So here it is, I introduced this board in the blog. This board is sold by Ocean Rodeo as a strapped board, and it is a blast ridden strapped; different animal, nothing to do with anything else out there. Some wise kiters took off the ball-and-chain and waxed theirs up, and found it to be an even bigger blast without straps.
Let's make one! Out of wood!
This is definitely NOT a first project. The board has got a 3D curvature which does not allow to build it on a rocker table. But with the experience of a couple of boards done, you'll have fun to do this one. It's also NOT a quick project; in order to achieve the complicated 3D shape, we have to glue 1" (2.5cm) wide strips, pair by pair, for the width of the board, top and bottom. Before glueing the next pair, you'll have to wait a good 5 hours until the glue sets.
Anyways. From scratch.
We will need software to do this project. I recommend AKUshaper, which is a free software running under java and thus on all operation systems, and which can be downloaded here
http://aps3000.com/ . Not that it is worse or better than other software (I don't know), but it's easy to use, intuitive, runs on all machines with java on them, and it's for free.
In order to create your board in AKUshaper, you get yourself a good photo of a Mako outline. If you want to know if it's a good photo, measure it and mirror it in photoshop or the like, and you'll know how good the photo is. Reason for this is, by using a wide camera angle, the curvature is changed quite a bit.
Download and install AKUshaper, and spend 2 hours of your time to run all the tutorials that are offered online. You need to understand how the software works, and there's quite a couple of really nice features you would not even think of.
Now, we start to create the outline of our board.
-Create a new board from their choice of boards, delete all the slices but the center slice.
-adjust the length of your board
-import the picture of the Mako outline "file/image board"
This results in the picture sitting behind the outline to create. Adjust your outline accordingly.