Surf Trippn' in New Zealand

Our friends Jason and his wife Pam just emailed us a few photos as they travel around New Zealand looking for waves. Sounds like they scored some great logging waves on the North Island on their Two Crows boards.

Kaizer Soze

A good shot of our boy Kaizer came in today. He's been the grom of the team for years- he's finally at college  , doing big boy things now. This shot is from behind the school he goes to- UCSB. 

 I've got a great story about Kaizer, aka Kai Mederios.

A couple years back, in preparation for a Malibu contest, I built myself a copy of my favorite board, except about a 1/2" wider than normal. Thought I might need some extra planing surface and stability if the waves were crappy as they often are. 

I don't really like to ride new boards in contests, but I figured if the board was magic I'd use it as my main horse, instead of the old trusty grrl. I gave the board about 45 minutes in the water before I decided I hated the width. Walking up the beach I was instantly hassled by the crew- subpar surfing is always a superb reason for harassment in a competitive arena. I decreed the board to be a total piece of crap and threw it at Kaizer. 

"Can I ride it?"

"Don't f*@king bother it's a piece of crap!"

"Come on..."

"Whatever..."

I went back to the car to retrieve my faithful board... and drink a few cold ones while I told everyone what a piece of crap the other board was. Coming back down the beach, Kaizer meets me head on. 

"This board rips!! I love it!"

"No it doesn't... stupid grom..."

"It does!"

Kaizer's always been an enthusiastic fellow, so I figured he could use a challenge.

"If it rips so hard, let's see you win this contest on it. If you do... you can have it."

The challenge was issued with the entire crew standing within earshot. As soon as the words were spat out of my sarcastic shaper mouth, I knew there was gunna be no backing out. 

Dammit.

Kaizer won his first heat.

I laughed it off as the whole team heckled me. Kid always wins his first heats, they're the easy ones. 

Kaizer won his second heat. 

I laughed it off again as the heat turned up on me. For some reason the crew loves to see their shaper sweat... But I've seen Kaizer drill through early heats a million times. Winning a whole contest is another matter entirely.

Early the next morning while I was still lazying around the parking lot at the Bu- The news came back to me

"Kazier just got though his semi final" Cathy bubbled. She loves to see me suffer.

"Oh man you are so out that board!!" Waylon's my younger brother and he likes it even more.

I spent the whole day mentally accounting for a potential loss of hundreds of dollars because of my big mouth.

They had the final on the end of the second day. 

I sat on the beach and watched quietly as Kaizer stomped the competition. I've never wanted one of my riders to loose, but I would have been totally fine with second place for him- he's got many contests to come... It didn't matter. He pounded the final nails in my coffin and I knew he had won fair and square. 

They announced that he had just taken possession of the board when they announced his first place win. 

Punk, he knew I'd never be able to back out. I should probably learn to keep my mouth shut. 

But it was the best bet I ever made. 

-Carl 

Slow Sundays

I spent a nice rainy sunday doing the afterwork on the lam jobs. Its amazing how the boards transform throughout the process. Its always fun to see what happens. I Re did a few art pieces that I wasn't totally happy with. Resin is a great medium because you can keep reworking a piece and it just adds more layers and depth.

-n

Here are some pics Matt took yesterday.

Here I am sanding off a doodle I did on one of the resin pieces. This piece sat around the shop for ages with a Posca drawing of Rainbow bridge in Haleiwa. I thought at the time I might be able to sell something like this. I ended up getting over the idea, sanding it, and adding another sequence of colors.

Here I am mixing up some black. Its always best to mix your own colors.

Here is Greg's board from the Big Island.

I love the colors on this board. I did a board for myself a few years ago with the green, black and yellow. We called it the "Creature" theme because it's the colors of the Creature Skateboards decks.

Glassing Gregs Mini Simmions.

What looks like water colors is the left over Acetone in some of the brushes. When using a lot of pigments the acetone gets real contaminated and turns a colors. Here I kept making lines on the wall, then taged it. When and doubt put it on the wall.

Lamination Station

I spent most of the day walking circles around the glassing racks today putting some color to the boards. The wether has been real wet lately, making the tape offs not stick so well. Usually in the heat you can tape off five or so boards without the tape falling off before you glass them. Not so much in this wether. I had to glass one at a time. This does not seem like a big deal, but it doesnt make anything more easy. After three boards the resin is going off and your feet are sticking to the floor. You see, there is a process of laying up the cloth and cutting it. Walking around the board in wet resin going off doesnt keep things moving. It was a good day in color though. Very pleased with the out come.
-n

The preliminary work

I dont know if you can tell but I have a lot of fun doing this.

