Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The British summer holidays are bellyboard season; that time of year when old plywood boards are pulled out of the backs of sheds and garages, dusted off and carried out to waist deep water to catch a whitewater wave back to shore on. These four foot by one foot surfcraft are as quintessentially British as eating an ice-cream behind a wind-break, and have a loyal following that spans generations, demonstrated perfectly by the huge popularity...
July was a good and busy month for wooden surfboard workshops here at Otter, and at the very end of the month we welcomed Marc Koska to the...
Last weekend we joined the wonderful team from Surfers Against Sewage at Somersault Festival in North Devon for a weekend of mud, music and...
For many families, school summer holidays involve going away somewhere and spending a week or so together making memories and enjoying each others...
A few weeks before Claire arrived in the UK from California, a large package arrived at the Otter Workshop addressed to her. When we opened it...
A few weeks ago Chris arrived at the workshop to spend a week helping us machine timber in preparation for a "Make-Your-Own" wooden surfboard course, with part of his final degree project in his car. It was a circular 3D map of the beach and point at Godrevy, the National Trust beach just down the coast from us. We knew that he'd been working on a series of these 3D landscapes throughout his third year on the Contemporary Craft BA(hons)...
It's not a race to complete the list of daily tasks involved in making your own wooden surfboard with us here, but you'd never have known that if you...
Kurt arrived at the workshop on Monday morning, having driven his pick-up truck half way across Europe from Switzerland to come and spend a week...
It’s lovely catching up with friends who have built surfboards with us in the past – that’s why we throw our “AGM” celebration every...
This week we've had Alan and a whole lot of sunshine in the workshop with us. Whilst the beach at the bottom of the hill has been intermittently...
One of the really special things about sharing what we do through our workshop courses is the fact that we almost inevitably form new friendships. It’s really lovely when, several weeks or months after helping somebody to build their own surfboard, bellyboard or handplane, we get a postcard through the letterbox or an e-mail with some photos attached, with stories of where friends are riding their new surfboards and how much they’re...
This winter we’ve been investing some time in materials research and development. With our backgrounds in design it’s important to all of us...
The first workshop week of our 2015 programme ran this week, and it was wonderful to welcome a friend from just down the coast into the workshop....
This deep into winter many of us rely on the woodburner in our front rooms to provide warmth through cold evenings. At Otter Surfboards we also rely...
Sometimes a great swell coincides with a busy week of work, and there's nothing much that you can do about it. It's a great problem to be faced...
Not many twelve year olds can say that they built a wooden surfboard in their half term holidays. Alex can, though.
Tom’s choice of t-shirt on the middle day of his “build-your-own” workshop week was wonderfully ironic. He hadn’t thought twice when...
Two weeks ago, James was sat in his back garden eating breakfast when Ralph called. "Would it be possible to come and build a surfboard with you...
One of the nicest things about running our workshop experience weeks and sharing the joys of building wooden surfboards, is the people that we get to...
