A Homemade Wakeboard for Dummies

plywood wakeboard assembly

Some of the most cockamamie sets of instructions we've come across in the eHow.com pantheon have been for people trying to explain how to make your own sports equipment (we'll include a brief list below). The reality of sports equipment is that it's rarely easy to make, and the eHowian contributors who pretended to know how rarely had the slightest idea how to do it. To the list of fake DIYers, then, add Brandy Alexander (or so she claims) and her SportsRec.com post, "How to Make a Homemade Wakeboard."

None of Alexander's references actually includes any instructions, so we have no idea where she came by her steps. She did, for what little it's worth, manage to get a crib description of the shape of the product, but after that it's all over. According to Brandy, then, your process begins with,

"Draw out the outline you would like for your board onto a sheet of plywood."

Brandy, it would have helped immensely if you had specified more about your "sheet of plywood": you know, things like, how thick? what composition? inteior, exterior, marine...? And then there's this bit of advice:

"Sand the rocker into the bottom edge starting at the middle of the board and working toward either tip."

From that suggestion, we guess the plywood had better pretty darned thick... but wait: Alexander knows how to "accentuate the rocker": by,

"...soaking the plywood board in a bathtub filled with hot water for about three to four hours "

That's probably information Brandy harvested from instructions for soaking solid wood she found at wikihow.com. Who knows, though. Let's just say that your glue is likely to be softened by the water...

You might be able to make your own wakeboard from shaped plywood, but you'd be a fool to use a sheet of ¾-inch stuff from Home Depot. Instead, you can buy special bendable plywood, in thin sheets, and glue the sheets together in the bent shape (see image above). In reality, however, most people who make their own wakeboards use foam and fiberglass, not plywood.

As promised, here are some other people faking a knowledge of how to make sporting equipment at the mother lode of misinformation:

• A lacrosse stick shaft (Owen E. Richason IV)
• Curling stones (Rachel Murdock)
• A hockey stick (Michelle Raphael)
• A cricket bat (Joanne Robataille)
• Carbon-fiber arrow shafts (Laura Hageman)

To that list, we're more than happy to add the name of Brandy Alexander as today's Dumbass of the Day, sporting equipment division.

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