GRAIN SURFBOARDS

We had the chance to meet with Grain Surfboards team during our visit in Maine last month. Their passion for board sports merged with their understanding of the importance of quality, some woodworking chops, and a sincere commitment to sustainable practices. Grain was born, and soon after, a tidy shop on a farm in York, Maine became their home - a place where they build surfboards one at a time and continue to share their experience with people from all over the world. Nous avons eu la chance de rencontrer l'équipe de Grain Surfboards pendant notre ballade dans le Maine. Un superbe mix entre la passion du surf, le travail du bois, l'amour des belles réalisations, le tout inclus dans une démarche éco-responsable. Grain est né dans un petit atelier du Maine près de la ville de York, un endroit où ils fabriquent patiemment une planche après l'autre et partagent leur expérience avec des passionnés du monde entier.

What started as a desire to build and ride their own boards turned into a bigger idea: Classic surfboards that were completely new to an entire generation of surfers, an environmentally conscious generation with an appreciation for sustainability. Inspired by the boats they've built and worked on, their first design featured caulked seams and bronze fasteners, but with quite a bit of trial and error, they refined a new technique based on time-tested boatbuilding construction techniques, and named themselves for the natural grace of the grain patterns that jump from every freshly glassed board. Ce qui a démarré par le simple besoin de construire leurs propres planches pour aller surfer les spots locaux s'est transformé en un projet bien plus ambitieux: construire des planches de surf classiques pour une nouvelle génération de surfeurs eco-responsables, inspirées par la construction navale traditionnelle.

Though surfing's been around for more years than anyone can remember, surfboard shapes have only experienced their blistering evolution over the last sixty with the advent of foam and plastic. But the same materials that allowed such advancement have also left surfers communing with the power of nature, ironically, on boards that are at odds with it. Something from the past has gone missing, and they've come to believe that, with wiser selection of materials and vastly refined design techniques, they can reach back into our heritage, take what's inspiring, and evolve it all over again. They think of it as "re-evolutionary". Time-tested ideas, progressive shapes, boatbuilding techniques, renewable resources, organic epoxies and New England craftsmanship. Today, their boards represent a new way of thinking about surf craft - one that values these things and results in a board that will last a lifetime and - perhaps - never be thrown away. Pendant ces dernières années les planches ont évolué vers plus de technologies et de matériaux peu propres, les surfeurs eux cherchant une plus grande communion avec la nature. Il était donc temps de ramener le naturel dans l'équation de fabrication également. C'est ce que Grain décrit comme une ré-évolution: des planches de surf durables dans leur conception et leur espérance de vie. Des planches dont on ne se sépare pas.

Texte from Grain Surfboards website Photo by Hoalen https://www.grainsurfboards.com Thanks to Mike & Nick Lavecchia & John Hamblett for their warm welcome.