Barong - longboard from scratch

So here is the deal. I'm coming back from Indonesia, calling up a good friend of mine and we are making a board from scratch and it's a killer.

Wheel well close-up.

Everything started here, when I visited this beach at Canggu, Bali. I spent a good couple of hours there watching surfers do their thing. Suddenly everything else felt insignificant. I was captivated by the sound of crashing waves, and how something so simple as trimmed piece of wood can be a door to a completely different dimension. I snapped the photo above and headed back to my guesthouse, chasing sunset along the rice fields.A couple of weeks passed by. The next thing I know, me and my buddy Oleg desperately searching for а piece of wood, that can be wide enough for a longboard.

And... We failed to find one. Here we are gluing 2 regular size boards together.

barong_deck_2

After 9 hours the glue was completely dry. We traced the shape we wanted using paper and pencil and trimmed the edges.

After a few hours of sanding.

The main shape is done, next we cut wheel wells and burned the surface to get that rich dark tint. After burning we used felt to polish it. The deck turned matte at this point.

Covering the whole thing with beeswax and preparing for artwork.For the illustration I've chosen Barong - a creature from Balinese mythology, a king of all good spirits. A small tribute to Canggu where the idea has hit me.

For the artwork I used acrylic markers, White and Gold. After roughly 6 hours the illustration was done and I covered it with 5 layers of acrylic lacquer. Done.Shout out to my dad, who let me use his studio light and took that first photo.Thanks for watching.