Build these darling kiteboards and more yourself! It's easy and fun!

Unless otherwise stated, all boards are made of plywood and are totally flat. For us and our conditions that's turned out to be the best. Cool huh?

Le Plank 1.0
We went to the lumberyard and bought a sheet of what the timber industry calls SPF (spruce, pine, or fir, we think). It already had a nice rocker built in (it was warped). Saul cut this one 56" x 16" and it was very nice. 1/2" thick. Footstrap centers 22.5" apart on the centerline of the board. Strap anchors 7" apart. Depending on what side was left in the sun, it had the full range of rocker and it didn't seem to matter. Great board.

Q: What is proper footstrap spacing and angle?
A: Try this test. Plant both feet on the ground. Now jump as high as you can. Repeat a few times til your feet are going back to the same place and it feels pretty good. Now measure that distance and angle. Or just trace your feet onto the board. That's your strap layout. Note the foot outline in the right strap above. There's a right relationship between foot placement, board flex, distribution of planing area, rider weight and style. This one is good. We don't really have it figured out yet. Very similar boards can have different behavior. See "Torpedo" and "Off My Rocker" tiny boards below.

Q: How much volume should my board have?
A: Way less than you think. It should be light so it doesn't sink and get lost, but that's it. Strange as it sounds, beginners especially benefit from low volume board. You won't believe me or understand the reasons until you've tried it every other way, so go ahead and repeat our mistakes. Hopefully our documentation will make it quicker for you than for us. It took us years.
A kiteboard isn't a surfboard. A surfer doesn't have a rope pulling him sideways. It's not a windsurfer. A windsurfer needs all that volume to float the rig for a water-launch. A kite is a totally different situation. You want a board that edges really well and lets you pull hard on the lines all the time. And that's why God made little pieces of plywood.

Lousy Travel Board
The Basketball Court: 19.75"x59.25" luan plywood. Seen here ready to travel. A takeapart board with wakeboard bindings. Middle section overlaps the two halves of the board. Held together with a bunch of #10-24 flathead screws and tee nuts. 1/2" Clamp+iron rocker.
How'd it ride? Heavy, dead, slow, bad when overpowered, too much rocker, too much flex. Just all wrong. And when the bindings come off you, you're barefoot on sharp shells, and then you get infected, and it hurts like hell to put the bindings back on, etc. etc. Painfully Bad.

Q: How wide should my board be?
A: 16". Almost every commercial board is between 37 and 42cm. (14.5"-16.5") We're crazier than that but it still depends on weight, foot size, and experience. In light wind your feet should be over the centerline of the board. In higher wind you want your heels right by the edge but not dragging. If you've got size 12 feet 16" or so gives you both those conditions without ever moving your feet, depending on how deep in the straps you are and how much you toe-out the straps. If the board is too wide you won't be able to control it, and if it's too narrow it won't hold you up. If you're a beginner you'll mostly be sailing underpowered and need a wider board, and if you're an expert you'll already know what you want. We've had good rides in these ranges: 13"-24" width, 100lbs-220lbs sailors, 6-50mph winds. If the board tapers to the tips it can be wider than a rectangular board in the same conditions.

Okay Travel Board
18"x69", 1/2" thick luan. My elaborate travel board leaning on the mandap where my brother was married in SF. Concave and rocker, vacuum bagged laminations, breaks in half to avoid baggage charges. Fully padded deck. The halves are joined by splints made from chunks of hockey stick. One stick is enough for the toe side but the heel side needed two layers of hockey stick to be stiff enough. There was foam under the splints and you could adjust the rocker with the splint attachment screws. It was best adjusted flat in the middle. The padded deck looked nice but was unnecessary weight. This board was too much work and too heavy. Okay.

Good Travel Board

Q: How long should my board be?
A: 5ft. Between 3 and 12ft.anyway. If it's short it'll be light and not have much planing area. If it's long it'll have to be heavy to be stiff enough. Everything depends on everything of course, but start at 5ft.

