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.

Been feeling a little sentimental lately, but I guess that happens this time of year. The last 6 years have absolutely flown by, but they’ve also given me some of the best memories of my life. I feel so fortunate to be able to do what I love, and to do it with such a great group of people.

Unlike most businesses, Grain was not formed after years of due-diligence, marketing analysis and financial planning… and maybe we’re a little worse for wear because of that. At the same time, our ability to remain flexible has lead us down some amazing roads. It’s given us the opportunity to follow our passions, to meet people from all over the world who share our values, to create a workshop that is constantly buzzing with energy and excitement and enthusiasm for the things that we’re creating, and those things seem to be expanding. We’re not building products based on pure profit margins, we’re working with our hands to create things that we’re passionate about, and we’re helping other people to do the same. We’re thankful to our customers and friends who allow us to come here everyday and follow our dreams.

Happy New Year to you all. Hope to see you in 2012, the door is always open.

We have so much fun hosting classes and we’re proud to have helped nearly 100 people fulfill their dreams of building a board with their own hands.

With all the perfectly paved roads around the shop, we’ve dreamed of making skateboards for years. Thanks to our friend Courtney, we’re now skating our own boards, made with SFI certified maple, cedar scraps from our board building process and Entropy bio-resin.

We’re passionate about board designs and we love working with customers to create shapes that they’ve been dreaming of. Here’s a sneak peak of our new 9’6″ Noserider called the Cutwater.

Think we’re gonna need a bigger backdrop.

In the fall of 2011, we held the first of hopefully many Surf Re-Evolution events. It topped all of the potlucks and movie premieres we’ve had in the past and we’re looking to make it a two day fest for 2012.

Our friend Randy has been doing some unreal wood burnings for us and some of our customers recently. This one is a tribute to a beautiful chocolate lab named Lambert who spent one of his final weeks here at the shop with his dad building this 10′.

Our love of Paipo’s is growing and this summer we built more then ever before. The Discovery Channel even decided to get in on the action.

Here’s wishing you a warm winter filled with good friends and great waves.

It’s been four years since Grain’s been in the Pacific Northwest and it’s about time we return. Oregon has always been a special place for us – the mountains, glaciers, rivers, and the awe-inspiring coastline, even old friends and new family members – they all draw us back.

So with a big thank you to my brother Vince, his partners and their company Instrument, we’re happy to announce that March 4th to the 10th, we’re holding a weeklong class in Portland Oregon, the place where young people go to retire. In terms of venues, we set the bar pretty high last September with Jay and Piper’s 100 year-old firehouse in San Francisco, but we think this won’t be too shabby.

This class will be held Instrument’s warehouse, literally a renovated World War II ship building factory, alongside the creative geniuses whose clients include Nike, Google, and Livestrong. We’ll have our own space in their warehouse, some room normally dedicated to bleeding off the excess creative energy of the staff in things like tee-pee building and motorcycle repair. So if you’re from the Northwest and have been dreaming of building a board but can’t bring yourself to Maine, we hope to see you in Portland.

An old saying: “the cobblers kids go without shoes” occurs to me often, since it’s just recently that I took the time to build a board just for myself. All the boards I’ve built have been for customers or to add to our demo fleet – although because we have a pile of demo boards for people to try, there are plenty for me to surf when I can get out.

But the first board I chose to build for myself was the 4’5″ paipo body board we call “The Leaf”. It’s such a cool shape, with contours that change so dramatically in such a short distance that it’s a challenge to build well, yet it comes together pretty fast compared to our other boards. A deep single concave that runs off the tail transitions to a full, hull-like belly at the nose. The deck’s just as crazy; it’s got a slightly dished deck forward that’s the mark of a traditional paipo running back to a full, dome-like shape at the tail that makes it comfortable to ride and still float-ey for it’s narrow tail width. Getting all that compound curvature bent into the cedar planks is a real trick but pretty rewarding to behold once it’s all done.

I made mine from wood I pirated from a 100-year-old piano that one of our guys had started dismantling in the storeroom. When parts of it started to go to the dump, I had to grab some and I was even able to inlay some ivory and ebony from the keyboard into the deck and bottom.

The original Leaf that we made was finned with a high-aspect, super-flexy 9″ fin, which works great for standing (I can’t do it!) and for getting down the line in bigger sets, but for messing about in smaller surf on your knees or belly, we’ve been putting in rail-fin boxes, and with a couple of single FCS-tabbed micro-twinzer fins get loose and fun body-board maneuvers.

This is the board that we always put in the front of the booth when we go to shows, because when you see it, you just have to stop and handle it. It goes as good as it looks and is one of the boards we’re most proud of.

