a craftsmans hands

via Instagram The man, the myth, the legend......... Jools Matthews of @gulfstreamsurfboards who are probably making the nicest surfboards in the uk at the moment! diana and crossprocessed #film pic that's a couple years old now

#filmisnotdead #filmphotography #ishootfilm #toycamera #shaper #nofilter #handmade #craftsmen #lomography #portrait #120 #dianafplus #surfboard #shaper #madeinbritain

Pre-surf stokage

via Instagram

BGA and @if6was9surfboards pre-surf stoke at the gate. About 20 mins in @if6was9surfboards found a coverup from somewhere to hoots from the peanut gallery. #impressed. Lomo LCa x Fuji film

 #film #nofilter #outsideisfree #outside #ishootfilm #filmisnotdead #analog #lomography #lca #surf #surfcheck #surfer #logging #35mm #35mmfilmphotography #sprockets #coldwatersurf #chasingwaves

January 05, 2017 at 11:02AM

via Instagram Flat again today so here's a holga picture of a French fisherman post dawn patrol at #lasauzaie I always find it interesting how you rarely see anyone surfing the kind of boards I enjoy along this stretch of coast. It's mostly white thrusters, progressive longboards and SUP's. The surf shops are the same. It's like "sprout" never happened. :-) My Slimpig and the superchunk drew a fair bit of interest in the water. #film #ishootfilm #lomography #sprockets #35mm #holga #analog #analogphotography #surfcheck #fish #twinnie #vendee #surfer #nofilter #outsideisfree

January 02, 2017 at 04:33PM

via Instagram Pretty splendid dog walking weather. #sunset #nofilter #doodle #dogsofinstagram #labradoodle #beach #coastal #coastalliving #outsideisfree

December 30, 2016 at 04:40PM

via Instagram There's a slumbering winter point break round the corner #nofilter #outsideisfree #sunset #chasingwaves

December 27, 2016 at 07:36PM

via Instagram Hanging out at the ancestral home in the midlands today. This shot has to be a decade old. A tiny Saturday morning at Saunton riding a @joeltudorsurfboards Nuuhiwa that I eventually sold to @finshack 9'6 of moving sidewalk. #nofilter #surf #longboard #dropknee #outsideisfree #singlefin #log #nuuhiwa #devon

Safe flying tonight Santa!

via Instagram Safe flying tonight Santa! God Jul to all 🌲#nofilter #sunset #outsideisfree #beautifulsky #merrychristmas

Well groomed French beachie

via Instagram Well groomed French beachie #summer #outsideisfree #lesdunes #35mm #35mmfilmphotography #sprockets #film #nofilter #ishootfilm #holga #lomography #beachlife #corduroy

minus digits...........

 

#coldwatersurf

I'm not one of those people that gets excited about winter surfing. It's difficult for me to love heavy water, big swells and the cold. Give me warm sunny point waves any day. Thats not to say that i dont enjoy it, theres little nuggets of pure stoke amongst the grind of the the cold and grey. One of the best things is the light of winter sunshine and the burn of a crisp day's sunset over the western horizon.

This iphone pic was snapped in the last rays of light with barely there fingers fumbling to catch the moment before wrestling out of my suit in a dark car park reliving the stoke of fun min-simmons waves.

worth the wait..........

continued

A few more from the iphone archive....

ground zero

I've had a couple of really fun trips to London recently, feeling like a country bumpkin off to the big smoke. It reminded me how much fun living in a city can be. There's a real buzz of energy and a feel of excitement and possibilities. I'd never move but it's good to get some exposure to culture more vibrant than the backwater that Devon can be. We definately ought to do it more often..........

No trip can be complete without a sojurn along the South Bank and a trip to Slam City Skates both British skateboarding institutions and two places i looked forward more to visiting than any of the official sights when i first went to the capital.

Incidentally, if you or your kids have anything more than a passing interest in Harry Potter, i'd heartily advise a trip to the Harry Potter studio tour at Leavesden where you can wander amongst the sets from the films, drink butter beer and try out greenscreen broomstick flying.

levitation

It's a cliche but noseriding really does feel like walking on water sometimes!

Zac Gibson swum his head and camera into harms way! He's a young but talented photographer check him out here

made by Michel

This beauty is a 9'10 RON model log custom made for my friend BGA by Michel Junod
Junod isn't a massive name this side of the atlantic but he is very well regarded in his native California both as a surfer and a shaper. He hails from the Santa Cruz area and was heavily featured in Thomas Campbells the present movie which is probably where you have heard of him before if you've been scratching your head!







 He makes beautiful surfboards but they are great value because his name doesn't have the worldwide cache of Bing and others. His boards deserve it though. The shapes and finish are every bit as good as other californian prestige brands.

BGA is most definately a fan and has had a few different boards from him over the years. This one came over with Nineplus and is one of Michel's Regular Old Noserider models. It's defiantely got a little bit of a piggy wide point back/ hippy influence but it's more of a full all round log shape than his Pignar or Two tone models. As a result it probably suits our average days  little bit more.

