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!

We’ve bumped into Kevin Cunningham, the mind behind Spirare Surfboards, over years of attending events like Sacred Craft and shows at Corduroy Gallery in Portland Maine. Kevin is a mix of designer, surfer, artist that may not be that uncommon in the world of surfboards, but for his creative and unusual application of his skills and passions.

The first thing that impressed us about his work was the wood honey-comb interiors surrounded by parabolic wood rails that formed the basis of surfboards we saw him showing. Though he also has a full line of standard polyurethane foam/polyester resin boards, he’s expanded his interest in sustainable surfboard construction into an exploration of boards made entirely of beach trash. We haven’t seen any of these fascinating “trash boards” yet, but we’ll hear all about them when Kevin joins the panel discussion we’re having at Surf Re-Evolution starting at 6:30 pm on September 10.

Here’s a little vid from his recent Kickstarter campaign:

We met Thomas Meyerhoffer for the first time just about two months ago while he was passing through town on a demo tour and we hit it off right from the start. Thomas’s designs represent some serious out-of-the-box thinking adhering to few of the constraints that many surfboard shapers take as gospel. And when you combine his out-of-this-world shapes with our passion for pushing the boundaries of what can be done with wood, well, the gears just start turning.

Thomas’s shapes are like three boards in one, which really makes sense as there is often never more then a few feet of board in the water at a given time. Longboards that catch waves easily, but then handle more like a shortboard… who doesn’t love that. Come by the beach from 10am-2pm and get a board under your feet, then come back to the shop for some tech talk with him and with all of the other shapers and thinkers who will be here.

Look forward to seeing you.

meyerhoffer 2 from meyerhoffer surf.

Sustainable surfboards… we often wonder if there will ever be one. Obviously, using non-renewable, non-recycled or even non-recyclable materials gets you nowhere near it – even our choice to use sustainably harvested local woods doesn’t get us there. But one step further forward is based on the work of Rey Banatao, a committed surfer/chemist/enviro-warrior – if you can believe a combo like that can live inside one guy. Rey and his team at Entropy Resins have busted their butts to figure out the first really practical and high quality resin based on organic material that they siphon off the waste streams of other industrial activities.

Entropy Resins is a company that we feel a great affinity with – they are rootsy, committed, and much smarter than we ever could hope to be. Rey’s been tireless in analyzing the performance of his resin, reacting to feedback, and continually making a better product. Because up to half of their resin content consists of organic waste, and because we’ve been working with this magic stuff for over a year, we are totally excited that Rey will be out here for Surf Re-Evolution to talk about their work, what motivates them, and of the challenges and victories of forging a new path in sustainable materials. Check the Surf Re-Evolution schedule for a 4:30 pm glassing demo that Rey will do for those attending the event on September 10… he’ll talk us through the best practices for glassing using Entropy resin, and show us all a thing or two about thinking out of the box.

A beauty glass-job with Entropy Resins by Eco-Boardworks.

You simply cannot love wooden surfboards without having heard about the nearly heroic efforts of the Wegener brothers to bring the ancient Hawaii’n Alaia back into the modern day spotlight. Since discovering these ancient sliding devices at the Bishop Museum, Jon and his brother Tom have all but dedicated their lives to convincing surfers today that our surfing predecessors had more skill, both in shaping and surfing, then we may have given them credit for.

Jon is coming all the way from California to show us New England surfers what he’s known for years, that fins are overrated. We even convinced Jon to come out early, so he’ll be teaching a class for the few days leading up to the event, and each student will take home their own hand-shaped Alaia. It’s not too late to sign up. Otherwise, we’ll see you on the 10th for Surf Re-Evolution.

In the weeks leading up to Surf Re-Evolution, we’re going to do a series of short blogs introducing some of the invited guests coming to the event. We hope you enjoy learning about some of these dedicated shapers, product engineers and creative talents, and we really hope it will inspire you to come out and be part of what we know will be an amazing day.

Ed Lewis was inspired when he and his friend Kipp Denslow started Enjoy Handplanes. Made completely from broken foam surfboards, offcuts from manufacturing processes, and old wetsuits, Enjoy Handplanes are as green as they are fun. Their mission is to keep broken boards and manufacturing waste from the landfills while creating products that are fun to use and environmentally responsible.

We’re honored to have Enjoy coming all the way out from Southern California to attend Surf Re-Evolution and we’re looking forward to showing them a good time and hopefully some good fall swell. Come on down and meet Ed and try out his planes. You’ll be buying a set of Churchills before you know it.

Enjoy The Ride from Ed Lewis.

Buy your tickets online now and save a few bucks. $12 online, $15 day of the event.

If you asked me back in May how the summer was shaping up, I would have said that our plates were pretty full. Along with a long list of custom boards and kits to get out the door, we had packed the summer months with weeklong classes, Board Blitzes, Fantasy camps, guest shaper classes, movie nights, events, demos and more. We knew the fall would be just as busy with our first ever West Coast class, put on with the support of Sustainable Surf and the San Francisco Chapter of Surfrider, plus Sacred Craft in Southern California.