There’s something special that happens around the shop on that first Sunday of a class. The crew here may have hustled pretty hard to get ready – often right up till Saturday night – prepping material, sweeping up, cleaning the bathroom… But when that Sunday morning comes, and those fresh faces arrive with the early morning sun, this place comes alive with a new kind of energy and enthusiasm.

It’s hard to explain why it’s so important to us, but I might equate it to having kids, and then those kids have kids. It feels like creating a family of offspring; of people, of surfboards… and who knows what else. But each time we open our doors, our community widens, friendships are created and maybe – in some unpredictable way – the path we’re on is affected.

Case in point: Last year, Joe and Holly came to visit us for a two week Fantasy Camp where they built and glassed a couple of boards. We have to assume they got as much out of it as we did, cause they’re back right now, building a couple more beauts. Holly’s is a sexy 6’10″ Pandan and Joe’s a broad and fast 6’4″ Wherry. It might be hard to put a finger on what exactly happened last year that inspired them to save their pennies for a return trip this year, but I know for us, it feels like a home-coming when they return.

All this is just a long way of saying that we’re happy to have just released the 2012 class schedule, and it’s packed full of opportunities to learn to build your own board, both on the east and west coast. Have a look, check out your schedule and let us know what works for you. We look forward to another great year of building boards and making friends.

We’re feeling really sentimental these days after the Surf Re-Evolution event and as a totally mad summer of activity has wound down and left us with a little separation anxiety. We miss you already.

So we want to say thanks to all of you that have been thinking about building your own, and those that have built one in the past, too. From now ‘til the last day of shipping for the holidays, get a kit and get a discount. If you’ve never gotten a kit from us before, get 10% right off the top. If you’ve built a kit of ours before, or taken a class here, or are ordering two kits, bump it up to 15% off. And if you’re adding a third or fourth Home Grown to your quiver, get 20% off.

And for locals, it looks like we’re going to be doing a Community Open Workshop again this winter. That means that – after the holidays have wound down – we’ll open the shop up a couple of days or evenings a week for you to come in here, use our tools, ask a few questions and generally be a part of the daily life of the shop. Look for an announcement in the Class Pages for that, and bring your discounted kit in for an easy build under the watchful eyes of Grain’s own builders.

To take advantage of this sale, just check out normally, but use one of these discount codes (without the quotes) to save some coin:
- First time buyer (10%): “Greenhorn”
- Second Kit (15%): “Seasoned”
- Third Kit or more (20%): “Old Timer”
You should see the right discount appear as you continue to check out, then we’ll double-check our records on this end and let you know if something doesn’t seem right… be sure to include your phone number and email so we can get in touch. As always, if you’re picking your kit up here in Maine, we’ll credit back the shipping charges, too.

We’re excited to be premiering Woodshed Films newest movie Come Hell or High Water next Friday night, November 4th at 7pm. This is going to be a free show, and one of the only premieres in New England, so come on over and bring some friends.

Come Hell or High Water is a beautiful look at what possibly is the simplest form of riding waves – just you and a set of swim fins. The film explores the history and progression of the sport of bodysurfing and the pureness that comes from riding a wave. Shot primarily in 16mm, the film takes a unique look at the culture, beauty and simplicity of just bodies in waves, capturing the stories and locations of those who belong to this community.

Whether you’re a hardcore surfer or just like to play around in the water, you’ll really enjoy this beautiful film. Bring a snack, a beverage and your own comfy beach chair and get ready to sit back and enjoy. Look forward to hanging out.

Ever since 2006 when we first starting selling our HomeGrown Surfboard Kits, we’ve had a plan in the back of our heads to collaborate with woodworking shops worldwide. We love helping people build their own boards, but we struggle with the idea of shipping wood from here in Maine to places like New Zealand, Switzerland, and Singapore, especially when those places might have their own local source for sustainable woods.

Capeboatworks in Wollongong NSW Australia was our first kit partner and have been selling our kits with locally grown Paulownia for four years now. We’re so excited about the number of people that they have been able to help discover the joy and satisfaction that only comes with surfing a board that you built with your own hands.

They recently sent us a couple of their kits so we could compare our local White Cedar to their local Paulownia. We’ll soon be returning the boards to Australia so they can give people a chance to try them out, take them to local events and help inspire even more people to DIY.

We’re also happy to announce, thanks to our ongoing collaboration with Channel Islands, that CBW now offers the Biscuit as a HomeGrown Kit. The Biscuit has become a favorite board of everyone around the shop and is a frequent build in our week-long classes. With it’s single-to-double concave and rounded tail, it’s a challenging project for a first time builder, but with a little extra care and patience, home builders are able to reproduce the exact shape that Al Merrick and Rob Machado developed together just a few years ago.