I rode this one the other day in waist high semi-clean medium speed beach break and i was really impressed. I normally dont like long logs, anything over 9'6 and i usually find that the extra inches are a hindrance rather than a help. Not so here, despite it's size, the RON has a nice weight, not too heavy, not too light. It has a nimbleness off the tail (in a traditional pivoty sense) that belies it's size and i found it was easy to whip through fades and cutbacks for me even though i'm only ten stone. The gentle roll in the bottom and nice round 50/50 rails undoubtedly help too.

Up front there's a subtle teardrop concave and perched with toes over it's very stable both in the pocket and when the wave fattens a little. It paddled great too but then there's a lot of float relative to my (fly)weight. BGA is taller and heavier than me and it suits him to tee. His daily driver for the last couple of years has been a 9'8 junod two tone which is a superb noserider when the wave has some shape but at mushy gutless saunton it's not the easiest board to get the best from. The extra width in the front half of the RON gives more forgiveness when the wave gives less and it's flattering his surfing already.

In short it's a good value californian all around log and well worth thinking about if you are in the market!

all for one

 

Ready to log some tip time!

Here's a thing......... When you load your board on your car roof, do you put it fin first or nose first?

In the UK i'd say everyone goes nose first (with the exception of those kooks who stick it up through the sunroof etc!) and there would be some sniggering behind hands in car parks if you did anything else.

Cross the pond though and California is exclusively fin facing forward, at least if you want to swing into the car park looking cool and correct. weird eh?

Thankfully my boards travel inside a van so thats one less detail to agonise over in order to maintain my aura of hipster cool ;-)

Speaking of cool, Gulfstream now have a 5'2 SeaPea mini simmons available to demo, call them on 01271 815490 and get your shred on (brah!)

hanging in Matts man cave....

Big thanks this week to Matt, the gulfstream glasser for patiently helping me glass my mini simmons. Once again, it's not as easy as it looks, especially when there are multiple tints involved. I don't think i messed it up too badly and it is starting to actually look like a proper board! ( " Literally" eh matt?!)

 Fin wise i think we are going with 7 1/2 inch base glass on keels. More of a keel fish shape than a half moon so similar to those on the bar of soap and the bing mini sim but not as long in the base as the TW soap ones.

Hopefully it's going to be finished for my trip to France in a couple of weeks time!!

Small glassy logging is the order of the day today, the only question is which spot to haul my heavy single fin to!

the sea pea

 

So i finally managed to get over to Gulfstream to finish shaping my first board under Jools watchful eye. It's come out really well and i am super stoked. It's not a straight copy of the Bing i borrowed although it does use that as a reference point. It also takes some influence from the TW bar of soap i own. Theres not much rocker, with a subtle bellied entry into a single concave from about a third back that deepens as it goes off through the fins. The rails are very soft 50/50, almost an up rail in the nose, quickly blending into a shortboard style rail with a nice edge to the back third. It looks "right" and hopefully will surf right too! Next up is glassing!

 

I want to say a massive thank you to Jools at Gulfstream for his patience in teaching me and correcting my cock ups before they got too bad. There's no way it would look like such a nice shape if i had been left to my own devices! 

I'd like to think that he enjoyed it  as much as i did, it's the first time he's shaped anything like this so there was a certain amount of head scratching and designing to get it to blend together well. Hopefully this is going to be the first prototype for a proper Gulfstream Mini simmons model! You heard it here first!

Obligatory cheesy shot..........hand shaping (well) is hard and my appreciation of it as a skill is even greater than it was!!

a lovely way.....

to while away an evening...

It's been a bizarre start to spring so far. Mellow sunny waves a week or so ago, then freezing temperatures, snow at sea level and pumping waves today, shame it's been so windy.

 I'm off to the lake district next week, supposedly for a little bit of mountain biking amongst other things. I'm wondering if i might be better off taking my snowboard instead looking at the current conditions!!

made in california

dust busting....

 

So i already had a pretty large amount of respect for skilled shapers but my level of admiration for people like Jools has increased yet again after my morning "shaping"

 

Notice i'm using inverted comma's since if i had been left to my own devices i'm not sure things would have turned out quite so well as they are going to and that is mostly due to Jools patience in walking me through in baby steps and stepping in to smooth out the bumps before my hamfistedness did too much damage!

 

Something that i hadn't fully grasped is how fragile the foam is when you are wielding the planer. It's incredibly easy to slip or lose concentration and cause a dent or bump. It's also difficult to keep an eye on the overall shape as you concentrate on each area in turn. So far it's been fascinating, fun and seeing the blank take shape is really exciting.

 

It's a 5'2 mini simmons. We took some measurements from the Bing mini sim i borrowed but thats now gone back so this isn't an exact copy. We measured out the points on the blank and then templated it using curves from Jools archive of shapes. What is really interesting is the combination of curves. It's got the nose from a log, the tail of a 6'8 squash tail shortboard and the curve that joins them comes from the template of a 7'6 mini mal. Bottom shape is belly to flat to a decent single concave and we are going to keep the rails pretty foiled as per the bing and the bar of soap i have.

 

Only half way so far and i'm going back to finish it off soon.......