Archive for July, 2007

Just thought I would send a a note from our trip down to Hatteras… When we first got here on the 14th, we had days of mostly small crumby waves. We surfed every day anyway just to be in the water, so we struggled during the first week, but had a lot of exercise paddling to beat the southerly current.

Eventually we got a surprise session that the locals described as the second best day of the summer so that was a nice payoff. There was enough wave that I was able to try our new 6′5″ single fin demo board that John Hamblett built and despite the fact that I spend most of my time on a longboard, I was able to get a few good rides. It was fun that the board got so many looks from other guys in the line up. I put a wood-grain FCS Ezi-Trim 7.75 on it which should be great and looks terrific with the light cedar.

Broke my brother’s foam board on day four of my two-week stay. It was a triple stringer long board from a reputable shaper, but it folded in half on some short, fast Hatteras dumpers and made me grateful that we had a new Grain experimental nine-footer to fall back on.

The experimental board has been surfing well in small (chest and smaller) waves - all the contours we put in the bottom seem to be working as planned. It has good stability at slow speeds and despite the channel under most of the board and the big hollow under the nose, the v-contours in the tail combined with the beveled rails still allow it to be pretty quick to turn. My brother has been surfing it more than I have (I broke his board after all) and he is very pumped on it.

I set up in front of one of the local surf shops (Ride the Wind) whose owner, Bob, we met at Surf Expo last winter. He is pumped about our boards and kits and wanted us to have a chance to show them locally.

The people that were stoked the most were local surfers; they want to build kits. I ran into one young guy that I met there named Charlie on the beach a couple of days later, and loaned him the Waka 5-10 fish. He quickly fell in in love with it and wants one.

We are really looking forward to the Wooden Boat Festival in Wilmington, NC on July 28th as it is being organized by Ed Verge, the guy who runs the boatbuilding program at Cape Fear Community College. He says that they have built a few wooden surfboards there in the past - even one hollow one. It’s also close to Wrightsville Beach where I hope to get in a session if we can find a place to park the van overnight!

Can’t wait to get back to the shop to start up some new boards and to see how the new 12-footer is coming out! I hope I am not missing any good waves at home but also that you guys are getting some.

Brad

Since I’ve known him, Greg Cyr has become one of my best friends. Everyone around York knew Greg as “the long paddler”, because he was always out surfing alone, knee paddling up and down the beach in search for the best waves. When I first started surfing in York, Greg was a bit of a legend between my friends and I. We’d see him out all the time, one of the most consistent longboarders around. We had even named a break after him, “Greg’s Right”.

At the time we met, Greg was between jobs, and our surfboard kit business was just starting to gain steam. It was a perfect fit, and Greg came to work for a couple weeks helping me mill wood and fill orders. Lucky for us, he never left. Over the last year, Greg has become an invaluable part of the Grain team. Greg has singlehandedly managed the surfboard kit business, from milling wood, to assembling parts, laying out planks, rolling fiberglass, pouring glue, to packing and shipping boxes. So if you like the way your Home Grown board looks, you’ve got Greg to thank.

In his spare time and during flat spells, Greg has built some sweet custom boards as well, setting high standards for railing wooden boards while honing in his shaping and glassing skills under a watchful eye. In the coming weeks, with some new blood in the kit department, I’m excited to say that Greg is going to be building boards full time. Greg will now bring his surfing passion and eye for crafting details to the board shop as a Grain builder. We’re all stoked to have the first “real” Grain employee to join the team cross-stepping his way forward with a spokeshave in his hand. Nice work, Greg!

Thanks for reading.

- Mike

We’ve been asking our builders at Grain Surfboards to offer their point of view on surfing and building wooden boards. We’ll be sharing their words and images here over time in special blog posts called “From the Shop Floor”.

We hope you enjoy them and they inspire you to build and surf your own wooden surfboard. Words below by Grain builder and artist Randy Gaetano.

“The world is moving fast. The cleanest and whitest objects have been the fuel of our desire for some time now. Machines and molds have quenched our thirst for plastic perfection. We’re returning to our fascination with the natural, the organic, and the hand-made. And only now, because of our choices, can we call this a fascination.

Before plastics were available, everything was made from wood and metal by hand. It was our only option. Our obsession with plastics gave us a way to rise above that earthiness, a chance for man to obtain some glorified state of perfection. But even those perfect plastics decay and crack. They loose that shine and luster, often quickly, and then stick around in this used state for very long time. And our world is quickly filling up with tons of these little pieces of plastic.

(Click Here for a related story on how plastic is affecting the environment.)

Many people are rediscovering what we’ve known all along: That wood and hand-made objects are timeless, ageless in their ancientness, and beautiful in the least. We all know plastic is a necessity now, but it’s no coincidence the greatest manufacturer of foam is now closed. At this juncture in surfboard history, I feel honored to be chosen by this world to be building and shaping surfboards made of wood.”