Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
Last week, Joe and Mat joined us for our June wooden surfboard workshop week. They’re identical twin brothers, and back in January they had a big birthday that they have now just celebrated with us by spending a week together making a pair of surfboards.
The summer solstice is fast approaching, and with it our annual “all are welcome” open-workshop evening of Boards, BBQ and Beers on the evening...
A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to be featured on Kate Humble's new series of Back to the Land, which has been shown on BBC Two over...
Yesterday, on Saturday the 19th of May, HRH Prince Harry married Ms Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle. Amongst the wedding gifts they received was a...
The Benefits of Making Most of us work with our hands every single day. But because the majority of developed economies are now based on...
It was our Chris' birthday last week but despite him having the day off, he came in to the workshop anyway. Why? Because the surf in the little bay just around the corner from us was booming, and he wanted some company for a birthday bodysurf. We managed to get some photos of him too, from a great student called Vinny who was in filming with us for the day and also from local photographer Sarah Bunt. It was sizey, heavy and fast, and there was...
Sometimes, and completely coincidentally, we have an “International Week” here at the workshop when all of the participants on a wooden surfboard...
All of the people who walk through the big blue workshop doors here are multifaceted; everybody has more than one interest, and the same goes for...
We’ve written before at the close of a workshop week about how, over the course of these five-days, the learning flows both ways. It’s rare that...
Riding a wave on a longboard is far from a passive activity; the size and weight of the surfboard means that the surfer must be dynamic and move...
Take a scroll through social media, and if you didn't know any better then you could perhaps be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that women's surfing is all sunshine, sand, palm trees and wetsuits that finish at the bottom of the....bottom. The reality is not often so. This week, with International Women's Day and Mothering Sunday here in the UK, we celebrate our female friends who surf right through the unglamorous winter months, inspiring...
The Fine Art of Trim “Ponce DeLeon sailed the ocean in search of The Fountain of Youth, when all he had to do was jump over the side of his...
Everybody who joins us to make their own surfboard has an interesting story; Tim’s is one that none of us could quite get our heads around though.
Snow rarely settles on this stretch of coast; in fact it very seldom falls. When it does, and there's surf, it's definitely a novelty that gives a...
Attending a course to make a wooden surfboard is, for many of our customers, the culmination of many months or even years of day-dreaming and either...
New Year, New Model Sometimes we set out to design and make a new wooden surfboard model, and sometimes one develops seemingly organically. The Barque is a new addition to the Otter Surfboards range and is one such shape; the quickest way to describe it would be to call it a smaller version of our ever-popular Island Hopper model, but that would be doing it a disservice. Developed over several workshop courses as the result of a number of...
As one calendar year clicks over into the next, we like to take the opportunity to pause and reflect on the twelve months just passed so that we can...
"It is the story of how I built a surfboard when I never thought I could, and what it's like to build a company when I never thought I would." In...
As autumn ends here in Cornwall yet more neoprene is taken out of the backs of sheds and garages to help us keep surfing through the winter. We’ve...