Instant Tiny Board
16"x48" Off My Rocker 1.0 DLX with Zero Prestige Reactive Warping Technology RWT tm and abuncha other cool magic stuff: A piece of 3/8" scrap fir from my brother's garage. Just a little rocker from tightening the plate screws. Good to ride when powered up, very light, easy to spin, kind of a skateboardy feeling. Lots of spray in my face at first because it's so short and has big tips. Then I learned to turn the board when I hit waves. Used it for a couple of weeks at 3rd ave. in SF when my big board was too big. That's me in my tourist outfit. Good.

Q: How much rocker should my board have?
A: Except for your first board, little or none goddammit!!!!
As a beginner you'll be getting dragged straight downwind and a half-inch or (insert huge amount) of rocker will make it easier to keep the board between you and the water. Might as well have upturned tips and a bunch of little fins all over it too. But once you're trying to go upwind, you'll be edging the board hard, and for most of us here in the kiteboarding paradise of Rumney Marsh, a flat board with some flex feels best.

Q: I found one of your boards in a tree. It has your email address on it. Should I email you?
A: Yes. You'll be made famous on this page as the first person to return a lost board. We've lost a bunch of boards and they all had a "please email me" message on them. Never heard a peep. I guess all the nice people are illiterate or don't know what email is.

Update! One Righteous Man
Lubos Vacha found one of Eric's boards hanging in a tree in the NC outer banks in April 2003. Eric must have kicked it off during high-altitude flight. What's even more amazing is that Lubos read the board, emailed Eric and sent him his board back. Hooray for Mr. Vacha and all Lubosians!! Let's surrender to them and let them do statecraft and nationbuilding here.

Update! Another Righteous Man
I loaned out my balsa board and someone left it in the water at pleasure bay. A fine gentleman found it and emailed me.
I have his picture and name here somewhere and hope to find it soon. For now be of good cheer. Such people exist.

The Torpedo 15"x50.3" 3/8" birch. A tiny travel board, designed to fit in a golf bag. Eric wanted to avoid baggage charges, and golf clubs travel free no matter the size or weight. "Not to exceed 62 inches" means length+height+width<=62" on some airlines. If you say "surfboard" they'll charge you anyway. He was ready to tell them it was a special "golf stance enhancer" shaped like a surfboard for that perfect swing. Eric sez: "It totally sucked! It was way too small. The amount of power I needed to start planing would then rocket me along the water until I luffed the kite. It does, however, have the world's best footstraps. Since it was so light it jumped pretty well. Good thing I wasn't charged for it." Bad

On further thought, this board was only tested right before a thunderstorm in super gusty wind with a kitesurfer xxl that tended to luff and fall into the water, on the last day of the season. So perhaps it wasn't a fair test. Jury still out

Q: So how stiff should my board be?
A: Just right. The fastest upwind board for a straight-line run has no rocker. Cutting back and loading up for a jump you want rocker to match your curved path. Then a flat rigid board feels draggy and doesn't jump well. The best flex depends on your weight, style, and where your footstraps are relative to the planing area. I'll update this page when we've got the numbers :). I've made a bunch of boards that were too flexible to be any good and one that was too stiff to jump well but was great for other stuff. If the board has wide tips you can bend the board more in a turn than if it's tapered (that's a good thing).

Putting in the rocker
We don't do this anymore because we like flat boards, but you might enjoy it. The bottom surface of the plywood board must be raw wood, not yet varnished or sealed. Clamp the board down, sponge water all over the bottom, and steam iron the hell out of it. For a flat spot in the middle use a prop near each end instead of the one in the middle shown here. Leave the board clamped for a couple of days while it dries and you catch up on humanitarian missions. On the right is another approach used in the jungles of North Carolina.

Old and Broken

New Hotness

Quick and Easy Footstraps:
Now that you've got those tee nuts in, it's time to make a footstrap or two.This kind is made from a 1ft chunk of truck tiedown strap. The bolt goes through a new penny, a chunk of wood, and a slot in the end of the strap. The slot makes it easy to loosen the bolt and adjust the strap. Melt the ends of the strap so they don't fray. Melt the slot and shove something in so it doesn't melt shut again. That also makes sure the slot is wide enough for the bolt. Varnish the strap to make it stiff and let it dry. Use contact cement to make a tube of wetsuit neoprene 7" or 8" long depending on how big your feet are. Put it all together so it looks like this. Your foot should be snug in the strap and go in no further than the instep or you're risking a broken ankle. Your tee nuts should be at least 7.5" apart so you can get your feet out in a hurry even if your foot is twisted sideways. Why use a new penny as a washer? This galvanized bolt has survived many hours in saltwater without rusting. In 1981 or so President Reagan took us off the copper standard and put us on the zinc standard because the copper in a penny was worth more than a penny. Those new zinc pennies prevent rust by acting as a sacrificial anode just like the one on your outboard motor.

