Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The week of June 19th-23rd was the ideal time to be in Cornwall as the southwest basked in a heatwave that included the hottest June day since 1976, and there was a lovely pulse of swell at the start of the week. Keijo, Rich and Tim spent this week in Cornwall, and although they were in the workshop for a lot of the time gluing, planing and sanding the wooden surfboards that they were making, there was a good four hours usable daylight on either...
Wherever you are and whatever you do, a little more space would inevitably come in handy. Since moving into our workshop at the Eco Park three...
It's always a great honour to be featured in a publication celebrating craftsmanship, and we couldn't have been more thrilled last week when a...
We’ve been making plans for this year’s Boards, Bangers and Beers event, and would like to invite you all to join us on the evening of Friday...
At this time of year, when the sun rises so early, we sometimes (as often as humanly possible) manage to squeeze in a dip in the sea before heading...
Mike and Peter travelled from Guernsey to join us at the workshop the week before last; it was the last week of Peter’s school Easter holidays, and Mike had taken a week off work to spend some quality time with his eldest son shaping a pair of boards and surfing or swimming in the sea.
The premise is simple: twenty slides, lasting approximately twenty seconds each, sharing the backstory of the speaker to uncover what makes them...
Ordinarily, it’s only James who keeps a pencil tucked behind his ear. This past week though, all three workshoppers arrived with the same habit; a...
Last summer we received an e-mail from one of our friends at Surf Simply; Kerianne, their logistics manager, was spending a summer on Long Island,...
Cornwall is, and has a history of being, home to some incredibly creative people; from the artistic hubs of St Ives and Newlyn in the 19th and 20th...
One of the questions that we always ask anybody who joins us to make their own wooden surfboard, is where they think they’ll have their first surf on it; after all of that hard work and then having waited for it to be laminated and cured, that first splash is a really special moment.
A couple of Saturdays ago we packed the workshop into the back of the van and drove half an hour up the coast to Watergate Bay Hotel for our first...
Every surf spot has its characters who are recognised for one reason or another. Our local break has one such individual who is highly regarded far...
Last week the workshop doors here were flanked on a daily basis by two pairs of boots drying in the sun, and an enormous (yet beautifully docile)...
Peering through the half-light of dawn, filtered through the mist and spray hanging in the air, you see a speck fall in to a wave and suddenly betray...
Our “Make Your Own Wooden Surfboard” workshop courses have become a core part of what we do here, and as with every thing somebody had to be the first person to go through the process. Steve Iliffe is the Neil Armstrong of Otter Surfboards, having enquired about ordering a surfboard back in 2011 and asking James if, actually, there might be a chance for him to have a hand in making his surfboard. Just over five years later, Steve’s been...
Naming something is a difficult business. And, you only get one shot. Sometimes, a name comes instantly as if it was always meant to be, whilst at...
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...
