You might have a surfboard builing obsession if...

…on a daily basis you grope random materials that are not normally found in surfboards to see if they are worthy to be used in board construction.

…you see a block of EPS foam at a construction site and immediately wonder what they would sell it for and how big of a board you could carve out of it…

When you see a white fitting on the wall of a retail shop that has a strip running down the middle of it and it reminds you of a blank.

when, despite having gone there 100 times already, you cannot resist the corner hardware store to see if there is something boardbuildable…

 

… when absolutely every form of adhesive in your home or office has become the subject of a sandwich layer test…

 

… when you have a nervous habit of peering in dumpsters located near construction sites for anything possibly remotely useful…

 

… when the first thing you do in the morning is get stoked writing up your answer to a swaylocks question about your habit…

 

 

You ask Santa for a couple gallons of epoxy resin for Christmas !!!

your wife has finally succumb and doesn’t constantly remind you about the amount of foam and balsa dust that coats the garage and cars, nor the little drops of epoxy that are randomly sprinkled about the garage floor.

… Swaylock’s is your homepage, and you check it for updates more often than email

when you’re reading up about twin fin placements and your wife starts talking to you and all you hear is, “Are you even listening to me???”

When you check Swaylocks on Christmas morning! and start thinking about sneaking away to just finish sanding a couple of new boards…

To busy working on a board to check the surf, weather report!!

if you think about the next shape while working, surfing, showering, eating...

if you smell resin while walking somewhere and smile

if you think you smell resin while walking somewhere

 

i am obsessed.

When you’re so consumed… you forget to use spell check.

I download pictures of surfboard shaping and glassing rooms that I find on the web. I have this thing about maybe one day building the ultimate small  one man factory. I have been “designing” it for 20 years. Right now the estimated cost is around $100K. The whole thing has a Japanese Zen feel to it.

     We have an art school in town  that offers an architecture degree… I just found a stoked student in the program who wants to do a computer model and then a real model for a class project. It should be a lot of fun.I have enough land to build it on so maybe I can scrape up some cash and actually do it.

    A funny thing is that this particular school pushes the “green” school of building and I have found out that my design is right in line with what they teach. All I did was copy 19th century Japanese structures. Go figure.

You keep building new boards even though you don’t need them, and even though there are bunch of boards to fix, you’d rather make a new one.

...you have no clean resin-free t-shirts...

And on getting a new 'un for Xmas, you're expressly banned from wearing it to work!

 

Josh

www.joshdowlingshape.com

when your reverie about 

a bucket list

is a list of boards

and canoes to make.

and it is never less

than twenty.

…ambrose…

is alzheimers

when you cant remember 

the tenth board into the future?

 

 

 

is it when

you have ten boards

rough shaped

or twenty…

six in wood

ten in poly

and five in styro?

all that’s missing

is time away from honey dew

melon balls   …

 

When the first thing you do on Christmas morning is check Sways and ignore what's under the tree.....Mike

…shape mini surfboards out of off cuts that are perfectly rockered and foiled.

… you look at pics of other peoples shaping areas to see if there are any “new tools” you haven’t thought of

you look at pics of other peoples shaping rooms

you look at the shapes of everything around you to see if an aspect of it will work in your next board.

you looking at this on your laptop while you are sitting on the can