Sometimes to take a step forward, you have to take a step back...

First, a major thanks to Mike and Brad at Grain Surfboards. After sending them an email with my blog site, they were kind enough to take a look at some of the problems I was having and post some comments and suggestions on how to avoid the problems in the future and how to fix the problems I have currently.

Looking at the bevy of problems I had, I took their suggestions and realized if I wanted this board to be the best that I could make it, I need to back track. The nose block isn't that big of a problem. I was casual about getting the tip to meet exactly with the tip of the keel (probably because I couldn't get a fair line and I snapped the first piece that I dry fit. I liked the idea of adding a nose block before putting on the top planks so that the nose block peeked out from between the top sheets. I'll post some pictures of this later.

I ran a piece of bead and cove strip around the so called "bump" in the rail to approximate how off it was. I measured and it was roughly a 3/16 of an inch, therefore I am confident I can smooth this out in the sanding and shaping process without going too thin in the rail.


Lastly, the tail blocks. These were such a mess that I decided to remove them. I took Mike's advice, got out the blow torch and a putty knife and began jabbing underneath the blocks. Nasty stench from that 5200 burning. After a lot of muscle and some singed spots on the board, I finally got the tailblocks off. I proceeded then to scrape off the remaining adhesive and then sand everything down. The board may be a tad thinner in some areas thanks to my lousy chisel skills, but nothing major. I've included the before and aftershots to the left.