We also have some good news for all you European surfers. We’ve recently partnered up with Fyne Boat Kits in Cumbria U.K. and they will soon be offering many of our designs to budding home builders. For nearly 14 years, Fyne has been offering some of the best boat kit designs available today. They have a complete workshop where they’ll be precision cutting our frames, milling planks and railstrips, and assembling all the material, cutting down the effects of overseas shipping while also supporting local mills and local employment. We couldn’t be more excited about this partnership.

While we constantly lament that there is never enough time in the day, or year for that matter, to do everything we dream of doing, we are slowly fulfilling our visions from the early days. If you live somewhere where the surf is good, the trees grow plentiful, and people are looking to re-connect with what’s under they’re feet, let us know. We’re always looking to connect with like minded people and well equipped woodshops.

It’s that time of year, so we’re heading west again for the Sacred Craft show this weekend where we’ll be showing off some new boards, meeting new people, and catching up with old friends.

We’ll also be psyched to meet up with the guys from Entropy Resins to do some joint glassing demos right there on the floor of the show using some unfinished Grain boards. Rey Banatao did one here in York at the Surf Re-Evolution event to a group of about sixty people and everyone learned something they didn’t know before. You can count on hearing all about their enviro-resins which we’ve been playing with over the last year, and learning about some best practices for glassing with epoxy. Rey’s totally up on the glassing variations that we use here at Grain, and he’s interesting and fun to listen to. Mike, Nolan and Allen will all be on hand to talk about our boards, about the details of their construction as well as plans we have for new models and other cool projects coming up this year. Footnote: Nolan’s been kicking around out in Cali since the middle of September, so if he seems just a little too laid back, that might be why.

We’ll also have at least one board built by a student from the first Traveling Class we just completed in San Francisco which is always cool to see because in almost every case, students have never built a wood board before in their lives and the result of their labors is always more than a little inspiring.

If you haven’t seen it yet, there’ll also be a screening on Friday and Saturday nights of “Manufacturing Stoke” at Bird’s Surf Shed. Also showing will be Keith Malloy’s new flick “Come Hell or High Water” which looks totally beautiful in the trailer (below). Tix here.

So if you’re anywhere within striking distance of Del Mar, you should try to get down to the Fairgrounds – it’s by far our favorite show, always fun and interesting.

We’re always struck when traveling that the world simply vibrates with variety – easy to forget in our little corner of New England. While the class here in San Francisco is humming away inside a firehouse built in 1896, I take a fiver out on the city street as the trolleys roll by sparking the wires overhead. I watch the little neighborhood pretty constantly come and go, sometimes meeting the neighbors, even being checked by a guy named Chico to see if I am lurking with bad intent. It’s more motion and more people of different colors than I see in York in a month – and the fact that an architect and his motor-cycling, chef-ing, graphic designer wife made their home in an old firehouse in this working class neighborhood impresses me more than just a little. “Out of the ordinary” seems to be normal here, and doing what moves you appears to be fully freed from the bounds of social expectations or trends or fads.

Case in point is the Dolphin Club, where on this night, our host Jay took Allen and me… In a nearly labyrinthine, ancient, wood frame “club house” on a pier that looks past nearby Alcatraz to the Golden Gate, over a thousand members share a weird lust for swimming in the cold waters of the Bay, sometimes out to Alcatraz and back, logging hundreds of actual miles in nothing but a speedo and goosebumps. Tuesday is “Boat Night” which doesn’t mean you meet for cocktails on a yacht; it means you show up in work clothes to sand varnish on one of their dozen or so brightly finished lapstrake rowing boats. Your labors earn you a seat at a long table set amongst the beautiful old wooden pulling boats which – thanks to Boat Night – are almost all in service constantly. One amazing home-cooked meal, a few glasses of wine, and a dozen eclectic conversations later, we ambled back along the dark waterfront, a 5’4 Waka under my arm. The mold-breakers at the Dolphin Club had alot of questions about it, and had seen it as sharing – with their boats – a kinship of quality; something with soul, something out of the ordinary.

Well, the summer has passed by and life on the coast of Maine is starting to get back to the way it should be. Undoubtedly one of the busiest times we’ve ever had, but we finally seem to be coming up for air. While Brad, Nolan and Allen are in San Francisco instructing a new group of budding board-builders how to DIY, John, Gemini, Brendan, Alison and I are here at the shop catching up on all the things that have fallen behind. We’re also prepping to head out to Southern California for Sacred Craft on October 8th and 9th at the DelMar Fairgrounds. With an honoree like Carl Ekstrom, this falls show promises to be one to remember.

