Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
Our friend Tony had quite the complete workshop experience with us over the first six months of this year; he fitted in sessions and days at the workshop as and when he could and worked on his 9'1" Wicket slowly-but-surely. He helped with every single stage of the process, from selecting the planks for his board, through machining and gluing up skins and rail strips to going with James in the van to deliver his surfboard to be glassed by Paul...
The Friday before last, on the evening of June 10th, we held our second annual “Boards, Bangers and Beers” open workshop evening. The weather...
We’ve always been fascinated by those most ancient of Hawaiian finless wave sliding craft, alaias and olos. Without fins to hold them straight...
You don't have to go very far, or for very long, to feel as though you've broken out of your routine and had a bit of an adventure. A couple of weeks...
You're all invited. In a couple of week's time we'll be sweeping up the workshop and lighting the bbq outside the big blue doors for an evening of...
We drank a lot of tea during our May “Make Your Own” wooden surfboard workshop the week before last. Marcus and David were with us building and shaping their own boards – David made an 8’0” Pieces of Eight, whilst Marcus made the first “workshopper” version of an (as-yet unnamed) 7’9” classic down-railed gun that we’ll be launching later this year – and Marcus, being a true Yorkshireman, arrived on Monday morning...
Two weeks ago, whilst the surfing population of southwest England stared in frustration at the small, wind-blown, waves lapping on their shores,...
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...
Surfers Against Sewage are a charity very dear to our hearts here at Otter Surfboards; based just over the hill in the neighbouring village of St...
Exploring the broad spectrum of worldwide contemporary surf culture, the team behind Gestalten’s latest offering, a heavy coffee table book...
Last Wednesday James took on the drive from Cornwall up to London, pushing his way through West London traffic at rush hour to arrive at Finisterre’s flagship store on Earlham Street in Seven Dials, right in the thick of Covent garden in the West End, with just minutes to spare before he was due to talk in front of eighty people there. He’d been invited up by our friends at Finisterre to run an in-store “make-your-own” handplane...
In the middle of March, James and our good friend Tony took a few weeks off the making of Tony’s wooden surfboard with us to head over the Irish...
This last week the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Ecology published some research that spells out a bleak future for British woodlands; a...
George Greenough is the barefoot genius and inventor whom many people argue was the catalyst for the shortboard revolution of the mid-1960s. Born...
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...
It’d be fair to say that we’re fans of a proper tea break here at Otter Surfboards; downing tools for ten minutes a couple of times during the day and drawing breath over a cup of tea and, if we’re lucky, a slice of cake. And we think that we’ve found our favourite cake.
It's fairly common for visitors to the Otter Workshop to comment on James' lack of footwear. For most of the year, in the workshop, on the beach and...
Surfboards vary in appearance as much as the human beings that use them; many become a vehicle for expression both in the way that they are ridden...
Over Christmas and the New Year James and Liz finally headed off on their slightly belated honeymoon, trading the wind and rain of the northern...
