Building your own paddle board; Pros and Cons

By Jason Thelen of Little Bay Boards

I’ve been building hollow wood boards for 12 years. Somewhere around 500 finely crafted wood paddle boards and surfboards have left my tables to go to clients. To be clear, those first few weren’t as “finely” crafted as the last few:) they were nice, but any craft you do gets better as you do it more.

I’ve been noticing a larger scale of Build Your Own forums and YouTubes this last year. A very encouraging trend I do hope to see continued. My personal mission for starting Little Bay Boards was to see more of the world on Eco-friendly vessels inhabiting our waters, which didn’t include me building all of them:) just helping in the mission.

Over all these years I’ve personally stuck with what I’ve known or practiced and advanced on my technique. Never straying too far away to practice anyone else’s in the industry. See, we all have a different way of technically building a hollow wood board. I originally started just like anyone out there, by purchasing a plan from Chad of Timeless Surf Company. The great little 8’ long board paper template and an Ebook that was very cost effective for the tools and ability’s I had at the time. I chose a surf board cause it was less costly in materials and it would be sized enough to float my then 9 year old daughter.

Carpenter by trade, I had your basic tools. Table saw, skill, jig, and belt sander. Honestly all you really need. Could even toss the jig saw. Once I completed that first build your own, a spark in both my personal desires and a swirling public energy began to take hold and I realized I wouldn’t mind doing another one for some extra cash as I was asked SO many times where I got that first one and if I’d consider building one for random strangers that would ask.

My second one, I built entirely from the VERY minimums I’d learned from the first. Adjusting the size and shape personally and making my own templates.

It was a “good” board, but I still wasn’t totally happy with its outcome. At a full size 11’ paddle board, its weight was a bit cumbersome to haul around at 46 pounds.

As a person who sleeps very little I went heavy into google, “How to make a hollow wood board ?” “How to make a hollow wood board light” “What woods to use to make a Hollow wood board.” “ Best epoxy to use for a Hollow wood board?” “Can I stain the wood of a hollow wood surf board” and so on and on. Forums back then were this like Tree to Sea or Swaylocks. A couple hundred different garage builders sharing their builds and hashing it out with other about the “ Do’s and Don’ts “ informative….truly…..just set in more of a social media environment that I didn’t fancy very much. Lots of trolls.

Hollow Wood Surf was a website I ran into multiply times. A website created by Paul Jensen. Paul had a real top notch page. Lots of story’s, lots of boards. A blog of different builds, places he’d traveled to host classes and so on. Paul really knew his shit. However his price tag for his book or CDRom was out of my budget and his frame kits at the time didn’t have a paddle board. So as any unknowing kid would do, I’d send him long emails about all my questions with honest short reply’s from him saying “The instructions cover most of these answers” and encouraged me to buy the goods:).

It wasn’t until a broke the chain of questions and  answers with an email containing a way to long story of me personally, my family and what my idea moving forward was that I got a reply that was more than a few sentences. In that email I explained to Paul that I wasn’t a surfer, I was from Michigan and we didn’t really have the waves that would allow me an opportunity to build more than just a few surf boards a year. That I really wanted to figure out how to make a REALLY good SUP.

At the time this sport was still kinda new. Specially in my area. Michigan is filled with flat waters. Hundreds apon hundreds of lakes. I personally didn’t have the knowledge and couldn’t just design one out of my back pocket and asked if he could help me with shape and design and if I could build and sell em I’d cut him a royalty for each board that I sold. He agreed and Little Bay Boards was started in my lean-too next to my garage. Table saw, skill saw, jig saw and belt sander was all that I owned so Paul and I worked together on a process that would stream line these ability’s. Paul was just the right person for this task as he’d had back ground in truly building boards by hand with only hand tools for some of his over seas classes he’d taught.

The process was thought out and a shape and style of board was designed, pretty close to the ones I still build today. After about a year and 12 boards or so, I’d ran into a million and one things I wanted to change about the boards and the process and rather than bugging Paul at all hours of the day I’d just make things work the way I thought they should. Paul and I would talk all the time and he would support or tear down my ideas as time went on. But ultimately I began to make the baby steps into my own design that really worked well for what I was trying to accomplish and eventually Paul placed his hand on my back like any father would do and pushed me out into the world to continue the rest of my journey on my own, telling me I’ve changed so much of the process that it was truly my own now and our deal did no longer need to be a contract. As time and builds went on the trend of accomplishment wasn’t limited to only what I could achieve in the shop, but out in the world was a whole ‘nother mountain to climb.

Who ever said “Build it and they will come” was 100 percent full of it :). Building just a board isn’t the only thing ya have to do if you plan on making money at it rather than paying out of pocket the whole time for the “Love” of building 🙂 My story to all of this is long….and tiring and I’ll save those for another time if anyone is interested.

Board building 101 from a perspective of a guy that doesn’t plan on selling you plans.

First lesson,
Just Do It! There’s no better way to know if your are capable of the task than to dive in. I’m not going to say who’s plans are the best or who’s are most of anything. Obviously I didn’t like any of em back then and to this day I still feel attached to my own process.

But from what I read and see there’s a lot of good options out there. Pick one that you have the ability’s to do. The tools needed, the time needed to accomplish it “steadily” and the space. Honestly it’s not all that hard. Well kinda is but so is raising a child and we all seem to make that work well enough to not have the little ones catch on fire or anything.

I do suggest on that first build that you don’t actually try for the gold metal. Take that pressure of of yourself. It doesn’t need to be the most stunning piece of art the world has ever seen…… it just needs to float…. And function.

Work your wood to the best of your abilities. Tight joints, good sanding, take off broken parts and start again. Don’t cheat yourself. Just make a “good” board.

Once you’ve accomplished that……you’ll have the bug…… and your next three will become better and better each time. That’s when you can try to make em cooler and cooler like I do 😉