Glassy Peaks

A Sunday Surf.

My first session in two weeks - I was pretty excited. The upside of fatherhood and work keeping you out of the water is that you are so much more appreciative when you do get a chance to surf.

Sliding the wooden fish into the car, I notice that despite several years of heavy use, she still looks as new, definitely a testament to durability of timber boards. 

As I drive down the road I am hoping the grey skies and drizzly rain would keep most of the crowd in bed. Even so, when I pull into an empty carpark at japs, I'm a bit apprehensive, no one out, it must be pretty average.

I jump out of the car, hands in my pockets and hoodie on and I jog up the path to the lookout. I'm greeted by the sight of a neat little A frame peak with a good 50-100m rolling left hander. Its small, but super clean with a nice shape.

Racing back to carpark I'm greeted by a couple of young guys suiting up, they've done the local check and Japs is the pick.

My wettie is stiff and scratchy, showing its age, but I'm grateful for any insulation against the cold Southern Ocean a stark contrast to balmy waters of the east coast. The paddle out through a fast running rip is a breeze and in two minutes I'm taking off on my first wave, I'm too deep and too late and the lip hits me in the back of the head, a nice wake up call. The next few waves are good, taking off early and racing down the line I've got heaps of time and speed to draw out a couple of big arcing cut backs. As I'm paddling back out after my fifth wave I see three guys walking down the steps. Within fifteen minutes there are another ten guys in the water.

Its great to see a couple of old friends and a few of the guys are interested in my board. The sets start to build as the tide comes up a little. I score a little barrel going right and follow it up a with a good overhead left with a good wall and power to link a few good turns together. This earns a few more enquiries into the board as its really performing well in these slower than normal waves. I'm happy to sit wide and chase the peaky ones as half a dozen guys jostle for the sets. After a few more I score a great little right that peels almost to the sand. Time to go in.

The cobwebs have been blasted out and I'm blissfully happy with wet sandy hair driving home. There really is no better way to start the day!

For Sale 5'7 Mini Simmons $400!

FOR SALE 5'7 Mini Simmons Australian Paulownia and Red Gum - $400!!! SOLD
Pick up locally (preffered) or I can bubble wrap and wrap in cardboard and courier if the buyer can organise, pay for, and insure it.

First Test Run

I've just finished building and testing a new hollow wooden surfboard thats now up for grabs. It's inspired by Bob Simmons, Dan Thompson and Tom Wegener's thumb... I've been shaping these boards as a hobby for a while now and I'm now looking to launch my brand, Kiri Surfcraft in the coming months.

First thing you will notice about this board is that its made out of wood, the next thing you will notice when you pick it up, is that its on the heavy side. This is a chambered surfboard, each of the 5 pieces of timber that make this board have been lightly hollowed out. The brass vent is to allow the board to breath, unscrew it when you are not in the water and screw it in tight just before a surf (a 5c coin works well in place of a screw driver(!)).

The light coloured timber is Paulownia – an amazing, fast growing timber originating in South East Asia and now sustainably grown and harvested in plantations throughout eastern Australia. The Japanese word for Paulownia is KIRI, which is where the brand name comes from. The unique thing about this wood is that it is almost as light as balsa wood, but it is much more durable and is resistant to water logging. This enables these surfboards to be made without fibreglass or resin. This board is sealed with a plant based varnish, which will last many years if it cared for. If the varnish wears off or if the board is scratched or dinged, it can be easily sanded back and re-varnished and will look almost new again.

The dark red timber is Victorian Red Gum. This timber is used because it looks great and it is rock solid and heavy. Again it is resistant to weathering, many of the old red gum railway sleepers laid in the early 1900’s are still around today unsealed and going strong after a century of heavy use.

The weight of timber board is often a turn off for many surfers, however this is based on the misconception that a lighter board is faster and more responsive. In fact this board’s weight gives the board more speed and glide that allows you to surf a much greater area of the wave than your regular board. The low entry rocker, planning hull and chined rails are also all designed to give the board more speed down the line. You will also notice the rails of this board are quite sharp, combine this with small twin keel fins and the board’s responsiveness is greatly improved. A chambered timber board is much more lively underfoot than foam and fiberglass boards (especially when the surf has a bit of power), it will flex a bit and bounce in and out of turns, the resonance of timber means you will “feel” the way the wave and the board interact. The feeling is hard to explain, suffice to say it’s a great ride!

This board will require you to modify your surfing. You will need to surf rail to rail, as the rails are what gives the board it’s control and speed and hold in the steep sections of the wave. You will need to keep a rail ‘engaged’ in the wave at all times, this will largely prevent you from going completely vertical, but you will be rewarded with an ability to do huge arcing cut backs and long drawn out top-to -bottom ‘figure 8’ turns. This board feels slow to paddle, but from as soon as you catch the wave this board will have almost instant speed, you can relax and just enjoy the speed and energy of the surf, you will be able to make sections that you once thought were impossible, you can nose ride when it takes your fancy and land huge long floaters with ease.

