still rideable. Great trip with a great travel buddy, hope to come back soon.

italy surf adventure

I decided to take a surfboard to my recent 5-day trip to italy. Not expecting much, we scored some 3 ft waves in St. Marinella and Ansedonia. The waves were not perfect, but we were more than happy to surf some rare mediterranean waves.