Custom 6ft Redwood/Kevlar Thruster

The newest custom to leave the shop is this little 6′ thruster. It is built using all recycled redwood for the decks, and cork rails covered with Kevlar cloth. The customer was ordering his board while the Kevlar Slider was in the process of being built. He loved the kevlar look, and the added strength was another selling point. So… he asked for kevlar rails. The combination of high-tech materials such as kevlar (high impact and abrasion resistance, low weight), and the beauty and strength of wood makes these boards pretty special. I also added Future Fin boxes since the owner will be travelling with it. Also, the nail holes in the redwood were filled with copper tack heads.The top deck was intentionally left “rough”, without hot coats, in order to shed some weight and make waxing a breeze. The board has a single concave running the entire length, measures 6′ x 18 7/8″ x 2 3/8″ and weighs in at 12 lbs. So far he has surfed it a few times, and says it hauls a$$ and holds a rail like no other. Stoked!

Shaped by Martijn.

Custom 8’2 Redwood Single Fin

This is a custom 8’2″ “mini malibu” cruiser board. The top deck is reclaimed redwood with ponderosa pine stringers and a purple heart walnut center stringer with poplar circles. The bottom deck is wavy redwood with black walnut stringers, outlined by ponderosa pine as well. The bottom features a hand-painted tribal Honu, a hawaiian-style turtle, near the nose.  The single fin is a redwood and pine rising sun, with manzanita burl as the sun itself. The glow of the redwood on this board is amazing, once the light hits it the depth of the colors really comes out.  I personally delivered this board to the customers in Phoenix, AZ, where it will spend some time on the wall before it comes back to the Pacific to be surfed by the owners. A truly beautiful board!

Shaped by Martijn.

We’ve been busy…

Even though we haven’t been posting as much, we have in fact been pretty busy building custom boards, and hanging others on walls. The boards include a custom 8’4″ big wave gun, an 8’2″ “sunset” tanker, a 7′ redwood pintail which is hanging in a corporate building.

Below is the 8’4″ gun, built out of madrone, spalted red oak, wavy redwood, and vertical grain redwood. The madrone and red oak came from the customers’ father-in-laws personal stash of wood, milled on their property in Bonny Doon. The redwood was reclaimed, and the wavy redwood left over from a previous board. The nose has a small abalone inlay, the knots are filled with small pieces of Jade from Big Sur, and it was all glassed in bio resin. The board also has future fin boxes, in a quad configuration. The board weighs in at just over 20 lbs, and was built to take a lot of abuse.

This is a custom 8’2″ Slim Tanker in the sunset motif. The bottom of the board is doug fir with reclaimed redwood, pine, and an unknown species of burl for the sun. The “ocean” under the sunset as well as the fin are sapele. The top deck is completely different: a purple heart walnut stringer with poplar circles, thin pine stringers, and reclaimed redwood stringers from an old arbor. The tail is a piece of  redwood burl with abalone inlays. This board looks phenomenal!

This is the 7′ pintail we hung on the wall at Plantronics, a large corporation in Santa Cruz. Their new building is amazing, energy efficient, solar powered, and directed at the comfort of the employees. Their walls all have really unique art hung up, and our board is displayed next to a large print of a surfer dropping into a bomb at Steamer Lane. The picture was taken by a friend of ours (unbeknownst to us!!!), pixelated, mounted on redwood fence boards, and hung on the wall. Up close the picture just looks like huge squares, but as you back down the hallway it comes to life. We are very honored to be displayed next to it.

More pictures of all of the boards. Gun and Tanker built by Martijn, Pintail by Tyler.

Custom 8-2 Slim Tanker, finished and hung

This is a custom 8’2″ Slim Tanker for a local business here in Santa Cruz. The board was built from reclaimed redwood from a deck in Boulder Creek, black walnut from a deceased woodworker, and ponderosa pine from a tree that came down during the Bonny Doon fire of 2008. The rails are cork as usual, with a redwood burl tail block with abalone stripes. The board is hanging on some custom walnut wall mounts, easy to remove and go surf before the boss comes in, haha.

Shaped by Martijn.

Custom 9-0 Noserider – Sunset/Moonrise

This is my latest board finished, and it’s all for ME!!! I’ve been having fun with the sunset boards, enough to tackle double the work for my own board. I decided to do a setting sun over a rising, waxing moon. The sun/sky are yellow cedar and reclaimed redwood, with the sun made of manzanita burl. The center stripe is some curly redwood from a local friend of ours, with black walnut stringers on either side. The walnut was also salvaged, from a dumpster. The moon sky is reclaimed redwood including nail holes, and reclaimed pine; the nail holes are filled with copper tack heads, and the moon is a burl from an unidentified beach find. The dark side of the moon was burnt, it is a solid circle. The tail block was a redwood branch that came out of a bonfire at the beach. The top deck is curly redwood with black walnut and yellow cedar, with a paua shell inlay at the tail block. The fin is reclaimed redwood with a burnt leading edge. On the nose, with the best view EVER, is my little rasta surfing buddy, who I hope will invoke a smile from even the crankiest surfers out there. The board was glassed in Entropy ONE resin, which is awesome to work with on wooden boards.

