Back to the Future

What does the son of a surfboard shaper do for a school project given a choice? How about "The History of the Surfboard."

Not wanting to be too new school and muck about with resin and foam, Ben chose to get back to basics and feel the soft, warm grain of wood. His scheme was to make a replica of an Alaia board.



First step was to find a suitable blank. Our backyard fence that fell down last year provided the perfect piece of aged redwood, worm holes and all.



Once he figured out the length, Ben laid out the plan shape using some basic tools like a compass and french curves. (Who knows what a french curve is?!)



The block plane made quick work of rolling the rails.



Then on to the final sanding.



The last thing was to apply a dark stain and beeswax finish to give it a rich, old wood feel. The end result was pretty cool.



It's about the size of a Paipo board. Looks like fun.

The main thing for me was that Ben was able to get his hands on some new tools, learn how they work safely, and feel empowered that these basic skills and tools can open a lot of doors.



Ben is just looking forward to taking it out and giving it try.

Mocha Coffey

Tory choose this mocha brown for her new hybrid.



She was also up for my thing for matching decals colors to fins. The red seemed to work out well.

Collections

Joel walked into the shop the other day with 2 boxes filled with magazines and said he was clearing out some of his stuff. As it turned out, he had a pretty complete collection of Surfer's Journals. Two of those years were subscriptions I gave him as a gift and I was able to glean a few copies I was missing. Now I've got the full monte. Stoked.



Well that little exercise reminded me of a photo of some of my Clark tee shirts that I took shortly after Grubby shut the whole thing down. These were the good ones, my work shirts were thrashed and a different story. They were given to me by the Clark truck drivers when they delivered blanks or when I stopped by headquarters. When I think about it, some of them are probably 20 or so years old. Where does the time go?



Well of course I had to throw my logo shirts into the fray. Which reminds me, it's time to do another print run. Anyone interested?

Nathan's 5'6"

A very stoked grom picks up his new Styrolite. I can't wait for this super talented athlete to get his chops down and start throwing some water around in the line up.

The Little Perks

One of the coolest things about my job is how well my customers take care of me. Phil stopped by and dropped off these nice crabs he picked up in one of his traps. On top of that, he gave me one of those cool lightweight, collapsable traps and tuned me in on how to set it up just outside the kelp beds. Next season I'm on it. It gives me another excuse to take out my SUP (quickly becoming a versatile craft) and poke around.

From a bottle of wine or beer to fish and crab, these little perks don't show on the bottom line at the end of the year. But they do add to the sense of community and overall quality of life. Thanks everyone!

Cole's Airbrush

Here's why ultra talented people piss me off sometimes. About 10 years ago I trained Cole to airbrush boards. He got good quick. In fact, he was pulling good rail tape offs from the start. He ended up spraying boards for me throughout high school and I was stoked. He was a good kid and a talented surfer, musician, and student. You could just see it in his hands.

Well off to college he went, got his masters, and got married. I hadn't seen much of him during those years until recently. He was in town and called me about getting a new board. He asked if he could do the spray job, said he hadn't airbrushed a board in years and wanted to take a crack at it. "No worries," I said, and I shaped him up a nice 6'2.

Well, we arranged for him to come by during lunch time to check out the shape. He figured it was a good time to spray the board so I showed him the spray room and where everything was and left for lunch.



This is what I came back to, a beautiful racy spray job, fades, pinlines, and all, in such a short time. I asked him what he thought of it and he just said, "Ahh, it's all right." The master of the understatement. And again I am humbled.

Community Service

A group of local peace officers decided to pool their funds and have me make this custom board for their retiring police chief. It was mostly to be a wall hanger but trust me, if you see him out in the line up, mind your manners and let him have any wave he wants!

Sure Feels Like Spring

With the warm weather we've been having, a lot of trees are starting to bud out. Louise took a hint from nature and decided to put this flower print on her first custom board.



We picked a background color on the print to spray the base of the board. The cherry blossoms really pop!