Composite construction or the process of vacuum bagging or laminating wooden skins over a foam core is the very high tech end of wooden surfboards. The purists may not view it as a wooden board in the way a solid or chambered board is to them. But technology is there to be used and move us forward and expand the possibilities . Here is Josh's story...

The path which took me to the boards I currently make has a bit of a story...








I’d returned to Torquay and been producing my own label in “normal” construction for a while when a longtime customer traded my shapes for surftech! Thats not an uncommon experience amongst shapers, but it was my stimulus to attempt to make custom boards with similar durability...
So I got experimental...not for the first time!
I scored a panel of 2mm timber, from a pressed-ply chair manufacturer, and sandbag pressed it onto EPS. I also used carbon around the rails...This board was too small for me, but was ridden successfully by my mate steak, It looked butt-ugly because I’d lammed it with qcell in the resin to save weight.



Immediately I began to devise ways to make the construction simpler, and the next board was built from a flat slab of foam and wood sticks bent to a rocker rather than cut to profile. This allowed a saving on materials which was greatly encouraging.
I began to correspond with Bert Burger and Nev Hyman and soon became Research and Development technician for the fledgling Firewire company. I was paid to play around with the composite technology and to this day I have a quiver of my own shapes in variations on the balsa railed composite tech. It was here that I was able to fully develop the techniques I had initiated in the garage in Torquay and my inventions became the basis for the mass-production of Firewire boards.
This one is the original flat-to-bend construction prototype which became Firewire...Made in a garage in Torquay for fellow shaper Mark Phipps. The skins and rails are spliced together from offcuts of the first two boards. Note the Balsa/Corecell combo deck.

I’ve exchanged the use of Balsa for Pawlonia, a timber which is less water-absorbent if dinged. My supply is Australian grown, and I make each board by hand, absolutely custom.
Pawlonia also gives what are more interesting grain patterns than balsa, and I love to play
‘spot-the-hidden pictures” with the whirls and knots in the timber. With all-timber boards I find the stiffness factor means I have to compensate with added tail rocker rather than relying on the flex which High - Density foam skins allow. My orders are evenly split between wood, foam skins or a combination of both. I’m still most interested in cutting-edge design rather than retro...Having said that I intend to build myself some old-school single fin showpieces.
I can build a shortboard under 2kg on request, but I find that my customers are very pleased with a typical high-performance weight with the added durability of the composite construction.
Full-circle from corporate involvement in surfboard manufacturing back to my roots, I’m happy to be making my own thing and I relish having some stoked customers.
Josh
www.joshdowlingshape.com <http://www.joshdowlingshape.com>