Sustainable Handmade Surfboard

This project was a collaboration with my boss, Charles Mencel, during the summer of 2022. While ordering blanks for a separate project designing accessible surfboards for Wounded Warriors we received all the cut-offs from these blanks. Rather than letting them go to waste, I decided to repurpose them by shaving down the eight cut-offs and gluing them together to form a new blank (if you click on the picture to the right a video of the glued up blank will open). This process took about a week, and the blank retained an inset rocker from the original Wounded Warrior blanks.

Wanting to keep the board as sustainable as possible, we salvaged a set of True Ames tri-fins from a broken board that had been discarded at another shop. After pulling the fins, I used a Dremel to reshape the base and sanded off the fiberglass, restoring them to their original form.

As I worked on the fins, the blank had time to fully dry, allowing me to shape it alongside Charles. To mask any imperfections from the glued seams, we pigmented the board yellow during the lamination stage. After glassing, I carefully sanded it down to a smooth finish, ensuring a polished, professional look. The end result was a fully functional, mostly recycled surfboard one that embodied creativity, sustainability, and resourcefulness in surfboard craftsmanship.