Wooden Surfboards: Update from Tree To Sea

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Update from Tree To Sea

Research and Development
In 2016 we spent a lot of time on research and development which has resulted in the ECO Board.
This wooden surfboard is made from Paulownia timber, a recycled polystyrene blank and recycled cork rails. We made a few ECO Boards and were excited with their appearance but of course needed to discover how they surfed. Darren and his son Jayden went to Bali to put them to the test. These boards performed better than we expected, lightweight, well balanced, super strong with the flex
that timber provides. We spent many hours developing a workshop build method and are now able
to run 2 day ECO Board workshops held over weekends.

Recycled Polystyrene
Ever wondered what happens to all the old polystyrene packing materials when you purchase a new fridge, TV or kitchen appliance? Some goes off to be ground up and recycled into more packing material or other items, fortunately an amount it is used to make ECO Board surfboard blanks.

2 Day ECO Board Workshops
This new building system allows us to complete an ECO board in just 2 days. We still design all our boards on computer as before but instead of cutting out internal plywood frames, we use an ECO blank. ECO blanks are pre shaped on a AKU shaping machine to our, or if you prefer, your design. This allows far more flexibility and when designing rideable wooden surfboards.

Vacuum Bags
At Tree to Sea we still favour Paulownia timber, but instead of clamping it down to a hollow frame as in hollow construction we vacuum the top and bottom decks to the ECO blanks in large custom made
vacuum bags. Once the decks are glued up, the excess is removed in preparation for attaching the recycled cork rails ready for shaping

A trio of ECO shortboards
The result is a Super Light Weight, very strong but flexible, fully functional wooden surfboard. Tree to Sea’s ECO Boards are a superior surfboard and don’t suffer from the issues of hollow wooden boards, which are heavier and do not flex. The ECO Boards have none of these problems, they don’t need a vent to depressurise because they are not hollow, don’t hold air due to the foam density and
therefore don’t leak. The cork rails reduce dings and combined with the marine spar are extremely forgiving and complement the cedar stripes.

ECO Boards for lululemon
Recently Tree to Sea was commissioned to produce four ECO Boards for lululemon.
The surfboards pictured below travelled Australia as part of a recent lululemon promotion