Alaia time

So this one has been sitting in the project pile for a while now....and when I saw that Tom Wegener taught an alaia building class at Grain this past week, and I missed it, and new fire started to burn.
The alaia is an ancient surfboard design which has been brought back to life by the finless surf crowd. They look next to impossible to ride, but fun to build.

                               Ripping on a home depot 2x10. I'm going for the deluxe model.

So, I found a guy about a year ago selling paulownia wood retail, including alaia blanks, and the plan starts there.

Paulownia is a super duper sustainable wood, 2x the strength of balsa, almost half the weight, and is the highest strength to weight ratio of all woods. It is pretty impervious to water, as opposed to balsa which sucks up water like a sponge. Coolest part of this super hero of a plant is that it grows like jack's beanstalk. 10-16 feet in one year, these trees are ready to be milled in 10 years. Thats like a 1/4 of the time that pine trees need. I am gonna buy a 16 inch sapling and see what its all about.

Rob Machado making it look easy.....way fast down the line

So, I will order my blank tommorrow, and start researching the subtle design of the alaia. Will post progress when she arrives..

                                             There are many, many variations on lines.

                                                          Take this one on the slopes