05 . 07 . 13
The making of anything is likely to result in some wastage of materials, and wooden surfboards are no exception. But how much you waste and what you subsequently do with that material is very much in the hands of the maker and it is a responsibility that we take very seriously here at Otter Surfboards.
The processing of wood from tree through to a finished product, surfboards included, is likely to result in the wastage of approximately 30% of the original tree – which is huge. First of all an uneven, round, shape has to have all of the corners knocked off to turn it into more familiar, use-able planks. We then take those planks from the sawmill, rip them down into thinner planks and cut them to length. Each time a saw blade passes through the timber the width of the saw blade is lost as sawdust, which on the big industrial saws at the mill means about 5mm every pass.
We then plane and sand down the planks or cut and rout them into rail strips. When all is said and done we have a finished surfboard, and bags of offcuts, shavings and sawdust. Here’s the first of a three part series
looking at what we do with our wooden wastage in the hope of making the most of what we have:
