Billy Fortier Skate Video

Here is our friend Billy Fortier skating here in Hawaii and a few spots on the Mainland. Keep it up Billy

Art Week: Tuesday

The lam room is all filled up and it's overflowing into the hallway.

Here fishy fishy

Trim the Mini Simms

no need to explain this one

Cody was cruzen around the shop playing one of his vintage ukuleles. You can tell which one it inspired.

Art Week: Monday Day 1

Art Week. It's like shark week but no sharks. Lots of art, deadly art. Resin art. Here is a few pictures from today. Colors. Colors. Colors.



Here is the boxes getting a squeegeed coat of lam resin.

This was the blunder of the day. This was supposed to be for Opal's Thai Food. It was coming along great. Here it is all hot coated before the sanding. Everything is fine. I sand it for a half hour with 40 grt and a 3300rpm Dewalt Grinder. Plenty of work. Hosing it off it was clear it had the plauge. Some bad bondage and all the fiberglass was able to be ripped off like a bad break in a surfboard. Looks like we got a new shop table top!

Here is some smaller pieces all glassed up.

Here is the fiberglass peeling off the piece mentioned before. Booooo

But at least the table became real practical. New hot coat station. With Eric lending a helping hand we were on a roll.

"Shmarty Pants" 4' x 4'

The wall racks are getting moded out for the time being.

Here is Eric before getting elbow deep in the lam room.

 Some more pieces in the works

We got so much done today it was great. Most productive and fun day creating art ever. I was so gitty I couldnt keep it in.

All these hot coated and ready to be sanded

Needless to say I created a massive mess after already having a huge mess. The joys of creative spaces.

I felt bad Eric had to work in my pig sty. Were getting trash bags tomorrow :)

Too much fun

The initial Color drop

Freestyle of course

      One thing I've always liked about shaping is that you always have the option to stray off in whatever tangent you please as you shape a board. That is of course, if it's your personal board or it's for someone who's very liberal about what they want as the finished product. Today I was finishing up a stock mini and realized that I really needed a new one for myself... tangent time. 

Or as we Crows call it, Freestyle.

     I really like the mini design, except that for me it gets a bit "tracky" on juicy waves. You know, those ones that you really shouldn't be riding a mini in anyways... But I just get so stoked on the design and want to ride it all the time, so I'm always thinking of ways to improve its "all-aroundness". On solid waves, the standard big keel fins tend to run on me as they pick up speed and they are hard to break free of their line once they really get going. So reflecting on the same route I (along with many others) took with adapting the keel fish to better, bigger waves- put a well placed quad on the board... like we do with the Quadini (the board that Daniel it riding on the front page of our site.) That works well, but on the bigger boards you end up with a pretty "Skatey" board that can be a bit sketchy off the bottom and through the top end of a decent cutback. This is mainly because the tail is so much wider than a fish... 19 1/2" vs 16 1/2" for a fish. Lots of extra planing surface that is so nice in smaller waves becomes a menace in bigger stuff.

     So, after shaping that last bonzer a few weeks ago my mind started spinning around a nice deep double concave out the tail- a half inch or so. The spine down the middle of the board will give it a bit of track, and the high pressure area added to the rail line from the concaves should help a bit with feeling the rail when you lean on it. Slap a quad on have Welzie name it... and we're shredding right?

Well, there's really only one way to find out... and starts with those few first committed swipes of the surform.

Yeah that's what I'm talking about... a nice solid 1/2" of double concave goodness. Yummy

    Executive Shaper privilege was invoked and the board was laminated today too. One of the perks of building your own boards :) More to come on this one

Speaking of Freestyle tangents, that finless board I mentioned a week ago or so is coming along nicely. Many thanks to Chris for being a sort of benefactor on this project... he's footing the cost so I can build whats on my mind... and then he has to ride it! I'm not sure he realized what he was getting into when he committed to this project

Cool lines in this shot. It's not even close to being done, but when it is, it'll get it's own post about how it's supposed to work, plus we'll keep you updated on testing...

Lastly, I just really liked this shot of my good friend Kyle Buthmans new step-up boards for puerto. He broke the red one twice and and had it put back together both times. Talk about a good board. Love those slightly pinny round pins. -Carl

Summertime!

Here is some pictures of what has been going on in the shop. With fun little surf all week, the shop has been pretty quiet. Got to get those surf in while you can, summer is here!

Kanoa Dahlin's new noserider

The Wall is thick

Stocked up and ready to go...

There isn't to many times that the polishing racks are empty. Finally catching up.

Old shoes new shoes. Give them a week tops.

seeing a piece of wood at Home Depot for cheap I decided to snag it and hack out something to sink on. Will keep you posted.

The Bonzer getting its wings

The Coorlaboration board getting sanded

A 10' for Longbeach Surf Shop

Honolulu Magazine

Surf Garage styled us out and put our board into the Honolulu Magazine feature. Thanks guys!

Posca on Fancy Paper

Here is a few pictures of the most recent "Posca on Fancy Paper" series...

26"x36"

Freestyle Flag

The Mini Simms Wins

Attempted Squeege Marks With Pen

Eye Spy

Birds Of A Feather
This one is for Pops. Happy Fathers Day Dad

Two Crows and Coors

It sounds so good doesn't it. Two Crows and Coors. It slides off your tounge like a ice cold beer. A Coorlaboration. Wanting to have more pictures of the process on this Banquet board but had no camera untill today... 

Here is the the Coorlaboration. Ready to be sanded before a resin inlay of the Coors logo gets added to the deck.

The Bonzer for longbeach surf shop. Almost ready for hotcoating.

The leash loop into the concave tail. Plenty of grinding to do...

A 9'8 Lowrider Full freestyle.

Lauren's board. This little clear panel thing going on is the new freestyles.

Here is the other board we tried it on. This is a Midrange model for Surf Garage

After the Thin Line Art Show, we were pretty tapped out for art. What do you do when that happens? Make more than you ever have before. The last batch of boxes we did was 16... This time we made 85. The shop has boxes stuffed into each corner getting ready to be glassed.

I hope you cant read this one. There were two of these canvas that Third Stone Steve gave me for Christmas. I made this one and Hot Dog Hand Job, which Matt took home with him :)