A Stringer Start

I'm making progress on getting the stringer cut. For those not familiar with surfboard design, the stringer is a narrow strip of wood that runs from the tip to the tail for the full thickness of the board. It provides the backbone support in a hollow-wood surfboard and in conventional foam surfboards it gives the foam blank a solid spine as well.

The paper template with the stringer wood. We're looking at the tail end of the board which has 3.5" of rocker. Rocker gives a surfboard its arc in profile and enables the board to not pearl at takeoff and turn more effectively.

In order to cut a narrow strip off the 10' long stringer board for laying out the stringer template I needed to create a feather board. This table saw accessory acts as a third hand by applying pressure to the side of the board to hold it firmly against the metal fence (i.e. a guide clamped to the table that is parallel to the blade). This is critical to making nice straight cuts on long materials. Here you see the feather board wood on the table.

To make clean cuts I needed to swap out the 24 tooth saw blade with this 40 tooth blade.

Getting ready for the miter cut.

The feather board taking shape.

I've cut half the fingers of the feather board now.

And now all the fingers; these allow the feather board to flex and apply even pressure as I push the board through the saw.

The feather board mounting I used to cut the narrow strip off the 10' stringer board.

And this is how I'm using the strip to define the lower edge of the stringer. Later I'll measure up from this curved line to establish the thickness of the board at each of the ribs and use the thin strip to connect the dots again.

Next post will show the transfer of the stringer template to the 10' board and cutting it out.