Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
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 us here. We all surf, but we all also pursue other passions and projects. James runs, and at the end of last year, having never run a marathon before, he signed up to run three in three days. A little more actually. Along a particularly steep and unforgiving stretch of the Dorset coast path. Some of...
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...
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...
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 the summer of 2016 best-selling author (The Idles Traveller, Crap Towns, Three Men in a Float) and CEO of Unbound publishers, Dan Kieran, joined us for a week and made himself a beautiful 7’2” Coaster. At the time, Dan had no intention of using his experience making a wooden surfboard 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...
This last week we’ve been caretaking a book that is both very rare, and incredibly relevant to what we do here. Tom Blake – The Uncommon Journey...
The community of surfers who have passed through our workshop over the years is a beautifully broad spectrum representing the 21st Century surfer....
Sometimes, one wave is all a person needs. It could be one of many, or the only wave of a session, but if it’s enough to make a memory then we’ll...
Spending a week making a wooden surfboard here at Otter is, for most people, going to be a step away from their day-to-day. The differences between this and a day job ranges from adjusting to spending a week focusing on learning to quite simply spending a week on your feet doing manual work. These adjustments can be challenging, but the reward on Friday afternoon is (we think) well worth it. You can get a good idea of the processes that go...
Creating anything with an organic material such as wood is both challenging and hugely rewarding, particularly if your aim is to work with and show...
This autumn our friends at Surfers Against Sewage have been busier than ever with a twin-pronged attack on the plastic pollution that blights our...
Last weekend, we held our Annual Gathering of Makers. It's a special occasion for us, when we invite all of the makers who have joined us over the...