Daniel Jones Surfing Rocky Point

Here is a quick video of Daniel Jones surfing Rocky Point on a little Mini Simms turned into a quad... or  now called a Quadini. It has the same template of a mini simms but tuned up for tighter turns to go with the quad fin set up. Looks like the board is a lot of fun.

Polishing surfboards

Buffy Buffy. I started out a polisher. In High School going to work at the factory after school. Polishing. I learned from  Scott O. He was an amazing polisher and really fast. I remember one day him comming in to the shop to do some boards. The other polisher was there and whining about Scott taking all the work. I only did about 7 a week at the time so I was no threat to the work load. "Ill buff circles around that fucking guy" Scott said about the note the other polisher had left about sharing work. Ill always remember Scott with those blood shot eyes "Buff circles around that guy" So Classic.


Chris' new medium simmions

Two Crows Freestyle Style Free

Stripes on the fins

My new mini simmions... but always for sale

 Toots' new chocholate dipped stick

Back and forth

Man we are keeping up a pretty frantic pace these days. When we first started this project it was pretty leisurely. I would hang out in Hawaii for a month or so, then fly back to Santa Cruz for a while. After a few months Nick would need more work and it was back out there to freestyle around with him. Now we've got shops, rents, dates, spreadsheets, deadlines and time tables. They say you spend half your life working, so you better be doing something you love. Nick and I are lucky. When it gets tough we still enjoy it... even when we are arguing about who was supposed to polish those two minis that got shipped to Santa Cruz... it's really not that bad, considering. 

Who knows what this is? :) 

 I brought back a couple Minis for Ryan and Gus this trip. Ryan's is this 5'0" and Gus's is the Yellow 6'0".

Love that yellow... looks like butter. -Carl

Shaping Machine

The new Two Crows Shaping machine is epic. Portable and "green" this machine does not use gas or electricity to run. Although it putters and mummers quite often, it is quite reliable. Its an older machine. 32 years I think. Plenty of boards under its belt, and the blades are as sharp as ever. Its caliberd just right and there is no ghost shaper needed to clean up the machine marks after its cut. It even signs the boards when finished.

Here is the shaping machine mid cut.  Powered by burgers and beers.

Mike dropped off a 12 pak sunday morning for us. It was a bit early for us to crack a beer, but they were all consumed after dark. Thanks Mike!

Carl the shaping machine busting out... ;)

we are saving the end pieces for some R and D we want to with the strength of fiberglass variations. We know the outcome but thought it would be fun for everyone to see a scientific experiment come out of it. Coming soon...

 The shaping Machines vacum system. Keeps the dust out of his eyes. I mean the dust out of the machine.

Malia's kid's board. Tiny. Such a little grom board.

Carl is a machine and may shape nonstop for 4 days but I got nonstop work for the next month.

Some of the art pieces getting finished up.

"One Mega Shaka" for you.

Chris' new medium simmons. You can see in the painting behind it where the leftover resin went.

Two heads are better than one

Nick's pretty burned out today. He's currently sitting behind me complaining... about pretty much everything. He's hungover. Last night was a big night, he moved out of his van into a nice "plush" room in a real house. 

The room is only about 80 square feet, but it's like a mansion compared to living in a van. 

The night was celebrated in Two Crows style. TOo many beers resulted in a loong day at the shop. Still got everything done though. 

Here's some art Nick's been working on... 

More art

 Some egg

 a mini simms ...for toots

 Got the news that one of our groms in Santa Cruz- Barrett won the High School league championship this year. Major props- I remember those days- that's a great accomplishment! Yeah Barrett! -Carl

Freestyiling

I got inspired today to attempt a new method to the freestyle. Something that I have been wanting to do for a while, just haven't had the right board or frame of mind. The Idea was to use a solid color over some squeegee work to tone back the colors then go in and rework it. Well I did it and it came out pretty cool. I will definetly be playing more with the technique.
Here is some pics of the boards going through the shop.
-n

Here is the preliminary work on the foam. A little more than just the spray paint get applied.

 The two mini simmons getting a fin Job

  Here is the freestyle with a light tint over it to mute out the colors. I like it.

 Stripy Stripy