Oh Taylor

One of my favorite people came up to Maine to play, meet Elwood, and take a class with me at Grain Surfboards.  Yes, Conor took a class, I took a class, we encourage our friends to take classes, I sewed a Grain patch onto Elwood's hat.  We are fans of Grain Surfboards.  

These two are buds

Taylor flew up to Maine to take the Paipo building class with me.  (And to giggle and chat and bond and visit)  Paipo's are wooden, finless bellyboarding boards.  Essentially, they are really badass boogie boards.  The class was two days of shaping, carving, sanding, laughing, learning, and enjoying the unique and infectious experience of using my hands to carve something functional and beautiful.  Jon Wegener, a pioneer in his efforts to reconjure the art and love of traditional Hawaiian finless boards, was one of the instructors for the class.  The class was an awesome experience, it was very special to share this creativity in wood working with T, and now, with my paipo, I am pretty sure I will be barreled before the Con Man. 

The shape we started with

Cutting out the rough shape

Chiseling out the rails

Let's just say I will describe my first few tries with the hand plane as challenging

The spokeshave, however, I loved.
 I carved smooth and silky curlicues with gentleness and ease. 

I've always taken instructions very seriously

The boys came at the end of class to check out our boards

Day 2 we moved outside for sanding and sunshine

At the end of Day 2 we coated our boards with a Whey (as in curds and whey) solution that provides a non toxic water seal

Our fantastic Grain instructor, Mike