This is a 7’4″ quad built for a guy named Joe who works next door to me. It has a relatively beefy foil, as Joe is a bigger guy. He used to play pro football in fact. It’s made with handmilled poplar, balsa and poplar rails, and has handmade birch ply FCS fins with the new Fusion system. Joe’s  planning on traveling with it, so he opted for the fin system. As a side note, Joe gave me a tour of his shop where he restores WWII era bomber engines. The level of difficulty of what he does is mind boggling. Imagine trying to restore an engine the size of your living room and with 21 cylinders to boot. It sort of makes what I do look like child’s play.

I always love it when customers come back to tell me how their boards worked for them.  Even better when they bring photographic evidence.  These are some recent photos of a customer named Breen riding his 5’5″ quad in Fiji. The board was actually Ryan Thomas’ originally. It’s an early flextail experiment that didn’t have enough flex for Ryan. We brought it down to Cardiff for Anything But Three and accidentally left to go home while someone was still out in the water trying it out! Doh! Upon returning to the beach to hopefully retrieve it, we were told that this someone had left with it because he knew how to get a hold of me. I figured it was probably gone for good and this guy had just scored a free board.  But sure enough the guy, who turned out to be Breen,  called me a couple days later and even offered to buy it. It’s nice to know there’s honest people in the world still. Anyway, that was over 2 years ago and he still favors this board. I’m glad to see it’s going to good use. I think he’s taking it to Chile next. Can’t wait to see those photos. Thanks Breen!

This quad was recently made for a local surfer named Andrew, who had brought several of his boards to me in the past for repair. He had caved in the decks of all of them. He’s a pretty heavy footed surfer and so he wanted something more durable. He figured the extra money spent on a wood board would be offset by not having to shell out cash for repeated repairs. The poplar deck should help keep this board in the water and not back in the shop. The shape is a copy of one of his favorite boards, made by Erik Olson.

This is a 5’10″ double wing quad made for someone in Hawaii. It’s basically the same template as some of the modern fish type shapes I’ve been making, but more foiled and rockered out and now with wings. It’s all balsa skinned w/ charcoal tinted birch ply fins. It’s finished with a sanded gloss that’s been further sprayed with acrylic (really slippery and fast).