Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
Surfing is often referred to as “The Sport of Kings” thanks to its ancient history as the preferred pastime of Hawaiian kings and queens, but it is not only the Hawaiian royalty and nobility who enjoyed riding waves – our very own British Royal Family have been known to also. Great Britain, the Hawaiian Islands, and their Royal Families have had a long and interesting relationship through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The Sandwich...
It feels somewhat counterintuitive to drive away from Cornwall and head up to London in the middle of August, but last weekend that's exactly what we...
When a person says that they intend to take a blowtorch to their freshly finished wooden surfboard before it goes off to be laminated, you could...
Late last spring we were visited by Chris, Rob and Matt, who were travelling the length of the British Isles documenting makers, producers and...
We’ve always been fascinated by those most ancient of Hawaiian finless wave sliding craft, alaias and olos. Without fins to hold them straight and steady, the bottom contours and rail profiles of these thin, flat, blades are key to ensuring that they hold into the face of the unbroken wave and generate speed and lift – and what speed! A few months ago, with summer approaching and the prospect of much more time spent playing in the sea in...
James first met Hannah and Justin Floyd at last year’s DO Lectures in West Wales, where they were part of the team of volunteers helping the event...
Living out of the back of a van seems to have become incredibly en-vogue in recent years. A sure sign of that is when a parody film, such as the...
We’ve had a rather unusual surfboard stored in the workshop for the past year or so; it’s a twelve feet long replica of a Tom Blake style...
A few weeks before Claire arrived in the UK from California, a large package arrived at the Otter Workshop addressed to her. When we opened it...
This weekend the annual Boardmasters Festival returns to Newquay (7th-11th). The Boardmasters has been running in one guise or another since 1981, and over the years this event has morphed from the UK’s flagship surf contest, with a line-up of international competitors vying for WQS points, into a large music festival on the cliffs overlooking Watergate Bay, with a small surf competition on the side held at Fistral Beach. Whilst...
"A man who makes things with his hands is a laborer. A man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman. But a man who works with his...
We were delighted to welcome 10xEuropean Longboard Champion Ben Skinner into the workshop this week to get started designing a wooden big wave gun...
We headed up to the big smoke yesterday to set up our Storyboard exhibition at the Patagonia store in Covent Garden. It took a little longer than...
Early last year this project began with excited talks from Tom Clarke, the head Gardener from Trelissick, who'd recently felled a storm damaged tree...
A "One Tree" Collaborative Wooden Surfboard Story by James Otter and Mat Arney.
