Ring around the rosey

...we all fall down.

Photos: J. Pham.

Hue surfboards singlefin

Here's an obscure one from the Gul collection, an early -mid 70s singlefin made by Hue surfboards with a hand drawn patriotic Britannia logo. This could have been made by one of the big makers under a side label as a tax dodge, or could just be a rare and small output shaper - who knows ? Some surfing history is a bit patchy. Photos by Alex.

Possibly one of the first Gul ads, sent in by Graham . Its from Surf Insight no 1 from 1972, and uses a long forgotten address.

Nobby's board almost ready to pack for Australia

Nobuhito Ohkawa from Japan has been very busy trying to finish his board to get it down to the Gold Coast next weekend. He flies in next Saturday with his wife and a couple of boards. All Paulownia , all from the same tree. He has a very detailed approach to building his boards.Come and check them out next weekend if you are able.

www.nobbywoodsurfboards.com

Crossed-Up

Epic cutback photo by Nathan Oldfield

1,000 Surfboards

Griffin just finished shaping his 1,000th surfboard!

Including many of the boards in this photo.

Congrats buddy!

Here's to the next thousand!

2010 La Jolla Art and Wine Festival

I have recently been accepted for the LJAWF Emerging Artist Scholarship. There are only 14 scholarships awarded and I was fortunate enough to receive one. The scholarship entails that I get a 10'x10' booth free of charge at the upcoming La Jolla Art and Wine Festival, October 9th and 10th. Also I get to keep 100% of the profit for any artwork I sell. This is going to be a fun weekend event to help support the funding of key programs at three area public schools: La Jolla, Torrey Pines, and Bird Rock Elementary. So if you are in the area or want to plan a weekend getaway come down to La Jolla, have a little wine and food, and check out some cool art! For more info go to www.lajollaartandwinefestival.com/index.html

Andy at Church

Screen shot of Andy Nieblas at Church in the Spring.

Charging on his d-fin.

A few round tails for Mollusk

Just sent a few boards to the Mollusk Surf Shops in Venice and Brooklyn. Feel free to email me with any questions you may have about them.danny@hesssurfboards.comYou can check out the Hess boards on the Mollusk site.

Kiwi John and his Kauri board

John Sutcliffe from New Zealand has just finished this great looking New Zealand Kauri board to bring with him next week . He is looking forward to some warm water at The Alley and to slide a few waves at the point.

summer

Some great images which convey heat and lazy days around the beach, by Loomis Dean, Joni Sternbach and Leroy Grannis.

The solid Paulownia test...

David from Paulownia Paradise in Melbourne just sent these pics and the following story to share.

" We were often asked how a solid Paulownia surf board would perform so we used 3 lengths of 2”Paulownia timber that were quite bowed and just glued them together then shaped a 9’10” long board from solid timber with no holes drilled not chambered at all and weighed in at 12.5 KG and just a linseed oil finish."






" We laminated a D fin out of 6mm Paulownia and gave the end result to Ken Reimers of KR surf to test it with an honest result ."

The result - "Not enough rocker , not enough buoyancy and the fin buzzed so we have proved that this is not the way to go."

So if you were thinking this would be the way to go. Don't. Not solid anyway, chambered works e all know. Solid Balsa works , but not solid Paulownia. So thanks David for the exercise.
David will be up from Melbourne on Sunday 8th of August ( next weekend )with samples of his timber and Paulownia Alaia blanks to check out.

www.paulowniasurfboardsupplies.com

Naters' Truck

Nate in his new truck.

Photo: Oden

Mystery Midlength #1

Here's a new CamOden brainchild.

the 8'2 Mid-Pig

With a plywood "flex" fin, that has way more flex than any of us expected.

How to get there

Nobby and Paul Jensen at last years Wooden Board day in the Gold Cost Sun newspaper.

The Gold Coast Surf Museum is not far from the Alley right opposite the entry to The Currumbin Wild Life Sanctuary in Tomewin Street. Look for the big surfboard.Saturday night at the Surf Museum to meet a few people and a few beers , put faces to names and all that.Great venue and some great boards and memorabilia to check out as well.

Check it out at :
http://surfworldgoldcoast.com/events/wooden-surfboard-night/

Cornwall Today

This month's Cornwall today is a special surfing issue, due in a big way to the guest editor Alex Wade, author of Surf Nation. It's worth a read with lots about our surfing history and whats going on today, and even I get a mention in the arts section!

The most expensive surfboards in the world and the man who shapes them

http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/733-the-most-expensive-surfboards-in-the-world-and-the-man-who-shapes-them  





 At last glance Gucci was hocking an Asian produced popout for US $2200, pretentious NY fashion label Proenza Schouler $2995, and Chanel a similarly made shiny shooter for $3900. Yet Roy tops all of these folk with his 'Baron' model retailing for $528 000. Yep, over half a million dollars - the most expensive surfboard in the world! And unlike those boards listed above, his are the functional result of a love affair with surfing and surfboard design.

I dialled his workshop in Putaruru to have a chat...



By Stu Nettle

Wind turbines inspired by Whales: interview with Frank Fish at nakedscientist.com

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1282/



Professor Frank Fish, West Chester University

Well again, it’s sort of counterintuitive.  I mean, whenever you see wing-like structures, we always think that they need a nice sharp, clean leading edge, so aeroplanes or car spoilers or windmills, or fans, anything like that.  So this is a bit counterintuitive that you wouldn’t think of putting these bumps along the leading edge.  Part of the argument has been that, if you do that, you're going to disrupt the flow in another way and that is, you're going to increase the amount of resistance that wing will go through the air or through the water with.  What we have found with the bumps is actually – there is no penalty for having these bumps along the leading edge.  They don't increase the resistance.  And additionally, as you go up to higher and higher angles, there’s actually a reduction in the amount of resistance compared to a wing that doesn’t have the bumps, simply because the wing isn’t stalling.  When it stalls, the amount of resistance goes up quite a bit.  So we can operate at higher angles with less resistance than if we didn’t have the bumps.. . . .



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Bobby Crisp and his Mini Simmons

Bobby Crisp from Deluxe Industries in New Zealand has been busy building more beautifully detailed balsa boards. He loves fine inlays and wood details. He used to be in windy wet Wellington , but has moved as far south in the even colder South Island as you can go before dropping off the end of the world. The cold hasn't cooled his passion for these great boards.
Bob will be here on the Gold Coast next weekend with some boards for you to check out.

www.deluxeindustries.blogspot.com

Hand Planes

I am often asked about the handplanes we have here in the shop, and whether or not handplanes actually work.

If you've ever wondered the same thing, check out this video I nicked off the Korduroy Blog.

Serious Tubes

just started making a board for my frind peter and he sent me over some shots of him and the infamous beau catching some nasty surf in indo

Final Four(duroy)

Korduroy TV made it to the Final 4 of Surfer Mag's Battle of the Blogs.

Help them get past Dane Reynolds and into the finals, by voting HERE.