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Surfie Surfboard

Go anywhere on the wave

Peanut Model Alaia

Its all about flex!

Stuth Model Alaia

classic tomb stone shape

Finley Model Alaia

Simplest finless board

Albacore

Custom longboards

SUPER CUSTOM FOAM LONGBOARDS

Always sketching
Just in from a surf
Shaper of the Year 2009
Craftsmen's hands
Tom begins a new Alaia

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Tom Wegener is arguably the most cutting edge shaper in the world. 

He started the alaia revolution in 2005 and was named Shaper of the Year in 2009 for this.  Then he took the dynamics of the alaia and applied them to modern materials and designed the Seaglass Project Tuna and Albacore boards to make a new age of finless surfboards.

Tom was the inspiration for the wood board movement.  In 2001 he discovered that paulownia is the best wood for surfboards because of its highly unusual property of not sucking up salt water.  Tom stopped making foam surfboards and turned only to paulownia wood and made over 300 hollow wood finned surfboards.  (Also, the alaia revolution was possible because Tom’s work with paulownia).  Tom is most proud of his green factory which has no toxic chemicals and almost no waste.  

Tom started shaping surfboards in 1979 and his brother Jon took up the planer a few years later.  Working together Tom and Jon have developed many surfboards and are still working together.  Jon is in Encinitas, California while Tom moved to Noosa Heads, Australia in 1998.

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Tom's Blog

19 Jun

Shaping Classes

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PHOTO

Come to the Creation Plantation and spend some time with me learning about surfboards.  There is a giant world in surfboard shapes and learning about them is a never ending journey.  Often customers come to my shaping room and watch me make their board.  It takes many hours because I spend most of the time discussing each element of the board and how it will affect the way it will ride the wave.  I should be able to do this without the hindrance of actually shaping a board, or of course we can shape a board if you like.

   

The first class will be on the alaia.  This has been such amazing journey here for the last eight years.  We will discuss the paulownia and how to cut it and make the blank, which is the most important part, and then carry on to shaping and finishing the board.  I will show all the shapes I made along the way and how after 98 shaped alaias I got to David Rastovich’s board which has become the basis for almost all alaias of today.  I still have this board along with lots of boards and templates I made along the journey.

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22 May

Super Custom Foam Longboards

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Tom’s Background with Durable Boards: When I was in 7th grade, 1976, I bought my first early 60’s longboard for $11.00.  It was a mint condition Wardy that was my favourite board for years. The boards of the 1960’s were made to last.  In 1986 I became a team rider for Donald Takayama.  He made me beautiful boards but I had to give them back after 6 months because they were still in OK condition and could be sold as used.  I never gave them back it time and the deck would delaminate with a big air bubble under the back foot and the board’s value plummeted.  Donald would give me a lecture. In my formative years that was the way it was.  With California’s Clark foam a board was designed to last 6 months of surfing and then fall apart.  Those days never really made it to Australia.  The blank manufacturers like Burfords, South Coast and Bennetts never strayed into the stupid consumptionism of the USA.  But even in Australia making a proper, super durable board makes the board last a lot longer with less maintenance.  

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