Stinger - An 18' paddle board

Back in Dec I took a trip down to Uruguay to get in some surfing and hang out with some friends. The trip was great however I came to a realization that I really need to find a better way to stay in paddling shape.

So when I got home I fired up Rhino and drew up some plans to make a stitch and glue 18' paddleboard. I had been thinking about building a paddleboard in this size for some time and had originally considered shaping it out of foam, but having shaped 12' surfboards in the past and finding it to be a lot of work I wasn't overly thrilled at the prospect of shaping an 18' by hand. I had considered getting it machine shaped as one of our customers has a CNC machine that can do that length but still I wasn't sure I wanted a solid foam core, since that volume of foam, even in a lower density is still quite a bit of weight. Finally I decided to go with stitch and glue, since the weight would be comparable, it would be easy enough to draw it up in Rhino, and I already had enough plywood from a previous project.

So the particulars are:

18' Long

18.5" Wide

5" Thick

The front 1/3 of the deck is convex and the back 2/3 is concave. I'll probably put on a coaming at the transition to knock down spray.

After modeling up the board I flattend out the hull panels and arranged the stations to print and headed off to Kinko's....

Up next laying out the plywood and cutting the panels.