Re: san o paddleboard

Posted by Laszlo on Jul 1, 2007

Chuck,

Since the paddleboard page shows "N/A" for the plans, it appears that they are currently unavailable by themselves as a product. The kit is it.

It does seem a bit odd on the face of it. One would think that since they need the plans for the kit anyway, that it'd be possible (for only the cost of xeroxing and shipping) to make a nice little low-labor, low-inventory profit from selling the plans alone.

We'll have to wait until the Big Cheese himself gets back from the Mystic Boat Show to really answer the question, but my guess is that the kit plans don't have any instructions in them for actually laying out and cutting the wood. All that work was done by the designers and the CNC machine. To give all the info needed to allow a homebuilder to accurately lay out and cut the curves so that the board will actually fit together and have the correct shape would probably be such a large effort that CLC would have a tough time making back the money it'd take to develop the homebuilt plans.

In the meantime, the kit is a pretty good deal. You get the right wood, the right epoxy, and everything is cut to the shapes and curves needed to make them fit correctly.

It's not such a big deal to have the parts pre-cut on the Chesapeake kayaks. They're basically 25 pieces of wood, 7 of which are in the coaming and deck beams leaving 18 major hull pieces. But in the picture of the partial San O board interior I can see at least 17 pieces just there. Then there's the whole rest of the board and the deck. So having someone else do alll that work for you will definitely save a bunch of time on that puppy.

So don't be put off by the price of the kit. You're going to have to spend pretty much the same amount getting all the parts (don't forget the cost of gas driving to the hardware store) anyway, and with the kit you'll be on the water faster.

Good luck,

Laszlo

In Response to: san o paddleboard by chuck on Jun 30, 2007

Replies:

• Re: san o paddleboard by chuck on Jul 1, 2007
• Re: san o paddleboard by George K on Jul 2, 2007
  • Re: san o paddleboard by Laszlo on Jul 2, 2007
    • Re: san o paddleboard by chuck on Jul 3, 2007
    • Re: san o paddleboard by George K on Jul 3, 2007
    • Re: san o paddleboard by CLC on Jul 6, 2007