30 . 11 . 12
We’d like to introduce Buddy as the newest member of the team here at Otter Surfboards.
Now that he’s old enough to be allowed out and about (15 weeks old), James is bringing him into the workshop everyday and he has a little cubby hole right underneath the desk where he sleeps. He’s not allowed in the workshop except for on his way to and from a run-around outside the back door; mainly because of moments like this.
We have a pretty good 3-stage strategy for minimising waste here, to ensure that we make the most out of every piece of timber. Surfboard offcuts go into handplanes, and handplane offcuts are shaved down to use as packaging. When it gets so small that it can’t possibly be of use to us, like sawdust, we take it off to a local company to turn into briquettes for wood-burning stoves. The words “wastage” and “bin” are frowned upon like swear-words in the workshop.
We’ll be exploring the various ways that we reduce our wastage and make the most of our resources in upcoming blog posts.
Buddy does not feature in our waste-reduction system here at Otter Surfboards. This small offcut of Western Red Cedar was in the box on the floor ready to be planed down into nice curly wood shavings (to pack and protect our handplanes when we post them out) when Buddy got his gums around it and thought it was ripe for a game of fetch. Thankfully everything else in the workshop is stored too high up for him to reach, and he’s coming to realise that only brightly coloured dog toys are to be chewed. You’ll be seeing Buddy in the odd photograph from here on, no doubt, as he’s now a full-time member of the team.
