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 MAS Epoxy to save shipping costs. A detailed 170-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 and a small amount of red cedar for color variation. You will find planks numbered in a suggested pattern and marked “top”, “bottom”, “nose” and “tail”. The rail strips are already milled with a nose and cove that allows them to work around the rails (see the manual).

This depends to some degree on your personal ingenuity... but the Grain builders recommend the following:

• At least 4 bar clamps (min. 24"span - more is far better)
• 20- 2" and/or 3" Spring Clamps
• Caulking Gun
• Small Plane (sharp)
• Chisels (sharp)
• Clothes iron
• Masking tape
• Duct Tape
• 80, 120, 220, 400, and 600 grit sandpaper
• Electric Sander or sanding block, muscle and persistence
• Drill with assorted bits
• 2x6 or 2x4 by whatever length of board you're building
• Strapping (as is used in construction)
• Misc scraps of plywood and/or 2x4's (24" lengths) used for creating a rocker table
• Cheap bristle brushes or foam brushes for epoxy work
• Foam Brushes for varnish

Do not neglect the critical basics: Dust masks, safety glasses and surgical or rubber gloves. Pay heed to safe handling standards for epoxy such as those outlined here: http://www.masepoxies.com/safety.htm

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. Instructions for making a clamping/rocker table and PVC clamps come in the manual. 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 with a fewer made-to-throwaway items entering the waste stream to boot.

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... just time-consuming.

The two places that swallow tails can trip you up are:

1. In fairing off the top of the tail block that is mostly inside the board. You will need to eyeball with a two-foot piece of ¼” strip along the tops of the three frames nearest the tail to see where the top of the tailblock should be faired to. The manual is explicit on this point, so read it carefully.

2. 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.

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 most of our boards. You can even put some very limited concaves in the bottom if you want and are very careful (Some boards such as the 6’5” single fin have bottom contours built in to the shape of the frame. For these places, you simply need to force the planks into the shape. No further shaping is necessary). It is 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. Compare our boards to the ones this customer built using only our frames and some leftover stock he had from a kayak project. You will see that he chose to chop off the rails that were machined into our frames so that he could build-up his own. This will result in a heavier board, but he will have no limits on the way the rails are shaped. This would require that you have a tablesaw available to you.

It is also possible to add custom paint tints, art or even fabrics during the lamination and epoxy coats. The boards to which we have added some color highlights have been very popular. Print out logos or other art that you want onto acetate using your inkjet or laser printer and laminate them on as well.

For those with a steady hand, inlays of other woods, plastics or other materials can also be done - but be careful: the skin of your board is a maximum of ¼” thick!

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. Be sure that your mom/wife/husband/roommate is cool with having your new stick growing in the middle of the room for that long. 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.

A little...because our original intention was to develop a kit for people that were like us - surfers with just a basement, some tools and a desire to surf boards we built ourselves. 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, but so far haven't come up with a good framework for supporting this. 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.