John,
I've been studying this thread, the thread over on OR's site, and the other wooden board thread on NWKite:
http://nwkite.com/forums/t-12112-0-asc-17.html
I remember you saying something about not revealing all the trade secrets, but am hoping you could help a somewhat landlocked and frustrated kiter at least feel connected to the sport through the building this kind of board. Thinking this would be an awesome winter project to help take the bite out of the fact that, due to location and family obligations, my kiting will be almost non-existent over the next many months.
Wondering if you can speak to the questions below:
How do you pull in the concavity on a board like the Mako Woodie? And still manage to clamp the strips together tightly? In the image below, I can see how you are clamping the strips together with your uber-cool wire set-up. Does that work when you have a significant amount of concavity? I would think the clamping would just pull the edge of the "taco" together and the strips would be pulled up and off the ribs. The board in this pic looks pretty flat in the concavity direction, and therefore would not have this problem.
Do the ribs on the mako woodie go full width? Or, do they get tapered out at some distance from the edge in order to allow for the relatively thin edge that is shown in the (pringle) pics? I see how you've done it on the more traditional surfboard shaped board (pic below), but the mako and other TT style boards seem to call for a more knife-like edge/rail (2nd pic below). If they're tapered how far from the edge are they tapered?
Traditional surfboard style rail:
Mako rail:
Where do you source your inserts? Especially the pad and strap inserts?
Thanks again! Sorry for all the questions!
Best,
Kevin