Would you buy a wooden surfboard if it had the same weight as a common PU board?
Let’s assume it would cost 20% more.
I want more than just a yes or no.
How important is sustainability for surfers? Is it important at all?
No, we would build them.
I believe you have the wrong audience here.
Sorry, No.
Unlikely, but maybe. Wood is too much fun to shape to want to give that up and I haven’t bought a stock shape in two decades.
Now if a shaper I like and respect was offering wood customs at only 20% more, then probably. Dennis Murphy’s longboards, for example, have always worked well for me and I like to support him when I can. A few others.
yeah Paul Jensen showed us years ago about how he got ripped off in his own area.
Even Grain had its troubling beginnings between founders before it became “hip”
the “hipness” factor eventually wears off after a while
just like the next phablet or wearable or resin
the only true sustainable form of surfing is body surfing
chris garrett was doing timbertek before the idea of firewire was conceived
blake did the original “kookbox”
Wrong audience for sure.
But No, nobody is going to buy a board they cant fix with a tube of solarez, or which requires special skills to repair.
I still ride my original 12+ year old HWS, but it has had surgery on it more than once as a well placed knee punctured a chamber.
The deck now looks a little frankenboardish with teak, white cedar, mahogany and some other woods and some carbon fiber.
A gave up any ideas of making wood boards for profit long ago. Its a labor of love and no performance oriented hipster is going to spend dime one on anything that is not similar to what the pros ride.
I don’t know if it helps you, but the weight relative to PU has no influence in my decision relative to cost. Sustainability of wood over pu is a given.
I’ve built wooden boards and sustainability wasn’t a concideration. It seems to me that they are way too labor intensive to be cost effective on a production basis. I don’t know how many boards Grain sells, but if it were enough, would they be running hands-on classes all over the country?
Duude , your question was answered long before you asked it…actually long before you were even born…foam surfboards , since the 60’s have been great to supply the masses , and feed the demand of a growing surfing population…but before during and after , that golden era of foam surfboards , there was wood . If you take a honest look at surfboards over their long history , you’ll find that wooden surfboards have been far more prevalent than foam , by a long margin…and if you add both modern and traditional construction methods , using wood as the major ingredient , you’ll find that wooden surfboards have nothing to prove . Wood has been there since the beginning , it’s still here , and it always will be. If you currently prefer a glassed foam board , buy it from a reputable builder that doesn’t cut corners to keep the price down. There’s still quite a few around , but their numbers have been reduced by the corporate involvement in surfing…the modern cheap surfboard doesn’t perform all that well , when you can carry half a board under each arm.
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What’s the specifics on that board, kayu? it’s a gem!
It’s Huie’s Mother Island gun Sammy…I made the blank to his “very” specific requirements…hand-shaped and traditionally glassed by Huie…7’ 7" by 19 1/16th".
If you’re asking would a quality wooden surfboard be viable in the marketplace at a 20% premium above PU boards, the answer is yes.
Look at Danny Hess boards. $1200 and up a pop, waiting list close to a year. So an $800 wood board should certainly be attractive,
If ia quality custom product, not a wood shelled generic from a popout factory.
And sustainability should be important, if for no other reason then who wouldn’t want a favored board to last as functionally long as possible.
- Kayu, that board is truly bitchin…
The first wooden board that Chris shaped was a balsa blank that I sold to his sander(or wasit Jack Knight’s sander ?)…I showed the same blank to Nev Hymen a week before , and he wasn’t interested at all . I’d already been doing these boards with Dick Van Straalen for years…and yes , Firewire come quite a few years after that. Chris Garret’s wooden blanks were made by Dave Franks , who posts on Swaylocks as “Quanta”, and Chris shaped them.