Designing new boards is one of the most exciting things we do – why wouldn’t it be? Not only do we get to offer new shapes to our customers, we also get to suss out how to make that shape using hollow wood construction – which is harder than you’d think. And while there are definitely short-cut ways to design hollow wood boards, we’ve worked hard to refine a design method that has allowed us to do shapes that seem just plain impossible.

The basic shape is designed like any other computer-modeled board, flowing together the rocker, outline, rails, and tapering thicknesses into a perfect surface of compound curves. But that’s only the beginning. From there, we take that shape and create a framework that represents the internal space of the board. The challenges of how to support and then build that structure has required us to develop a whole host of construction variations for our advanced shapes that most people never see.

Because of our attention to these details, and with all of the other things we try to get done on a daily basis, we’re somewhat limited in the number of new shapes that we can design in a year. We have a long list in mind, many of which we are really itching to build and surf, but one that finally reached the top is a new noserider we fondly refer to as the Cutwater.

The experience of building our first noserider about a year ago for a customer here on the east coast got us thinking about a few new techniques we could employ. Back on the drawing board, we stretched it to 9’6″, re-engineered the rail construction, added a super-cool beveled chine on the rail-bottom extending back from the nose, and while we were there, made a few changes to the outline that appealed to us.

The result is the board Brad’s been dreaming of designing for years. We kept the deep single-concave under the nose – naturally running out to a flat near the middle, and sweeping up to a hippy, super soft tail. The bevel we added under the rail is designed to make the board responsive from the nose, granting additional control during tip-time that some noseriders are too stable to permit.

With a few boards in customer’s hands and our own demo here in the shop for anyone to try, we’re proud to add this beauty to the lineup. Too complicated to offer as a kit, this board will be available as a custom board or to anyone interested in building it in a Fantasy Class.