Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
It feels somewhat counterintuitive to drive away from Cornwall and head up to London in the middle of August, but last weekend that's exactly what we did when James and Liz set off for Seven Dials to run our annual make-your-own handplane workshop at Finisterre's flagship store. The workshop was part of Spotlight 2017, a one-day festival that sees Seven Dials in London's West End (just above Covent Garden) transformed into a traffic-free hub of...
Chris and Rikke drove from Denmark to make their own surfboards with us last week. They took their time and made a road trip out of it, spending some...
The week of June 19th-23rd was the ideal time to be in Cornwall as the southwest basked in a heatwave that included the hottest June day since 1976,...
Mike and Peter travelled from Guernsey to join us at the workshop the week before last; it was the last week of Peter’s school Easter holidays,...
Ordinarily, it’s only James who keeps a pencil tucked behind his ear. This past week though, all three workshoppers arrived with the same habit; a...
One of the questions that we always ask anybody who joins us to make their own wooden surfboard, is where they think they’ll have their first surf on it; after all of that hard work and then having waited for it to be laminated and cured, that first splash is a really special moment.
A couple of Saturdays ago we packed the workshop into the back of the van and drove half an hour up the coast to Watergate Bay Hotel for our first...
Last week the workshop doors here were flanked on a daily basis by two pairs of boots drying in the sun, and an enormous (yet beautifully docile)...
Our “Make Your Own Wooden Surfboard” workshop courses have become a core part of what we do here, and as with every thing somebody had to be the...
When a person says that they intend to take a blowtorch to their freshly finished wooden surfboard before it goes off to be laminated, you could...
Neither Brian nor Ben are strangers to working with their hands to create something; Brian is a garage owner and mechanic from North Wales who spent fifteen years building his own sports car from the ground-up with his neighbor, whilst Ben is an acclaimed artist and an old friend of ours here at Otter Surfboards. Last week they toiled away at neighbouring trestles here to make themselves a wooden surfboard each, each of them adjusting and...
No two workshops are ever the same, and the people that arrive here on a Monday morning and end up stood out in front of our big blue doors holding...
During the last week of September, we were joined by Jac, who was celebrating his 21st birthday by making a 5’10 Fetch with us. He travelled to us...
Having somebody join us from overseas for a workshop week to make their own wooden surfboard is not uncommon, but having a completely...
We've spent a fair bit of time over the last month loading and unloading bits of our workshop in and out of the back of our van, as we've spent a...
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...
We’ve always been fascinated by those most ancient of Hawaiian finless wave sliding craft, alaias and olos. Without fins to hold them straight...
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,...
