The Shaper’s Bay
The shaper’s bay is where we collect the best stories from New Zealand’s eclectic surfboard shaping industry. From full factory giants to the little guy crafting a woody out of native wood, they’re an inspiring bunch.
I knew it was Jay standing there in the parking lot. It wasn’t because he wore the hair of a rocker, or that he stood in dusty jeans with a plain, unbranded mushroom-coloured jersey. It was the fine gradient of foam dust on his fingers that gave him away. Since......
Surfboard shaper Luke Hughes tells us about the difference between epoxy and PU boards as he walks us through his popular Zorkn model. He shows us how epoxy construction has opened up a slew of options when it comes to flex management and design. Epoxy surfboard construction has been around......
As a 40-something year old grommet with 30 years of surfing under the belt, I’ve got an insatiable hunger to surf as well as I can before the inevitable decline of aging sets in for good. Like a good comb over, I’ve been trialing different surfboard constructions in an attempt......
HC Surfboards shaper Hayden Chamberlain has moved his operation north to Ruakaka and into Roger Hall’s Surfline surfboard factory. It’s a mutual relationship that should see both brands benefit. But surf photojournalist Craig Levers thinks he just may be the one missing out. A couple of months ago West Auckland......
There is a place in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, Bowery 315, where you can worship a sacred site: the birthplace of The Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads. CBGBs was no bigger than two fish ‘n’ chip shops stuck together. The trouble is, that it’s now a......
When we first saw Homa Mattingly’s crazy collection of boards we thought he must be experimenting with lots of new shapes and designs. They seemed very, very radical. On closer inspection we discovered a talented backyard shaper taking a different direction completely. Homa has been retracing a few apparent “dead-ends”......