There are common misconceptions around wooden surfboards; they’re too heavy, they don’t perform, they’re this, they’re that. And while some of that rhetoric was true in the 60s, the modern day wooden whip couldn’t be farther away from that.
Just ask Sergi Flama, of Flama Surfboards, who has spent the better part of two decades tailoring his craft while finding alternative surfboard materials. It’s about questioning the way things are done, experimenting with what’s possible and just making things work.
Ahead of the European Wooden Surfboard Meet at Lost Shore this October 8-11, we caught up with the Spanish shaper to talk wood, experimentation, sustainability and why the best ideas often come from a bunch of people sharing what they’ve learned.
Sergi, very neatly tucked up at Lost Shore. Photo: Edu Bartolome.
“I think what I realised quite quickly is, I couldn’t stay all day long in front of a computer,” he said, on beginning his journey into wooden board building. At the moment, Sergi’s tucked away in a small wooden cabin in the Spanish mountains, a place he goes to think. During the pandemic, the mountain cabin became a refuge and, conveniently, a workshop. Sergi spent four months there with his family and was able to continue building boards.
But that wasn’t the start for Sergi, that was 20-or-so-years-ago, when he began experimenting with wooden constructions as a more sustainable way to surf.
“I watched my father and grandfather make things at home, although I never really learned from them – I learned that you can do anything you can turn your mind to.”
There’s more that goes into wooden surfboards than you think. But the actual process actually takes the same amount of time as your traditional fibreglass board. Photo: Ivan Teba.
It was in 2007 he came across a growing movement of people experimenting with wooden surfboards. An issue of Surfer’s Path introduced him to builders including Tom Wegener who were exploring ways of bringing wood back into surfboard construction.
“I knew surfboards were always made of wood until styrofoam and fibreglass were introduced,” he said. “But then I discovered there was this magic wood called paulownia.”
Paulownia’s water resistance opened up a whole new possibility, a surfboard that could be made from wood without recreating the heavy boards of the past.
Sergi couldn’t initially find paulownia in Spain, so he improvised. There was plenty of agave growing around the coast, and he used it to make his first board. And when he eventually found paulownia: “That was when my story started,” he said. “As soon as I saw that I could work with that wood, it was like my click. It was like, man, this is what you need to do in your life.”
Flama team rider Andrea Molina. Photo: Edu Bartolome
Flama Surfboards was born and his wooden solution was based around 100-percent wooden hollow boards. “Perhaps the biggest misconception about wooden surfboards is that they are simply old-school surfboards made from a heavy material,” Sergi said. “That might have been true historically. Some early wooden boards weighed 25, 30 or even 40 kilograms. Modern wooden construction is a very different thing.”
As Sergi and a growing network of shapers began experimenting with different construction methods, the possibilities opened up. Hollow construction, veneers, vacuum bagging, flax and cork all started to materialise.
“The heavy factor disappeared,” said Sergi. “More importantly, so did the idea that there was only one way to make a wooden surfboard.”
Yes, we would take a cabin in the mountains.
Sergi’s own boards have gone through several different technologies, each one the result of experimenting with materials and construction, including cork, which allowed flex in the rails of wooden surfboards.
“It turned out to be absolutely amazing,” he said. “I shared this with other builders who took the idea and developed it in different directions. And that’s perhaps the most interesting thing about the wooden-board movement. We didn’t have a rule book. There’s not one way. It’s like infinite ways of doing it.”
The European Wooden Surfboard Meet takes place at Lost Shore, just outside Edinburgh from 8-11 of October. It’s an opportunity to try wooden surfboards, to meet likeminded people and enjoy a few days of feeling inspired. As for Lost Shore? Yeah, no amount of words can do it justice, you just have to experience it.