This board is made to bring the fun back into your surfing, no matter what the conditions are like, all the test surfs have been in very poor conditions, but the board has still performed well and the surfers have had a blast. This board is designed for a surfer from 65kgs and up to 90kgs (can be heavier, but need to paddle harder) and to be surfed in anything up to overhead and a half, onshore, off shore, cross shore it doesn’t matter. This board is the first of its model and has been tested by myself and other interested surfers, as you can see in the photos. The ideal wave for this board is a long peeling break with a variety of fast hollow sections and slow shoulders that break anywhere from knee high to a couple of feet overhead. Since surfing my first timber surfboard, I have only gone back to my regular foam and glass thruster for two sessions (when the swell was 6-8ft+).
Surfing wood is addictive.

If you know anyone looking for an affordable wooden board thats a blast to ride, get them to check this one out - Cheers James

This shape is a finalist in the Shaper's Apprentice competition run through Smorgasboarder Magazine! Check it out on page 105 of issue 10 here: http://www.smorgasboarder.com.au/

Looking back to rebuild the future of surfing.

Do you ever find yourself just sitting and watching life? I do and the last time this happened I was checking the surf on a fairly average day at Japs (the local beach) … Nothing really changes quickly here. If it does change it kinda stays that way for a long time. Anyway this day was ok, winds were light and a bit off shore then a bit cross shore and back again. The waves were ‘saw toothing’ as my Californian friend would say, but there was an occasional good one peaking at just the right spot on the bank and peeling left down the line for 30 meters or so before fattening out to nothing in the channel. There was probably half a dozen guys sitting on that bank, which was the only one really working on the beach as far as I could see.

For every good wave, there would have five other waves that no one surfed. There wasn’t really any one thing wrong with those waves, they were just over head high normally, some we a bit fat and slow and some were a bit too fast or peaked too far inside. These waves just rolled on through unridden and it struck me as a waste. I mean why, why did no one try and surf these other waves, its not like there was an endless run of good ones, there wasn’t, the good ones were here and there one, two, even five minutes apart. I figured it was unlikely that they (the kids surfing) didn’t want to catch waves. As a grommet (I always loved that name for young surfers) and sometimes even now, I was so keen to ride waves, I’d imagine waves even when I was living in Kinglake hours from the beach. I’d run down the dirt track behind our house in the National Park and pretend the trees and shrubs that overhung the track were waves and I’d trail my hand along their leaves and branches visualising the perfect barrel I was in…

The only reason I could think of why these waves were being surfed was that they (the surfers) weren’t able to ride those waves that didn’t line up just right. Their boards and in some part their skills weren’t up to the task. Looking at the boards they were all fairly similar, short, narrow, curvy with three fins, just like all the guys on the ‘dream tour’ ride. I’m sure the reason it’s called the dream tour, is because these guys get to surf all the best waves (or at least those that are well known) around the world in the peak of their swell season with just one or two other guys. Most surfers can only dream of that. Which begs the question if their boards are designed for those dream waves (and their considerable skill) why on earth do we kid ourselves by thinking they are the right boards for us to ride at our local break? I mean Japs has its day, but that’s just it, its day, singular. Unless you only surf on the very odd occasion when it’s absolutely pumping and all the elements come together just right, for the most part you’ll be riding less than perfect waves and normally you’ll have to share those less than perfect waves with half a dozen less than considerate other guys. It would stand to reason then, that the boards you ride on all those other days when it’s not quite perfect or indeed a long way from perfect, would be considerably different to those ridden on the ‘dream tour.’ Logical right? Yet our surf stores (or store since the other place closed down), don’t stock alternative boards, they just stock dozens of ‘dream tour’ boards with some slight variations in size and shape, fins and rails, and of course the big seller - different brands and colours! Are we surfers really that shallow? Are we too cool to surf the not the quite perfect days? Are we not creative enough to surf a slow fat waves well, to change our board’s shape, or our technique, our manoeuvres to suit the waves we live with? Watching all the old surf films, people surfed whenever they could, good days, average days, they were out there and having a blast, stoked if there was a good wall and loving the company of other surfers. What’s changed? Now we surfers hate it if another bloke paddles into our wave, we don’t surf if it’s not ‘good’, and a smile is a rare thing to see out there in the water…  

Things do change slowly here, and I think they are changing, surfers are waking up to the dreaded onshore Sou’ Easta’ and wanting to go surf anyway, so they are looking for other boards that might work well on those less than perfect days. Hopefully they might even begin to enjoy surfing with each other again. For me the change couldn’t come quick enough. I build and ride hollow wooden boards, they are nothing like the dream tour boards, they are wide, heavy, shorter, and they go really fast. They don’t turn as tightly as a regular foam thruster and an air is fairly unlikely, but they are heaps of fun in the waves here. There is one thing a Chinese pop out can never be, customised - Customised to your waves, to your size, to your style. If you are looking at getting a new board for summer, think about it. Get something you will have fun on even the surf is small, or a bit onshore, or if (dare I say it) some guy drops in…

Welcome

Welcome to Kiri Surfcraft. We produce high quality sustainable timber surfcraft. Our boards are made to bring the fun back into your surfing, no matter what the conditions are like.

Established in South West Victoria we use sustainably harvested paulownia grown in plantations in Eastern Australia.

We try to make our boards as green as possible without compromising on build quality or performance.

Our boards are affordable and will last you a long time if you look after them. Please keep checking back to see our latest boards, news, and events in the world of wooden boards.

Enjoy the waves!
James