From the Kew Files

Tired of Rabbit's Foot frame-grabs yet?

Framegr4bz

ThrougHull | Trevor Gordon

RabbitsZ

The First Foot Of Hare. from Michael Kew on Vimeo.

A quick edit of Dan Malloy and Trevor Gordon on the first and second versions of the Rabbit's Foot...dopesauce!

And a quick one of #5 here in Noosa a few days ago during the finless division @ the Noosa Festival...piloted by mr.Ari Browne:

Dreaming Of __________

currently floating around the Noosa festival, Australia is just as I left it; perfect.

Sorry for the lack of blog postage, internet powers are lacking and require more effort than I feel like exerting on my vacation leg of this adventure ;)

Staying with a pile of radical individuals. the enthusiasm for surf and culture is electric, watching Children of the Sun nightly with Matty Chojnacki is making me want to shape some involvement boards reeeeeeeeeal badly!

In the meantime, Morgan has thrown up a rather epical video of back home and it's got me all excited to surf good waves, though Noosa hasn't offered too much so far I'm hoping next week will bring the goods! Check Trevor and Travers' shred...sooooooooo rad!!!

The Dot in Words

My resin circle is a nod towards my intentions, process and history.

Around 2009 I had built roughly 250 surfboards and was finding myself struggling with my work; I enjoyed it but was shaping what I thought people would want to buy vs. what I wanted to build them. I followed trends and watched other shapers to define my direction; it was a well rounded education in following my curiosities, but it lacked originality and true inspiration. I had been shaping a few displacement hull designs and extremely experimental boards for myself and was enjoying the heck out of them but I didn't quite trust that I could support myself with boards like that since they were relatively under represented in the surfboard design world at the time. I took a few months off and surfed my brains out with a handful of friends and like-minded surfers (Morgan Maassen, Trevor Gordon, Kyle Albers and Kyle Lightner) in the hopes of figuring it all out.

I couldn't repress my desire to build surfboards for all that long, and I had one blank left. I wanted to shape another experiment for my buddies. I gave myself a lot of freedom and shaped the most extreme version of what I had been surfing up to that point. I built it quickly and let my imagination and hands run free, getting more excited as it progressed an following random sparks as they came into my mind while I shaped.

I rushed to glass the board, and when installing the fin-box I added a hefty amount of catalyst (the chemical that makes resin cure and subsequently makes resin heat up as it sets) in order to get the job done quicker; Morgan and I had a standing date to shoot a few photos of the new craft before sunset that evening. I poured the resin into the board, pushed the fin box in, set the cup down on the board and let it rest. After an hour or so of curing I came back to the board ready for the final sanding work. I reached to take the cup off of the board and everything came to a screeching halt. The cup was fused to the bottom of the board just above the fin box! The excess resin in the cup had heated up so much when it set that it not only bonded the cup to the board, but delaminated the dark-blue fiberglass from the board also, leaving a gigantic bubble in the glass-job the size of my fist.

I was dumbfounded.

I called Lightner and frantically explained what had happened; we decided that the best course of action would be to sand off the bubble, exposing the white foam circle, and glass over it with a fast-curing clear resin so I could make my date with Morg. I signed my name and the date inside of the white circle to make it look somewhat intentional, and pushed on as I watched the sun slowly lower through my shop door. Morgan and I met at the park, got the photos he wanted, and waited for the next day for it's maiden voyage.

That board was the first She Hull. It worked like gangbusters and expanded our minds to new understandings of trim and speed in the next few weeks of razor sharp surf. It seemed like a perfect storm of inspiration, design, improvisation and community. I figured there was something to that process and especially that magical little circle. The She Hull quickly changed the face of my work as I decided that in pushing forward I would follow my own path, and put my trust in my own design and application.

Since that experience I've put a resin circle on all of my boards, surrounding my signature and the board's particulars. That event and process has shaped my work and my motivation every day, and serves as a constant reminder in the power of creative freedom in my work.

Ryan Lovelace & She Hull #1, the evening the resin dot was born.

Shot by mr.Morgan Maassen, 2009

Today's the Day!

I'm off on shaping/travel duty today, I'll be touring the North-East coast of Australia until April, holding down the fort in Byron Bay and Noosa; I've got a Rabbit's Foot with me as well as a v.Bowls and a few other funky machines for the journey! STOKING!!!!!!

Above we have Trevor Gordon and his 16 year old brotha' Spencer, plus Will and Travers Adler making for a whole bunch of shred.

There's a bit of Rabbits Footing, v.Bowlsing, ThrougHulling, and Travers putting it down on a White Owl.

Rabbits Foot Video

I've been very blessed lately in the realm of fun projects; this is one of them.

The Rabbits Foot is a finless surfboard that's been a really fun project between some finless-fanatics; Dan Malloy came to me with a half-started project that Dan was calling the Rabbits Foot, it was under way and there was a solid and very interesting design theory but it needed to be executed and wrapped up. I shaped and glassed the little monster with a substantial question mark in my head about it...then he and Trevor surfed it and the project had some legs to run on!

The orange board here is the second version, keeping the same basic design elements and altering the package pretty heavily, when compared with a discerning eye. Version 2 went to Trevor Gordon who got some really fun results, this video is a session in small waves, though this version seems to perform best on bigger waves. There are 2 other variations so far, Ryan Burch owns one, and Michael Kew owns the last. Another is in the works and will be heading with me to Australia shortly.

