Making of Balsa Surfboards

The main steps to manufacture a balsa board are:
- The making of the blank:
- Slice boards from a balsa trunk (1) (2)
- Make a sandwich with the planks and apply the rocker(3)(4)(5)
- Addition of the hard wood stringers (8)
- Outline design and gluying of the rails (7)
- Shaping the board, wood veneer decoration and glassing.

Square beams are made from the balsa trunks, they typically are 20cm wide by either 1,90m or 3m depending of the final board length (1).
Those tilts are cut into planks which are glued to each other, they will form the lower and upper deck (2).
The upper and lower deck are separated by square sticks in order to make a chambered wood sandwich (3).
Then this sandwich is positioned over a working surface where thanks to a unique guide the rocker is applied to it (4) (5).

Once dry the sandwich is cut lengthway to integrate the hard wood stringers (8).

At last the outline is drawn and the rails are glued. The rails are made from several balsa rafters running from nose to tail (7).

Once the blank ready it is shaped like a normal surfboards the main difference being that the actual shaping is much longer than a normal foam board; between a day and a day and half depending on the model.

Balsa wood is farmed thanks to the help of the Ecuatorian government who gives seeds away for free. Balsa is a fast growing tree, within three years it has reach the proper size to make a surfboards. An average of three trees are needed to make a surfboard.