With all the stuff I have been doing with boards from rubbish and entries into the Vissla creators contest the last few years I have had the chance to meet and work on a few hings with the General manager of Vissla.
I have been invited to go down to the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro. Which is the WQS 6000.
I haven’t wanted to say anything as it may not have happened but now it all go. 5 of my boards are being shipped down I have flights booked and leave from work. EEEEKKKKK
Amongst other things I am doing a reshape for charity (Surfrider foundation). I have been promised a 5’10" length of longboard nose that I plan to make a Manny Carrow inspired thing either with little almost finless finlettes or maybe a quad.
SOOOO two things.
Gimmi your thoughts on the three outlines in the pic. The one on the left is the nose from the after and the tail from the before.
check out @swallowtailsociety for more of Manny’s work, he is amazing
If you wanna see what a backyard hack gets up to when they let me loose in a shaping bay at a WQS event in between legends of the shaping world check out my insta @skatement_surfboards.
Vissla just sent me this.
Getting a but excited, next week is gunna be epic!!!
Adam Baldwin, @skatement_surfboards
Adam, a 42-year-old school teacher from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, is an accidental shaper. In 2009 he discovered the sport of downhill skateboarding but found it difficult to source cost-effective boards to pursue the sport. It led to him making his own high-end skate decks under the brand name of ‘skatement’ and his passion grew into an obsession. The decks became quite sought-after but, following an injury to his knee, his skate career was over. But the passion for crafting his own boards remained and, five years ago, he made his first surfboard – a timber veneer board made without fibreglass cloth. As he puts it, ‘from there I just applied the same obsession to making surfboards instead. I was always looking for ways to make things cheaper and with less harm. So I explored and experimented a lot, which lead to the creation of a number of boards from weird materials’. In late 2015 he was finishing a ‘Frankenstein of a board’ when he heard about Vissla’s Upcycle Contest, where entrants were asked to turn waste into a rideable craft. It was a lightbulb moment where he realised that others shared his interest in upcycling and it inspired him to continue. That board went on to win the most functional board category in the 2016 Vissla Upcycle Contest and he ultimately auctioned it to raise funds for a local charity. He now works with a high school surf excellence program and continues to experiment with materials to make unique surfboards for himself and his students.
Bloody oth mate… thats pretty cool.
So ya handshaping a heap’a shit blank in front of a bunch of ‘pro’s’… and thats the shape? love the shape, don’t get me wrong that tail/Swallow is a shape all of it’s own .
Love your passion, always have. Go for it, you’ll come out trumps.
…I had to have a quick beer before I did a shaping expo hahaha.
… Super happy for you, go get em.
This is the nose piece of the mal that I started with, it has been sitting on the rack out the back of DJB Surfboards in manly set for the dump. Unfortunately the broken end had been sitting facing up into the weather and there had been significant rain the day I collected it and the day before. More on that later. I have done a timelapse of the shaping and laminating of the board. The battery ran out just as I was working on the tail and I didn’t film the filler coat and the sanding was doine by Dan from DJB.
This it after the strip back and the WSL interview.
I didn’t include too many shaping shots cause they will all be in the time lapse.
But I just kinda liked this one.
The finished product here in this shot and the next, I was super happy with the tail and how the concaves were flowing out through the swallow, but I now know shaping wet foam does weird stuff when you put metho and acrylic paint on it.
The tail, I mean just look at it… the was a few mm un evenness at around 100 mm from the nose. The rest was pretty much bang on.
Playing with the art and the devastation when the foam started to randomly expand and then bow out of shape.
The tail reshape and reduced length of board overall and swallow tail, just reduced the overall vibe of the thing, hahah.
Bottom Lam and the groovy UV box.
Top lam
This is where we got to after the full day in his factory lam done top and bottom.
Hot coat on the bottom and fin boxes glued in.
Then Dan turns up the next day with the board all done, Broken mal Monday, finished board Thursday.
Joe was frothing on it, and the other boards I had on display.
Random tourist shot from the way home.
At one stage during the trip the sponsored kids from vissla all took out a pair of my twinnys, they both had a blast, the Griffin Colapinto asked if he could ride the fish from the fish for my fins thread and apparently loved it was saying how much he wanted to get one hahah.
i confirmed this with him via instagram, pretty stoke inducing.
Weirdly, as i put the metho (denatured alcohol) and paint onto the tail area it seemed to just start to activate. Not only did it bow but little bubbles expanded out from the surface. looking like blisters on your skin, on the surface, one length down a rail near the tail, and a section right at the tip of the swallow. it was like the foam in the center of the big mal blank still had some chemical reaction potential, and with the addition of the water residue from it being left in the weather and the metho it reactivated and expanded?
Here is the raw timepase and a finished shot of the whole board.
stripping, shaping (well 90% of it battery went flat) and the laminating.
youtu.be/WXZLCWpC8lY
Awesome looking boards - great thread, thnx for posting! And btw, it’s not everyday I hear a phrase for the 1st time, but “one post build thread” wins the prize for this week!
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