Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
On our May workshop we had the pleasure of spending a week building wooden surfboards with Kim and Shelby. A truly international couple, they are Canadian but thanks to global work commitments live in Amsterdam and were just in the process of organising moving to Japan - so their new surfboards will be well travelled by the time they eventually take them home to the west coast of British Columbia. At the end of their week with us we sat...
Back in March we were joined by Lloyd on one of our "Build-Your-Own" workshop weeks. Lloyd is a joiner by trade and so had a bit of a head start...
A good set of chisels is fairly essential in any woodworker's tool cabinet, and because of the variety of tasks that they can be turned to it's often...
This week all three sets of trestles in the workshop have grown a surfboard, as Patrick, Pete and Claudio joined us to build their own. All in...
Packing up the van and taking our workshop on the road is one of our great pleasures. Last Saturday the road wasn't a very long one though, as we...
The saying goes that two’s company, three’s a crowd: We’ve had a wonderful crowd in the workshop with us this week, and luckily our spacious new premises at Mount Pleasant Eco Park, Porthtowan, means that it’s not been crowded. Three sets of trestles have been the centre of attention as Jerome, Graeme and Lloyd have spent the past five days with us building and shaping their surfboards under James’ tutelage. Absolute...
Every once in a while we receive a request from a customer asking for something a little different. We love these little forays into the wider...
Last Saturday we welcomed our first workshoppers into our new space. Emma, Barbara, and Chris spent the day with us producing their...
In between everything else that we've been doing this winter, we've been having fun with our handplanes. Everything that we do here is subject to...
Take a walk along the Pier with us. The Pier is currently the longest surfboard in our range' it's our take on a traditional mal at 9'6" x 22 7/8"...
"Why two fins?" we hear you ask? Well, that's a very good question, and one that we'll try to answer here. Surfboards can have as many or as few fins as you wish placed on the bottom, from none (as in the case of ancient Polynesian surf craft and early paddleboards) through to the most common maximum number of five, as utilised by the Campbell Brothers in their bonzer bottom/fin configurations. The key is to balance out the "hold" (or...
Once all of the component pieces of one of our hollow wooden surfboards have been prepared, the building and shaping process is done largely using...
The one that a lot of you have been waiting for has finally arrived…introducing our 5’6” all cedar Seadar! Earlier this year we casually...
Last weekend we temporarily relocated our workshop. For one day, on Saturday, we did what we normally do and covered the floor with sawdust whilst...
We're heading back up to London, but this time we're loading our tool kit and a stack of timber into the back of the van ready to put on a...
Kingsley's just finished off his "Desert" Island Hopper after a week of hard work, fuelled by lots of cups of tea. He's really pleased with his finished board, and so are we. Kingsley lives on a smallholding in Hertfordshire and uses travelling to visit friends and family in either Devon or Scotland as easy excuses for regular surf trips. He was very interested in the provenance of the timber used for his board, being keen that he would...
It’s been a good summer this year. Memories of past years of howling nor’westerly winds and incessant mizzle were banished and we spent the...
We’re closing the doors to the workshop next week (w/c Monday 16th September), loading the van and driving up to the Big Smoke. It...
A few changes have been afoot at Otter Surfboards this week…if you browse around our site you'll see that the first of the Autumnal updates have...
