Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
We like to keep in touch with everybody who has ever joined us to make their own surfboard, and it’s incredible when we receive an e-mail with a handful of images attached containing stories of a successful surf trip. Matt made a 6’4” Woodburner with us last June and surfed it close to home in Cornwall through the autumn and winter before taking it away for a wide-ranging trip across the Indonesian archipelago. When we recently sent out...
Robert Chapman (known around the Otter workshop as Rob) joined us last November to make a surfboard as a gift for his son who’s currently living...
It's festival season once again, and with the hope that this year's quota of rain has already fallen on Glastonbury, we're making preparations to...
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...
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 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...
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...
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 to run smoothly. Hannah and Justin are from Buckfastleigh in Devon, a town that was once the centre of a thriving woolen industry but which has since declined as demand for the coarse wool of upland hill sheep to make carpets has fallen when the local factory closed. Much of that wool is now...
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...
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 review of the Ash tree, Fraxinus excelsior, by Dr. Peter Thomas predicts that eventually the ash tree is likely to be all but eradicated from Europe thanks to the twin threats of ash dieback (Chalara) and the larvae of a beetle called the emerald ash borer which is spreading west across...
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...
