Archive for August, 2007

We’ve all been blessed to know Randy as an artist, snowboarder, surfer and friend for quite a while. He’s got balance dialed in every aspect of his life, especially surfing and skateboardng. But the earthly balance Randy aspires to is expressed best in his diverse artwork, commonly combining the opposing forces of nature (the organic) and technology (the man-made) into line, shape and color.

There is no better example of this achievement of harmony than Randy’s most recent works, the Balance Ballads. These are modern, almost robotic, hieroglyphic shapes burned into raw wood with talent and flow. Randy’s inspiration came from hours of working in the Grain Surfboards shop, building custom wooden surfboards that would soon be harnessing the power of water and swell on the world’s oceans.

Randy recently had an art opening in our old home of Burlington, Vermont where he showcased his Balance Ballads to friends and newcomers from all over New England. The show was a success and was recently covered by Future Snowboarding magazine. You can read their article on the show here.

Grain Surfboards is now offering custom wood-burning artwork on any of our customer’s boards built in our shop. Randy can custom design a piece of artwork that will not only personalize your board, but also give it a timeless artistic quality that no other surfboard in the world will have.

Let us know if you’re interested in the opportunity to have custom woodburning techniques used to personalize your Grain Surfboard. It’s another distinctive feature of wooden surfboards that we believe elevates these boards from the everyday boards on the beach.

Even though our roots will always stay on the Right Coast, the surfing mecca of Southern California beckons, and this Fall, we’re listening. Grain Surfboards has many customers, builders and interested surfers hailing from Southern California, so soon, we’ll be heading out to meet them in person.

Starting in early October, the Grain staff will leave Maine, head west towards the Northwest city of Portland, Oregon. From here we’ll get started on our West Coast tour, driving south along the Oregon and California coasts visiting retail shops, surfing and offering board demos wherever possible.

We’ll also be planning some events for all of our Home Grown kit builders in the area. It will be good to finally meet everyone that we’ve been in touch with, helping them move their board projects toward completion. If you’re going to be around the best surf spots along the West coast in mid-October, give us a holler.

Then we’ll make our way to the Sacred Craft Consumer Surfboard Expo on Oct 13th and 14th at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego. Grain is proud to have a booth at this event alongside some of the greatest surfboard craftspeople in the business. We’ll be at the show to display our custom wooden surfboards and Home Grown kits, as well as new Grain apparel.

Keep an eye on the site for a more detailed schedule of our West Coast Tour.

There’s still time to get some warm weather waves, so we’re having a Summer store-wide sale. Order Now to get 10% OFF Everything in the Grain Surfboards Online Store. Just enter the following coupon code at checkout to receive the Discount: GRAINSummer07Sale

ALL Home Grown Surfboard Kits – both longboards and shortboards, are 10% Off. All Accessories and our New Bamboo/ Organic Cotton Apparel are 10% Off. Order NOW while this deal is on.

Remember, in order to get the discount, you must enter GRAINSummer07Sale in the coupon code field during checkout. Thanks for your interest in Grain Surfboards.

Mike

Like us, do you find yourself daydreaming about surfing throughout the day, staring at the photos in the Grain gallery? Looking for some new art for those bare, white walls?

Grain Surfboards is now offering custom prints by photographer Nick LaVecchia. Check out the Online Store for all the details. Free Shipping on all Custom Prints shipped anywhere in the continental U.S., for a limited time.

We receive tons of email and occasionally we receive images of complete Home Grown boards and kits in production. We’re going to start posting these images to a dedicated gallery shortly, but for now, we’ll post them here. Keep sending us your stories and images of Grain Surfboards in action or in production.

This note is from a friend of ours who has spent plenty of time helping around the Grain shop, but he’s off to Nova Scotia for college. We’ll really miss his smiling face around here, and we’re psyched to have a Grain Surfboard representing in the great white north, but more importantly, we have a place to crash when we head up there.

“Mike and Grain Crew,

I tried my board last week for the first time. I went to the Cape and the waves were about waist to chest, shoulder on the sets, and really clean. I was super excited to just get in the water and even more so because of my new board. On my first wave I got up a little awkward because I hadn’t ever ridden such a small board before. I got used to it quickly, and the board was insane; it just flew. I could pump once or twice and was able to a nice cutback on a waist high wave.

The board totally outperformed what I thought it would be able to do. Now, wherever I go with my board people give me the staredown, because it is so amazing. I got pulled over for speeding the other day, and after the cop gave me a ticket he was like, “WOW, your board is beautiful!”.

My favorite part is that I built it myself. Not only did I create an amazing looking surfboard, but one that surfs incredibly. I’ll easily say that this is my new favorite board”.

Here’s another note we received from a happy Home Grown Kit builder. This one is a 6′5″ Seed single fin, built by hands and surfed by feet.

Dear Mike,

You must be a genius.

You invented a wonderful board and you were able to convey to an amateur woodworker like myself perfectly clear instructions for replicating the creation.

I cannot wait until Rhode Island gets a swell. – Sincerely, John

Below is another recent message from Emily out on the Northwest coastline. Our Summer tour should bring us out to visit there soon!

Subject: finished fish

Hello Mike,

I finished my board, it is awesome. I have a few pictures here. The pictures of the finished board are on another friends camera and I will send them along soon. Beautiful reds and golds came out in the glassing, it looks amazing.

The best part…. my friend Mark was telling me about andrew and his board (we live in the same town here in Oregon and surf at the same place in Newport). I kept looking out for him and never met him. On Friday (the maiden voyage) I spotted a gentleman with a beautiful wood board in the water. I got to ride his as well. The two boards looked so good next to each other on the beach.

Everybody stops to look at the board, EVERYBODY, its kind of overwhelming…

Thanks so much…… I really enjoyed this project. Do you ever want an apprentice?

More pictures to come. -Emily

Last weekend we set up at the 2007 Wooden Boat Festival in the shade of a big tree on the lawn of Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, NC where they have a boatbuilding education program. We were able to hang boards from the branches of the trees just like Ty’s design on our T-shirts!

The Wrightsville area surf scene is alive and well just a few miles from Wilmington – and all the friendly people there seemed pumped to talk about the boards. Ed Verge, the director of the CFCC boatbuilding program told us that his students have built hollow and solid wood surfboards in the past – and would be interested in building kits during their time in the program.

Pictured right to left here are the 5-10 Waka, the 6-5 Seed (in profile), and a 9-0 experimental shape fresh out of the “Grain Labs”. My brother’s broken longboard on the ground in front of the table helped answer questions about the durability of Grain boards compared to foam.

The Grain Surfboards Summer Tour continues… check back to the Builder’s Blog for updates.