We know we have a disorder though. We have a very hard time saying no to opportunites. It can be viewed as a real problem, however at the same time, I really think it’s a symptom of simply loving what we do and wanting to do more of it. Everyone says being busy is good, especially in this economy, so I guess this means the summer of 2011 will go down as the busiest and happiest on record.

About 6 weeks ago, we received a call from Discovery Communications. They were planning a special event for producers and were hoping to give a custom board to everyone attending the evening event. The reception was just three days before the premiere of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and the perfect gift to celebrate the week. Sounds amazing I thought, but how many people were they expecting and when’s the event? Somewhere around 100 people and in about a month was the answer. Holy Crap. As soon as I hung up the phone I ran back into the shop and announced to the gang that we might have some serious work ahead of us. We gave it some thought and bounced around ideas, and concluded the only board that we could produce in those numbers and on that timeline was the Sea Sled, and even a modified version of that. Luckily for us, it was exactly the one they had in mind.

Within hours, we went about planning out the job, ordering more wood (and sharpening our saw blades), pulling in some good friends who are skilled in the ways of the spokeshave, and basically rallying the troops. While our custom boards are built one at a time by one builder who sees it through start to finish, we knew that this job would require a production line type process. Mill planks, glue up panel, sand, add side runners, cut outline, shape, and so on. We worked in batches of 10 each day, 30 per week; we were a well oiled machine.

All in all we made 125 Sleds for the Discovery Channel, each one from local cedar, hand glued, shaped, sanded and branded, in just over 7 weeks. And I couldn’t be happier or more thankful to our amazing crew here at the shop. That’s a job I think we’ll all be telling our grandkids about.

We feel so fortunate to be able to build boards in such a beautiful place everyday that we love to share it. That’s why we love throwing parties, offering classes and premiering some of the best surf films to be released. Fall is undoubtedly the best season in the New England, it’s the payoff for putting up with the crowds, heat and flatness of summer.

So, in an an effort to top our fall parties of the past, we’re teaming up with Korduroy.TV to present, Surf Re-Evolution, a day of sun, surf, art and music, Saturday September 10th 2011

We’ve selected a group of innovators, shapers and forward thinkers to be part of the day as our guests and exhibitors. Everyone involved will be sharing their craft either in the water, back at the Grain shop on a farm in York, Maine, on the walls of a hay barn-turned-art-gallery, or during the festivities throughout the evening.

The event will take place at our shop nestled in the farmlands of rural Maine and at nearby Long Sands Beach.

Following a day at the beach with shapers, demo-boards, and sun, the soon-to-be released “Under the Sun” – a 16mm surf film – and “Manufacturing Stoke” – a film looking at sustainability in the surf industry – will be premiered along with a couple of hand-selected KorduroyTV shorts.

An art show curated by Corduroy Gallery and housed in the hay barn will feature artists that depict and revere waves and the sea.

As a bonus to the festival, we have partnered with two specials guests to create two new class offerings – an Alaia class with Jon Wegener during the days leading up to the event, and a one-day handplane class with Cyrus Sutton the day after. For more information and to sign up for these classes, visit Grain’s 2011 Class Schedule.

If you are exploring new territories with your surfboard construction or design and would like to be a part of this inaugural event contact info@grainsurfboards.com for more information.

The Surf Re-Evolution is sponsored in part by Liquid Dreams Surf Shop.

LIVE MUSIC, ART & THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE ON A MISSION.

We spend a lot of our time thinking about sustainability and feel pretty great that we’re offering surfers the opportunity to think twice about the environmental impacts of their surfing. But we’ve also had to come to terms with the fact that, at bottom, we’re making stuff, selling stuff, and shipping stuff all over the world. There’s just no way to do that and claim that you’re “good” for the environment.

So in our quest for improvement, a growing interest for us is the life cycle assessment of stuff. That’s a whole science that we aspire to get more familiar with, but in a nutshell it looks at the environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product’s life – from cradle to grave. (check the Colbert Report video below)

Re-using the resource: Shavings being Pug’d over to a horse stable

What we’ve figured out is that most of us aren’t thinking enough about the waste part of that cycle – which is really one of the biggest parts of the global problem. So we love it when we can use something from the waste stream, or keep something out of it. And to complement our own actions we’re always on the lookout for great partners that think the same way we do. Here are a few we’re particularly psyched about:

Entropy Resins – they intercept waste from paper and bio-fuel manufacturing and use it as a base for their resins. We’re going to get to know these guys real well.

Eco-Gear Apparel – We just took delivery of our first order of T’s from these folks. The fabric’s soft, looks great and is made from waste trimmings from apparel manufacture. One hundred percent recycled cotton and soda bottles. Awesome.

SustainableSurf.org – Founded by a couple of sustainability professionals, this new group promises to set new evaluation standards for surfboard manufacture. ‘Bout time.