Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
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 hand tools. The exception to this rule, however, is the use of an orbital sander in the final stages of shaping. Without such a tool the final 5% of producing a surfboard would more than likely account for at least 20% of the overall build time and the production of each surfboard would certainly...
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...
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 majority of the summer enjoying pleasant weather and small, summery waves. Now, perhaps the apparent early onset of Autumn has caused us to cast our memories back and view the summer through rose tinted spectacles, and we’re tactfully forgetting about the crowds, lifeguard loud-hailers and...
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...
Bellyboards are right up there with buckets and spades, windbreaks and the sound of an ice cream van as a pillar of the classic British Summer....
"We very nearly spent the week sleeping on a boat off the south coast, but unfortunately it was sold just a few weeks ago" Tim replied when asked...
This is the second blog post that we are publishing in our short "Down The Line" series, which aims to share with you (our friends, customers and followers) exactly what we do with the waste that we produce as a by-product of building hollow wooden surfboards. As we mentioned in Part 1, there is no getting away from the production of waste in any industry; in our small industry wood goes from a round shape (the tree) to rectangular...
The awning was already here when we moved in to the workshop here at Krowji; a few lengths of 2"x4" with some clear plastic tarpaulin pinned to it...
The name paipo (pronounced pipe-oh) is derived from the Hawaiian "Pae Po'o" which means to surf headfirst. Essentially these surfboards are...
The making of anything is likely to result in some wastage of materials, and wooden surfboards are no exception. But how much you waste and what...
This past month it has finally felt as though Summer has arrived here in the south west of the UK - on some days at least! And when we get a high...
This afternoon Glenn Bowker carefully lined up an inked rubber stamp, paused to take a breath, and then pressed it firmly down onto the deck of the wooden surfboard that he's been shaping this week. Stamping the surfboard with the Otter Workshops logo is the final job on a "Build-Your-Own" workshop to-do list, and it's as important and celebrated as the topping out ceremony on any building. It signifies the completion of something and is a...
Poplar is a popular choice when we ask customers which hardwoods they would like to have laid up into the deck and bottom skins of their surfboards....
It's Friday afternoon which means both blog-time and also, during "build-your-own" workshop weeks, the culmination of a week's hard work and the...
We were delighted to welcome 10xEuropean Longboard Champion Ben Skinner into the workshop this week to get started designing a wooden big wave gun...