Gluing up a balsa kiteboard blank
The tips, rails, and center stringer in this one are poplar. The steps: Put plastic sheeting over a heavy flat solidcore door. Clamp scrap boards along two edges. Lay out the boards you're going to glue up. Screw wood blocks around the other two edges and make an equal number of wedges. Mix up some epoxy and paint it on all the edges to be glued. That keeps the wood from soaking up too much glue later and sucking the joint dry. Mix the remaining epoxy with wood flour, phenolic or glass microballoons, white flour, or whatever you like until it's got a consistency between pancake batter and peanut butter. Spread that on at least one edge of each joint. Pound the wedges between the boards and the blocks to hold the whole thing tightly together. If the boards won't lie flat pile heavy things on them or nail them down. Some people use yellow glue or white glue instead of epoxy, that's fine too, cuz the whole thing's going to be encasulated with fiberglass anyway. I like epoxy because it fills and sands well and I have it.

Frequently Asked Question:

Q: "Can't I just use my windsurf board? and aren't fins better?"
A: In theory yes and yes. But the difference between theory and practice is much bigger in practice than it is in theory.

Summary: After much striving and human drama, we all gave up on directional boards entirely and fins mostly.
Here's a bunch of stuff that should have worked really well but didn't.

120 liter windsurfer set up for kitesurfing. That means adding more footstraps further forward. I actually sailed the length of Boston old harbor on this monster with a 5 meter sputnik 4 modified for 4 lines and handles. I really wanted to get that windsurfer-istic feeling of drag decreasing with speed and the board skipping along just slapping the water. To stay on this thing required a lot of screaming and channeling James Brown ("Get On UP!) It was pretty scary. Big and squirrely and had that huge sharp fin and once it was going fast seemed like way too much board for a pair of skinny human ankles to control. After surviving a wipeout it was really hard to fly the kite and get back on it.

Saul kited his way into the air and landed on that big fin, cutting his foot. For a while it seemed like every kite excursion ended up with Saul in the emergency room. He developed a real antipathy toward fins. Saul is the world's greatest optimist, which makes him very accident-prone. He quite a collection of scars and an almost complete set of x-rays from breaking most of the bones in his body over the years.

The Fat Tadpole, or according to Saul, The Tadpole with Teeth: I bought a $10 windsurfer at a fleamarket, cut it in half and made a smaller board. Saul didn't want to touch it or even stand near it, which showed good sense.

I put the straps about centered over the planing area and then added another strap (not shown) over the fin. I rode this across the Charles river in a very rough northwest wind flying a 10.6meter Kitesurfer XXXL with handles. Conditions were so bad that it actually seemed like the board sort of worked. Later in decent conditions it became clear that it was nearly unrideable. Surely physics was involved in some way.

Model Zero became the Can Opener with the addition of a Big Fin. 12.2" long, 4.1" chord, .26" thick. Foil thickness is ~6.5% of chord. Parabolic-looking outline, modified double-ogive foil section, which means circular arcs but blunted for health reasons. Thanks to Dave Culp for foil advice. Nice graphic by Selena. Aluminum is very slow stuff to work. Use fiberglass instead. Most rideable "Finnish" board yet. Goes to windward well and feels slick once the fin gets lift. The board wants to be flat on the water in the steady state condition, and that means it needs upturned noses to keep from diving. All the side force is concentrated in that narrow fin, and the board can easily pivot around it, which makes it squirrely. Further fiddling would involve bigger stabilizing fins at the tips, upturned noses with planing steps at both ends, and maybe Hawaiian manu thingies on top the tips. And I'd probably never jump for fear of all that hardware.