IF agave was available to shapers on a commercial level, what would be reasonable rates?
Stringers?
Rails?
Blanks?
Finished boards?
All serious and non serious response appreciated. Thanks
You should factor in the workability of the material compared to say, balsa. Chances are you will find craftsmen that feel balsa is easier to work with, but if the price of agave can be less costly, then you may gain wider acceptance than if they are too close in price.
Shapers that are dedicated to offering sustainable products are your target market.
The net result is a very dramatic, appealing product with admirable compression characteristics not unlike balsa.
May your aspirations and hard work be rewarded accordingly.
Thanks Deadshaper. Do you have any agave experience?
Falling one balsa tree yields enough material for maybe fifty surfboards (?(balsas are one of the largest of the canopy trees)). Yet, ten agave plants are needed to make one board.
Balsa logging is incredibly destructive to tropical rain forests, yet agave can be grown in most peoples backyard (I saw an agave in bloom near JFK in Jamaica, NY) and grow in poor arid soils.
Agaves can be hand harvested and transported in a pick up, while balsa requires medium duty haulers and backhoes to move, not to mention a team of men and a meter long chainsaw.
Agave “wood” is also less dense and stronger, and has better flex than balsa making it a far superior material for watercraft.
Also agave is not a tree and is only useful to board making after the life of the plant has ended.
I dont really see a comparison between the two.
I get your point about workability and drawing comparisons for market pricing but I feel it is more nuanced.
What bothers me is while trying to offer an alternative material for board making, which I feel is superior to others, is that it is anti-ecologically sustainable to transport raw materials or even finished boards in such a way that requires traditional ocean liners or air mail. Agave is meant for local consumption, if you know what I mean.
If it was available I’d like to do a board with wide agave stringers. Really like the spalted look of it.
I haven’t had the opportunity to work with agave, albeit I would welcome the opportunity. My comments were not directed as a statement of personal use, but from what I have been told by friends in the industry that have worked with agave from harvesting, shaping and glassing it. Personally, I feel like Mako, the material has a very dramatic look to it aka “spalted”. I know Linden has worked pretty extensively with agave, maybe more so than just about anyone. I wish I could get his take for us here. More realistically would be Barry Snyder, longtime hand shaper and fellow Swaylockian!
I’m currently working with a crew in Ecuador using balsa, and foam, and the comment about getting 50 boards out of a balsa tree was met with some skepticism. Here’s some perspective on that - and meant in a good way mind you, as I feel ALL efforts to reduce the carbon footprint while offering surfers ecologically sound products is a good thing and in keeping with caring about Mother Earth.
Q. How much balsa wood is needed for each surfboard?
A typical height of an 8 year old tree is 75 foot with 20 inch diameter. With a yield of three 6 foot by 10 foot lengths, eight of these lengths are needed, therefore almost three trees to produce one surfboard blank. Balsa seedlings spring up as quickly as grass, much to the annoyance of agricultural farmers, so space left by a fallen tree will naturally re-seed. If not cut after 10 years and 6 foot diameter the balsa tree rots from the inside, even though some giants are 6 foot in diameter and support many vines and forest ecosystems, they are in fact slowly dying.
***Ecuadorians have always fished from Balsa rafts, the ancient Machiguenga culture believed their God, Tasorinchi, carved the first people on Earth out of Balsa wood! Spanish Conquistadores saw the Incas transport armies on the river and seas and gave the wood its Spanish name: Balsa meaning raft
I’d love to do a Balsa board but it would probably cost me a fortune to get the Balsa here on the east coast.
Sorry, my intent wasn’t to hijack your thread!. Let’s refocus on agave as a sustainable medium/resource. Here are some pix of mostly Linden’s visuals while doing agave boards. There is also a gunny agave stick Swaylockian Barry Snyder carved out (2nd from top), and a shot of Jason from Chemistry carving into a very rustic, clamped, bunch of glued together agave (top pic).
The stuff is a very dynamic looking material! Here’s a link to check out: http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/one-man-and-his-quest-to-build-a-surfboard-made-of-100-plant-materials-gary-linden-and-the-eccentric-tequila-a_128290/
Enjoy.
Where are you drawing your information from regarding “balsa logging”. Mine is from what we are actually doing in Ecuador. Here is a better explanation for those who ask"
Q. What is balsa wood?
A. It is a hard wood called ochroma lagopus that grows naturally very fast in Equatorial forests coining the term ‘weed tree’. Its cells are 90% water which gives the tree strength to shoot up above the canopy, however, once dried the cells contain so much air that it is considered the natural foam equivalent. It is used commercially for insulation, packaging and of course modelling. Locals use balsa for roof insulation, ocean and river rafts and shavings as a sponge to absorb salt when watering coastal gardens with sea water.
Q. Where does balsa come from?
A. It can be found in South and Central America from Guatemala to Bolivia. Ecuador is the primary exporter of balsa and the best quality is found here. The surfboard balsa wood comes from around the tributaries of the river Guayas, where rainfall and soil quality is high, the higher the water content in each tree, the lower overall weight of a surfboard.
