(Re)Opening The Blue Doors: Sam’s Wooden Surfboard Workshop Experience

20 . 04 . 21

During the sunny and calm days of last week we welcomed Sam to the Otter workshop to make his own wooden surfboard. The lack of waves at the bottom of the hill and the sun streaming through the open doors gave us the perfect setting to guide Sam through the making and shaping of his surfboard, also providing a few opportunities to grab lunch at the beach and bask in the sun during tea breaks outside our blue doors.

With this being our first (socially distanced and masked up) workshop experience of the year due to Covid 19, we were frothing to get Sam started on the journey of making his 7’2″ Coaster. We made a video of the weeks making which you can view below, enjoy!

otter wooden surfboard blue doors workshop experience

Sam's Wooden Surfboard Workshop Experience

Sam is an Australian, living for the last 10 years in the UK, who has surfed all of his life and since learning about Otter Surfboards from a friend studying sustainable businesses, had wanted to make himself a wooden surfboard to grow old with.

Throughout the week Sam got to grips with the process of gluing together the inside framework of his surfboard, building up strips that would form the rails and shaping the exterior using a variety of woodworking tools. Sam told us that he had been interested in carpentry at school and was enjoying the opportunity to work with his hands, with the experience offering a distinct change from his day job working as an Economics Academic.

Sam prepping rails for deck wooden surfboard

We were interested to learn that Sam had managed to combine his job with his love of surfing and had written a paper studying the effect surfing has on local economies, looking at ways to support the communities of known and lesser known surf breaks through investment and conservation. You can read an article about this here and also link to the full paper here.

It is always fun to spend a week in the workshop sharing the experience of bringing a surfboard into the world with anyone who walks through our doors. We learned so much from Sam about his passion for surfing and his desire to help countries better manage their natural resource wealth. It was especially awesome for us to be able to complete our first workshop experience of the year, making a surfboard together and having the interactions that many of us have been without during the current pandemic.

Sam left us on Friday after celebrating the achievement of making his own 7’2” Coaster with a well deserved beer, he’ll be back to pick it up once it’s been glassed and we can’t wait to share those first waves with him!

If you would like to join one of our workshop experiences here in Cornwall, please follow this link to view available dates or alternatively to order your custom surf craft click here.