To Premium Kit or to DIY Customise Kit?

That is the question - here we provide some helpful info to help you on your way to board making with the best suited kit for you. 

For each of our 8 board styles you can make, there are two kit options; Premium Kit or DIY Customised Kit. Simply; the Premium Kit is recommended for Beginners/Intermediate and first time board makers, while the DIY Customised Kit is more suited to experienced woodworkers or someone who has attended one of our in person courses.
The Premium Kit has more inclusions (has reflected in price point) and the materials are prepped ready to go, eliminating the need for you to have access to certain machinery.

The DIY Kit is the bare bones of wooden surfboard making, providing you with the rough sawn materials and the Bywater Surf 1:1 paper plans of your chosen board. 

In the Premium Kit, all your parts will be machined and cut to size for you, allowing you to pretty much jump straight into the glue up. The Paulownia rails and ribs have been cut out to the exact sizing, The Nose and Tail blocks are machined to size as well as the deck skins (you have the option to upgrade the skins pre-glued and sanded). In the Premium Kit will also include; internal fiberglass, breather fabric, brass screw vent and rubber seal, Plastic vacuum bag and connection, tape, timber tabs for the rails, centerline ply for the frame, plus a comprehensive instruction guide and video tutorials from Stuart. 

The basic equipment and tools you’ll need for your surfboard making journey is; block plane, hand plane, jig saw, sanding paper, pegs, sandbags or similar, vacuum, drill, hole saw, router. We recommend browsing from the additional extras you can include in your kit, like finboxes, leash plug or vent. 

For the DIY Customised Kit, you will be making your board much more from scratch with more scope to customize your board and use the 1:1 paper plans as a guide. This is is more suited to experienced woodworkers or tradies, or someone who has dabbled in surfboard making board. The materials included are rough sawn and need extra prepping before the surfboard making. You will need to mill your paulownia skins and rails will need further machining down to reduce thickness and using the paper plans you will cut out the extra shapes yourself. As the DIY Customised Kit only includes the basic materials, we recommend you shop from our selection of extras to complete your board, like the fiberglass, vacuum bag, brass screw vent and inboxes or perhaps you may want to source these yourself. The DIY Kit only includes a basic instruction manual and no tailored video tutorials. 

An integral part of the surfboard making is the glue and resin, which we can’t include in our kits, so they will have to be independently sourced. We recommend Epoxy Resin - Techniglue CA, which can be purchased directly from Nightingale Supply here and Surfset resin for external coatings, we use Surfset Flex Resin which can be purchased directly from Sanded here. 

If you have any questions or queries about our surfboard making kits please reach out to us. We are able to work with you and your needs to help you on your way to creating the surfboard of your dreams, with your own hands.