The Mental Tools - Lesson 4

Comfort vs. Intimacy. This article covers volume and flotation in surfboard design — how much foam/thickness a board has and how that shapes the surfing experience. What are ...

Suction + Tension = Hang Ten

Walking on Water - Tom Wegener tells you how. The science behind your next noseride is more complex than you might think. Enjoy this read which was first published by JB in Pacific Longboarder, Vol...

The Mental Tools - Lesson 5

Trace the evolution of what Tom has called the Corky Method — laminating thin paulownia wood sheets and cork onto a foam core using a vacuum bag. We've also called it the Paulownia Sheets Method. H...

Hollow Wood Surfboards

After moving to Noosa in 1999, Tom was introduced to paulownia, a lightweight timber similar to balsa but with a key advantage: it doesn't absorb salt water, making it far more durable for surfboar...

What is in a surfboard?

This is a rich, personal history of surfboard materials told through Tom's own shaping experience over several decades. The article centres on the long rivalry between Polyurethane (PU) and Polysty...

The Mental Tools - Lesson 3

In this piece Tom explains his theory on the physics behind how a surfer can "hang ten". The key is that the back two-thirds of the board engages the energy within the wave rather than sliding alon...

You're Going to Need Tools

First, the mental tools. Curiosity, understanding the energy of a wave, basic elements of surfboard design; floatation and volume, flex and rigidity, dynamics of rail curves (how they pull and rele...

Let's Make Surfboards!

Simple to Complex Designs - but first, an introduction. Or how to become a Kahuna of surfboards. Slowly, I hope to introduce you to the principles of surfboard design. I have been making surfboards...