Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
Following an exhaustive period of research and development (which you can translate as us making a surfboard and riding it as often as we could this summer), we’re now offering all of the surfboards that we make in white poplar, as well as the western red cedar that we currently use. White poplar’s a light, straight grained and strong timber, with the added strength allowing us to produce thinner deck and bottom skins in order to...
Tealing We’d like to introduce all of you to The Coaster, the latest addition to our range and a surfboard that we’ve been struggling to keep...
Last Saturday, James and Liz became Mr and Mrs Otter. Hooray!
In the mid-nineties, an ex-pat Aussie lifeguard residing in Hawaii named Andy Cochran started to develop a new type of swim fin. His aim was to...
It's often been said when trying to describe the sensation of getting barrelled that "time slows down in the tube". We think that time slows down...
A few weeks ago Chris arrived at the workshop to spend a week helping us machine timber in preparation for a "Make-Your-Own" wooden surfboard course, with part of his final degree project in his car. It was a circular 3D map of the beach and point at Godrevy, the National Trust beach just down the coast from us. We knew that he'd been working on a series of these 3D landscapes throughout his third year on the Contemporary Craft BA(hons)...
Last Friday, it was grey and raining in Cornwall. In the true spirit of all the best British summer festivals and events, whilst the rest of the...
Last weekend a very special event happened in Wales, and we were lucky enough to be involved. Every year on a remote farm in Ceredigion, West...
We're not quite sure how we're going to top this one; having kept it a secret for the past few months, we're now incredibly proud to announce that...
We have a date for your diary folks; on Friday, June 12th, the workshop will be open late and we are inviting anyone and everyone who is interested...
The maxim "Measure Twice and Cut Once" is heard so often in the Otter Surfboards workshop that we thought we'd go ahead and paint it on the wall (at least, the latter part of it) underneath an old two-man saw that we found in an antique store recently. It's a nice reminder to consider and check everything that we're about to do before committing, and has been a motto of craftsmen for centuries.
Earlier this year the guys over at Wavelength Magazine sat James down in their "Hot Seat" to ask him some questions about how Otter Surfboards came...
Every surfer around here is worn out at the moment, and in a really good way. April has been a bumper month for waves, with back-to-back swells,...
On one of the walls of our workshop, between the rack that holds wooden surfboards in various stages of completion (from half-done to old-faithfuls...
We feel very fortunate that our workshop is located where it is, not only because of its proximity to the beach and our homes, but because of the...
Last weekend saw the 2015 Approaching Lines International Festival of Surf (presented by Reef) go down just up the road from us in Newquay. Three nights of surf movies in a packed cinema and a single fin surf contest that lucked into perfect conditions made for a brilliant few days, and it was wonderful to indulge in a weekend of surf culture and stoke at the tail end of winter. We headed along and enjoyed some really great surf movies...
This time next week it will officially be summer; Cornwall is decorated yellow with daffodils lining the lanes and gorse flowers covering the...
This winter we’ve been investing some time in materials research and development. With our backgrounds in design it’s important to all of us...
Every now and then we introduce a member of the Otter Surfboards team to you, so that should you happen to stop-by and visit the workshop one day...
