X mas Rushing

Thirsty????

 Juan's new Quad

Freestyle Jail house striped fins

Team Rider Toots ripping in town.

If you want to see board builders stressing out a good time to do this would be the week before Christmas. The Sugar Mill shop is bustling 20 hours a day. Everyone in the shop is to their elbows in resin, running around each other like chickens with their heads cut off. It's all good though everyone is in the same boat and more than willing to help get the job done. A pretty good example of hurry up and wait. Shoot a past then wait eagerly for the resin to go off (not too hot of course). I only got two more boards to do before Sunday so I have been lucky enough to sit back and lend a helping hand with a beer in hand. Big thanks to Josh and Juan for stocking our beer fridge for the holidays, everyone at the shop has been tapping the Rockies once the sun goes down.

Coffin display case

Just finished up another Coffin, you'll be able to find it at Hotline tomorrow! 

The Rocks board

We just finished up a board for our good friend Rocky, a.k.a. the Rock. :) Loved the brown freestyle band with the white opaque. Rock is taking it straight down to Baja CA for a few weeks of fun in the sun. Here's to hoping he and his girl get plenty of waves down there! 

Two Crows Planer

I've just finished tweaking on my new planer. I've shaped thousands of boards with these little green Hitachi planers. While the Skil 100 is well known as the workhorse of the surfboard industry, many production shapers choose to use the Hitachi because of it's cheaper cost, better availability and lighter weight. Clark foam used to  manufacture a modified version of the Hitachi that was distributed at most places that you could find surfboard building materials. They would change out the bearings for better ones and modify the front shoe adjustment for more "on-the-fly" action. After they shut down, the planers became harder to find. I've resorted to building my own from scratch. I cut off the handle, and fabricate a custom one from steel that closely matches the skil 100. In the process I also remove the trigger switch and replace it with a simple toggle, because I leave my planer on most of the time when I use it. Also I cut out the crappy little dust chute and fabricate a nice over sized one to facilitate the easy removal of large foam shavings. The front end is modified to more closely resemble the skil, much easier to hold onto. 

Here's a stock Hitachi

And here's mine. I can't help but paint everything flat black. 

Time to get shaping. -Carl 

Coffin, shirts, 3rd Stone Stock boards... Hawaii

A few pictures of what's going on in Hawaii right now. We've been hard at work taking care of everyone's Christmas presents. Keep your fingers crossed that someone in your life might surprise you with a new Crow under the tree. :) 

First up we have a picture of the new coffin POP display for surfshops that we've been working on. 

 We've been focusing on new t-shirt designs, and here's a quick sample of the ideas that have been circulating in the mind of Welzie...

Carl's a machine, here's one day's work, all handshapes.

 Bruce's yardstick

 John Coffee's mosquito

 A stock 6'0" Mosquito that's for sale at the 3rd Stone shop in the sugarmill

 A Stock 10' Lowrider

 A stock CA Nosrider

 John Coffee's copycat- Full freestyle artwork

One more on display at the 3rd Stone shop

Welzie in the glassing room

Coorsmas

Great picture sent in by our friend Rachmo, Celebrating in a style that we can definitely relate to. Awesome!

Also got some more hats in...

Hot Rods and 2 headed Llama People

This is Welzies Dad's sweet rod that he's building. It actually sits right where we glassed our first two boards over a decade ago together... see resin on the floor? :) Awesome.

Here's an art project that Welzie put together for an art show in Feb. I think it has something to do with Llamas...

Coors Light or Salvation?

We stopped by the regional Coors distributor in Nor Cal. We had an opportunity to tour their giant walk-in fridge... it was the entire storage area, as cold as your fridge at home. You guys that enjoy Coors light as much as we do will enjoy this batch of pics. 

Luckily, Welzie managed to restrain himself,  I was worried that he'd just grab a 30 pack or a pony keg and make a break for it. 

Man that sign would look great in the Lam room. 

Fire safety check

I remember being annoyed when my Pops came down on me about the possibilities of a fire happening at my first shop, laid out in the back of my parents yard when I was 17. He made me install fire sprinklers and I thought it was so lame... I remember the dorky sprinkler hanging down right in the middle of my main shaping room like it was yesterday. Running all the pipe was the biggest inconvenience to my extremely important 17 year old reality I could imagine. I wanted to be building boards, surfing and hanging out with my cute girlfriend... I didn't have time to cater to my lame parents paranoid ideas. Fire? Yeah right.

If you have a time machine, I need to go back and smack my stupid ass.

Tuesday night was a reality check, we actually had a fire start in the Santa Cruz shop. Stoked there were fire sprinklers and all possible horror scenarios were avoided. The fire dept didn't get to play with their toys. Remind me to tell my Pops how right he was, he'll love to hear it. Sure there was water damage, floors that had to be ripped out and replaced plus some soot damage to a few boards, but the sprinklers saved the day and the shop is back to business after only a few days of cleanup. Here's a token pic of the firetruck rolling our scene. 

Sadly though, the few boards that were damaged by the soot and water were really nice. Here's a couple pics to commemorate them. Man, Welzie looks pretty cold... Can't wait to join him back in Hawaii on Tuesday.