Image of large Balsa tree
Q. How do balsa wood trees get made into surfboard blanks?
A. Local families have managed their forest plots for generations, their knowledge in the location of good quality balsa is vital as it is dispersed amongst other wild trees, grapefruit, coffee, palms, oranges etc and can take many hours on foot. The owner fells and cuts the balsa in location, lashes the 12 foot lengths to horses which drag them to the nearest road. The balsa is kiln dried for 11 days to remove moisture, insects and fungi. Lengths of equal density are matched, cut, shaped and glued together often with a Cedar wood stringer in the centre. After two weeks they are finally clamped together and left in the sun to dry - a blank is born!
Comes from living in Costa Rica in the southern Pacific coast. I fell one on my neighbors land because it had many years and was a danger to his house. It easily had 6 feet in diameter. It took down everything, every tree in about a 10 meter radius and 20 meters in length as it was very tall. Needless to say, it destroyed that area of his property and then the backhoe moved in to haul the mega-ton 3 meter sections to load onto a large stake truck for hauling. It took about a year for the land to recover itself.
The same can be said for any massive tree I fell in CR. It destroys the forest for about a year before the forest regenerates. From that balsa tree yielded close to 5000 board feet if I recall correctly, easily fifty surfboard blanks by my estimate (10feet x 2feet x 5 inches per blank).
Really, three balsa trees for one blank? That is unbelievable.
I met an old timer in Pavones who told my back in the 70s he was making balsa boards and shipping them north.
With agave I can harvest a dead dry one in a matter of minutes with a handsaw, and throw it in the back of my truck on my way home or to the beach. Quite a different process than organizing a chainsaw man and his crew, a backhoe man and a truck driver…in Costa Rica, mañana-land.
Agave is the most usable natural surfboard material because it can be a solo project. Maybe include a mill or carpenter for milling the stock into blanks but people, as shown above, simply crank up their planer and get at it.
I have logged numerous trees and agave by far, it really does not compare, is the easiest and least destructive “logging” I have ever done. Again agave is not a tree and the wood is not wood but the inside of a flower, xylem and phloem.
But back to the original post. What is its worth?
How much would yall pay for a custom stringer for example, one of 5mm and one of 5cm?
"With agave I can harvest a dead dry one in a matter of minutes with a handsaw, and throw it in the back of my truck on my way home or to the beach. Quite a different process than organizing a chainsaw man and his crew, a backhoe man and a truck driver…in Costa Rica, mañana-land.
Agave is the most usable natural surfboard material because it can be a solo project. Maybe include a mill or carpenter for milling the stock into blanks but people, as shown above, simply crank up their planer and get at it."
I can see how your previous experience colors how you feel now. I can appreciate you experienced negatives regarding the immense balsa tree you removed for a neighbor in Costa Rica. But I have to say, that it’s apple & oranges compared to generational Ecuadorean farmers that manage their land and have been doing so regularly for decades. As I pointed out, they remove younger trees smaller in stature and they are hauled out with donkeys or horses… not quite comparable to the damage done by a backhoe. This is why they cite commonly using three trees compared to the grand behemoth you removed.
I applaud the focus on keeping the resource as sustainable and with as little impact to our environment as possible, but I come away with feeling as though cutting a few agave plants and throwing them in the back of your pickup and/or perhaps having some milling done is something, although special, isn’t really something scaleable into an industry unless some concessions end up being made. With something such as this, at a tiny scale, the price expected for a return, any kind of return, is generally regarded as quite high. And ot answer you more succinctly, it is only worth what people are willing to pay. So in that sense, maybe people can come back to you with a board foot price of $3 or $6 or $9 and then you will get an idea of your original ask.
I applaud your spirit of entrepreneurship.
…few years ago I bought Balsa from one of the shapers in Ecuador. CIF or FOB is expensive. One thing is the cost in Ecuador then after all the imports hassles etc you finish with double or triple the price. Add defective planks, etc so you need an small fortune to have a solid load of planks to have a solid foundation to fill possible orders…I still have planks due to not found enough customers willing to pay top Dollars for a Balsa board.
By the way, the Balsa boards in Ecuador mostly are average quality and not performance wise construction; most use the hollow method brought there by a US citizen many moons ago; or do solid boards.
The way to go with Blasa is chambering (if you are performance oriented)
This technique is not so easy if you wants quality…many variable factors occurs.
Anaga: Thanks for the PM!
As I said in my reply, I had no idea you were in Spain. If the resource is readily abundant, then heck yeah, have at it! It really is a dynamic material with great compressive qualities and developing that resource can only be a good thing in my book. Please feel free to contact me with any other questions if I can be of service to you!
Keep shaping, stay stoked!!!
Foto Credit: Steve Bissell BF Archives circa 1972.
The current boards we are doing are chambered or foam filled. Weights available can run +/- 8 to 11 lbs. depending on size and overall volume. Beautiful quality with veterans that have built many boards. Boards being built are per my designs. The goal is not to produce only big wave guns & longboards that sell at high premium prices, but to offer go to designs, which I am known for producing. The goal is to offer surfboards that are beautiful, strong, and perform well in every day surfing conditions.
Now refocusing back to agave, here is a link to fellow Swaylockian and craftsman extraordinaire, Barry Snyder, who has done quite a bit of work using agave. His site talks about the material and I highly recommend you check out the excellent video included there.
Salud Amigos y Feliz año nuevo
http://www.barrysnyderdesigns.com/agave-surfboards.html