With some quiet time in the shop and a few minutes to focus on why we love what we do, it seemed like an opportune time to show you a few of the things that make us smile everyday. Hope you enjoy them.

Glass-ons.

Experimenting.

New Friends.

New designs thanks to new friends.

Shapes.

Winning the battle.

Gloss Coats.

Getting organized.

Loud and Proud.

Successful dumpster diving.

Committing to better ways.

A lifetimes worth of fin rope.

Surprise visitors.

And more gloss coats.

Enough words – enjoy this cool little video from Dylan Ladds & Ryan Scura at SurfNH

We wanted to take a few minutes to thank everyone involved, from our invited guests to every one of the four hundred or so that attended for an absolutely amazing Surf Re-Evolution. We heard from more then one person that it was an inspiring, eye opening event that clearly touched hearts and minds as we hoped it would.

We had a packed house in the Grain shop with glassing demonstration by Rey from Entropy Resin with their 50% bio based resins. Our good friend Tyler from Corduroy Gallery transformed an old dairy barn into a stunning art gallery and theater. Cyrus Sutton’s film “Under the Sun” was played in the barn to a crowd of 120+ people. From there our panel discussion took place with guests including Thomas Meyerhoffer, Jon Wegener, Ed Lewis, Rey Banatao, and Randy Budd. Outside, we were dazzled by the sounds of Speed of Sand, our appetites were satisfied by mouth watering treats like Flat Bread Pizza, cotton candy and popcorn. And as the sun went down, everyone gathered under the nearly full moon for the east coast premiere of “Manufacturing Stoke”. What party would be complete without a giant bonfire to light up the night.

We also need to thank Eco-Movement for helping to make this a zero waste event, Surfrider’s New Hampshire chapter for helping to educate people on water quality issues, Eastern Surf Magazine for spreading the word, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery for the libations and of course Korduroy.tv for their support both before the event and the night of.

When a group like this gets together, there is a powerful message being sent… that it’s time for a change in the surf industry and time to begin thinking about where your products are coming from. It’s time to begin supporting people who are venturing outside of the norm, whether it be new shapes, better construction, greener materials, or a DIY ethic. Together we can make a re-evolutionary change.

We’ve already begun thinking about how we can make next year’s event bigger and better. So thanks to everyone who attended for making this a really special day.

The shop’s been humming the last few days primping for what we hope will be a great time on Saturday. Besides all the interesting invited guests we’ve been blogging about, we’re going to make sure there’s plenty of fun to be had once we abandon the beach and head back to the farm. Here’s the full schedule.

We lined up three separate friends with good hearts and the whimsical foresight to own carnival carts that serve up popcorn, cotton candy and shave ice. Eat ’til you’re sick.

The surfers that run Flatbread Pizza will be here with their mobile pizza rig to serve really, really good pies that are a shop favorite. Salivation is in order.

Amazing Dogfish Head brews will be served to those so inclined and of legal age until there’s only foam to be found.

Tyler Briggs, the engine behind Corduroy Gallery has curated a cool art show in the hay barn featuring favorite artists that share with all of us a deep love and connection to the sea and the waves.

The soundtrack for the day will be provided by Speed of Sand, which sounds like the 60′s, but feels like now.

Plus bring along some old gear that needs a little extra something, and you can get an embroidered Grain Patch (same as on our truckers) sewn on by our pal Jenny who’s coming with a sewing machine, some thread and a bright smile. Bring hats, clothes, courier bags, back packs, board bags, canvas beach/shopping bags – any old thing you got that could use a facelift.

AND we’ll be showing not one, but two great films – “Under the Sun” shot by the inspiring Cyrus Sutton with ancient 16mm cameras, and the East Coast premier of the “documentary with surfing” called “Manufacturing Stoke” by Pierce Kavanagh. Both of those guys will be here to introduce their films and chat with aspiring filmmakers.

If you can find a way to take full advantage of all that fun, AND still have time to talk with guys like Ed Lewis and Mark Marchesi – hand plane makers from opposite sides of the country, you deserve an award. See you there!

PineKnot Surfboards is the work of one man in his basement in New Jersey. Entering Randy Budd’s workshop one gets the sense of a mad scientist in his laboratory. Always experimenting with new shapes he’s crafted everything from alaia’s to handplanes to planning hulls, using mostly reclaimed wood. One of the most generous people we have met, Randy offered roadside help to me (while on the East Coast Ramble) if I was anywhere within 100 miles of Randy’s home. As it turned out, the Pug broke down on the NJ turnpike. Randy got there before the tow truck and brought me home for lunch!