I told myself i would be better

But I wasn't, I was horrible. its been almost a year since my last post. o well. 

there has been a lot going on. customers have been pushing for some new templates and designs, and it has been interesting trying to satiate their demands. customers have been going to central America, the south pacific and other locations, and looking to surf very specific waves and conditions. It has been challenging to say the least. with that said, look for new models to be popping up soon. they'll trickle in. 

that said however, the surf has been pretty sub-par locally. not much going on and aside from the more modest swells here and there, I haven't had a lot of opportunities to spend a lot of time in the water. the south bay is not the most conducive to producing good conditions from average swell. 

I guess on the flip side, this has meant I have had a lot of chances to develop some of the fishing equipment further. I have been building a lot of fly rods lately, mostly for trout customers but some saltwater rods in there as well. now is a good time to order in preparation for summer fishing... I also caught my PB Halibut back in February. 24". he went back to grow bigger. 

getting started

So lately people have been asking me to share more and I'll be honest I am not a big fan of social media. I struggle to remember to take photos of what is going on around me. But I figured a good place to start otherwise is with a blog and I have my own website so why not?

Spring is always an interesting time...there are orders coming in for summer long boards and between family obligations and track season and school I don't get to surf as much as I would like. At the same time though the surf isn't thaaaat good either so its hard to say that I'm missing out ya know? Like of course I would rather be in the water than studying for midterms but the water is a different temperature everyday, and the onshores start at like 9am. At least the fishing has been good. I caught a halibut at Torrance beach for the first time in the 20 years I have lived in the south bay.Pretty sick.

I have been working a couple new designs and refining (tweaking) some little things on some of my more recent prototypes and boards for the "team" riders. I have been playing with little things like changing how far up the hard (or sharp edges, whatever you want to call them, its just the sharp resin corner on the bottom edge of the rail that usually goes from a like 4 inches in front of the fins to end of the tail) edges come up past the fins. The longer the hard edge, the faster the water will disengage from the rail and the more unstable the rail will feel, theoretically. You don't get that locked in feeling and the board reacts faster, theoretically. I kind of think of it like a fighter jet, like its technically or aerodynamically unstable and while that makes it dangerous to fly, it also means that it can more readily make abrupt direction changes; again, theoretically.

So I put a hard edge on one of my recent personal greasy weasels, like 2/3's up the board, a 5'9" x 18 1/2" x 2 1/4" and it feels like I took the parking break off in small waves. Weasels are really athletic boards for good waves and the outline doesn't typically like glide and snap in small or weak waves, it really favors steep stuff, but with that hard edge, it turns over so much faster. 2-3 foot sloppy/mushy Torrance and the board felt lively and fast. It would turn over in the lip and everything. But like all things, more research is needed. My fear is that it won't cooperate in bigger waves, but on the other hand all those Tom Curren boards had like full length chines and he would ride them in 12ft j-bay and pipe. But on a third hand, I have like .001% of Tom Curren's talent.

We'll see.   

the "hard" edge goes all the way up, past the fins, past the mid-point, past the wide-point and softens near the logo.