Next, I came across this rather cool site called phoresia.org – it’s devoted to sustainable surf products and design stuff and there was an interesting interview with a hollow wood board designer named Paul Jensen. It looks from the pictures as though he does beautiful work.
If you want to have a go at building a board from the usual materials, Stephen Pirsch’s How to build your first surfboard might be a good place to start. I liked that this was upfront: ‘At this point you might ask yourself, do I really want to do this? Is it worth saving roughly half the cost of a showroom board? Is it worth buying new tools? No book or video can make building your first surfboard easy. If you are not used to building things, it may be so difficult you regret it. It’s dusty, sticky, sweaty, and toxic work, and the pro shops mostly do a good, cosmetically pleasing (although somewhat disposable) job. Consider reading this in order to gain information on how to custom order a more durable surfboard from a shop.’
If you’re looking for a slightly less comprehensive explanation of the board making process then this article on shaping from a Californian company called WB Surf co might be worth a squizz…
Finally, here’s a real old school web page with lotsa links about building and repairing boards from surflibrary.org.
Have you come across a great site about board design – or some other surf-related topic? Why not use the form below to tell me about it and I’ll go have a look.