The shape is fairly close to a traditional noserider, having the wide point aft of center, low nose rocker, plenty of tail rocker, with a nice little kick in the last few inches. The nose has a deep concave, progressing to a flat bottom, and back into a deep concave through the tail. The rails in the last 24″ are chined upwards, giving the bottom contour almost a catamaran look. Really cool! The rails are sharp in the tail, progressing to rounded rails, beveled up in the nose. It measures just a nose over 9 feet, 22.5″ wide, 2.75″ thick. She weighs in at a cool 21.5lbs. Not bad for all those seams!

This board was meant to be surfed hard, I will keep  you updated as far as the performance and abilities of the board. Stoked!

Shaped by Martijn.

9 Ft. Noserider – “Sunset / Moonrise”

This si the newest board being built here at Ventana. It’s a 9′ noserider with some unique designs to be elaborated on later, but for now I’ll just say it looks like it will be a winner. The bottom deck is reclaimed redwood, curly redwood, salvaged pine walnut, and yellow cedar. The design represents the sunset on one side over the rippled ocean, and a moon rise on the other side. The sun and moon will be inlayed at a later time. The top deck is yellow cedar, curly redwood, and salvaged black walnut. Check back soon to see the progress.

Martijn.

Custom 9’6″ Redwood/Pine Longboard

The newest custom board to leave the shop is this gorgeous 9’6″ longboard. The top deck is pine with redwood stringers, and the bottom is reversed. Both sides have a large abalone circle inlayed near the nose, and the nail holes in the bottom deck are filled with copper boat tacks. The tail block is an old redwood branch found on the beach, and the top deck has a piece of Big Sur jade inlayed in an knot hole. The customer also requested a wood-burning of a sand dollar split open with the “teeth” coming out. The leash cup is lathe-turned bubinga with poplar, and really looks great. The single fin is made of scrap from the decks, and has a unique pattern to it, almost two fins in one. The board was glassed in Entropy Bio Resin, with the normal glass schedule of 2x4oz. on deck and a single 4oz. layer on bottom. This is one happy owner who intends to surf it often, but I have a feeling he will surf it much more than he expects…

Shaped by Martijn.

Custom 5’10″ Redwood Single Fin

I just finished this custom board order for a gentleman that’s been coming by and admiring the boards for a while. He finally had to pull the trigger and get himself one of these boards custom tailored to his needs. It ended up being a 5’10″ single fin with a squash tail, rounded nose with a concave running to a Vee in the tail. The single fin is 9″ tall, and really flexy, to provide plenty of snap and responsiveness. It looks like a coral snake when seen from the front, and is made up of redwood and pine. The whole board was glassed in Entropy ”One” bio-resin.

The decks are reclaimed redwood with strips of black walnut, inlays of copper nails in the original nail holes, and two pieces of Big Sur jade, found on the beach in the Ventana Wilderness. The rails on the top deck have circle inlays of abalone in the nose and tail, and redwood along the sides. The tail block is Monterey cypress, collected as driftwood from the beach. A pencil drawing of Pelicans in flight is behind the fin on the bottom of the board. The drawing came from a previous customer who drew two for his own board. We decided on one, and he left the other one to be used on another project. Voila!

The glow in this wood is incredible, and to think it was destined to end up in the land fill. It really is amazing what we can salvage and put to use, and surely these few discarded deck boards will put many smiles on the new owners’ face. Trash to treasure.

Shaped by Martijn.

Custom Longboard with Hatch

This 9’6″ beauty is a custom order for a local pro named Tyler Fox. He wanted a unique longboard with twin keel fins and a hatch/dry compartment to bring some goodies out into the lineup. The board is made from recycled redwood and left-over cedar from the shop. The arrows in the cedar strips as well as the tailblock are made of  scrap aromatic cedar from the shop. The leash cup has some really cool abalone inlays to finish off the board.  The hatch measures 7.5″ x 7.5″ x 2″, enough for a cliff bar or two, some wax, and a small camera if needed. I will also build a second lid for the box, structurally reinforced for those bigger days when the hatch is empty. The board will be glassed in Entropy Bio Resin, a new batch we are testing for the Entropy guys. Check back soon to see the completed board.

Built by Martijn.