Pages

T. Gordon in the new issue of Slide magazine, v.Bowls'ing, shot by Jim Martin.

Capt. Lingcod!

Trevor and Johnny made a friend one evening while surfing a spot that we stumbled upon in the wilds.
Just as it fell dark the guys got out of the water and we hopped into the car to go head off the Captain at the launch ramp a few miles down the coast. He told us his name was Captain Lingcod and he just had to share a few waves with the guys before he went home for the evening. We bought a few live black Cod off of him and brought them back to the campsite for dinner!
Pretty nice little evening :)

Music by The White Buffalo [How the West Was Won]

Thru

photo | Jeremy Koreski

Escape

got out of town for a few days last weekend with 'da boyz and our girls.

Here's some random shots from the weekend :)

Finless Function

Silence is golden...

..but I'm about to explode.

zippy framegrab via mr.Michael Kew!

TG fo' REEEEEEEEE

..then he was all FWAP under the lip and made the wave. It was radical.

Intuition and Reassurance

Around the New Year I usually write a little bit about the past and coming months; I was curious last night what I had written last year so I dug it up and read through. It was reassuring [as I read] to feel that I've stuck to my path and done justice to the hopes that I had set for myself in 2011. In fact, the last year has tested me a thousand times beyond what I had ever thought possible, and I'm proud that I've held up my end of the bargain.

Leaving Point Concept behind was a big deal to me. It was a choice based on honesty to myself and my chosen path as much as it was a choice to boil down the important parts of my 'job'... To make sure that I'm keeping myself true to my passions and curiosities so as to stay inspired and on an honest path and not one run by glossy marketing schemes, machine shapes and t-shirt lines. I may be naive, but I'm living for honesty right now over monetary profit.

I asked myself to trust in people's goodness and give them the benefit of the doubt as long as I hold up my end of the bargain; take out what I put in and trust that others will do the same. I have most definitely been shown that this kind of action is not always reciprocated, and has revealed some true ugliness in the past year; but it's also brought me the most surreal of opportunities and friends. Its like an automatic sifter of good and bad...You learn about yourself and about other people, then make an informed decision on what to do with the information from there. And thats exactly what I wanted to do when I started building surfboards for other people: Learn. About friends, surfing, myself, and about my path in life through surfboards.

As 2012 starts, I'm poised in front of as many new opportunities as ever. I am humbled and grateful to everyone who continues laying down the challenges in front of me, and flattered that somehow week after week I just have to keep building honest, good surfboards and everything will work out. I'm more than happy to do that. I want to be transparent, and I want what is inside of that to be honest and grateful. Thank you for supporting my ambitions, publicly or silently, I truly appreciate what my life has become.

So with all of that said and my slate clean, I want to share a short edit that I put together of some clips taken by mr.Kew. I've been holding this one in my back pocket for a couple of months for some reason, waiting for the right time to let it go...This feels as good of time as any. Trevor draws some beautifully clean and effortless lines on his v.bowls; Full-screen it and turn up the volume a little; it'll increase your mellow.

Intuition

getting the next video all ready...couldn't help but pause on this one.

Once more, mr.Trevor Gordon.

Phat P1gz

5'8" x 19 7/8ish x 2 1/2ish...Trevor and I have been wanting to make a high performance twin for a while now after we built the Fush, so here she is! Trevor dubbed it the Piggybacker.

I like flowing curves so I didn't make any extreme wings or bumps in the outline, a subtle pull that that does what you are after [to me] is much more challenging but offers a drastically smoother line on the wave:

T has been doing bunches of paintings lately inspired by tribal/native american art, super cool stuff, I now own a shirt that he painted with two dudes roasting one kine pig on a fire. win.

Coverboy McGordon

Morgan and Trevor snagged the cover of this month's Tracks magazine, and I couldn't help but notice that funky fresh surf-sled he's on!

It's official.

I'm f*ing amping after Slide, the Surfer's Journal and then THIS showed up?!?!!! WTF!?!?!!?!??

Win for the dude who makes boards out of a one room shed!

GO B4NANuHZz!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!1!!!!111!!!!1!1!1!!1

PiggyBack

New 5'9 for mr.Gordon. A mixmatching of templates for this one, dubbed the PiggyBacker. Shortboardy to the max for ultimate shred, 2 1/2" thick and about 19 7/8" wide, interesting dimensions for me to work with for a change! Majorly simple and flowing bottom contour, I'm intrigued.

High performance twinny for the winny!

Frame Grab Grab Bag #2

a frame grab that Kew sent me last week of trevor and the 6'7. I didn't look at it too closely until I actually LOOKED at it...super cool.

Surfer's Journal

Go snag a copy of the new Surfer's Journal...Trevor's reppin' and rippin' on the ThrougHull in India with Craig Anderson, Chad Konig and company, written by Michael Kew and documented by Alan Van Gysen:

...Shark's view of the Fush...

On the througHull.

Above shot by Kew, below by Van Gysen

Having the opportunity to consistently have a surfer like Trevor ride and report on my work is surreal, but having him as a close friend is the icing on the cake. So here's to you and congratulations Mr.Gordon on all you've achieved in your past few years...I have no idea what you're capable of and I can't wait to find out, and thank you for piloting my vehicles into the pages of the best surf magazine in existence!

YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!