KELLY SLATER BUYS FIREWIRE
Seen a few rumours around the traps over the last few days but nothing solid.
spoke to K today...its more than a rumor...
@brutus have you ever shaped with there technology? would you now
Wowzas this sounds radical..imagine the next gen world champ riding environmental boards shaped by ks?that would be tripped out! Could he redefine shaping the way he has redefined surfing? Ya never know with this fucker!!
brutus wrote:spoke to K today...its more than a rumor...
Any firewire protows on the horizon, Maurice?
It's not an attack on KS by any means - but his environmental credentials are pretty fucking minimal. I saw on instagram the other day that he flew from Panama to NY to Cali to Hawaii in a week, and he's done thousands of one day trips to remote islands to have a surf for three or four hours. It's pretty fucking rich for him to talk about the environment. Advocacy only goes so far, especially when most of that advocacy involves buying shit you don't need.
Want an environmentally friendly board? Buy the one closest to you.
(Just to be clear, if I was in KS's thongs, I would be jetting all over the place too!)
FW is basically a shaped blank with a vacuum bagged exterior,I did this in the 80's in France for sailbds...this is a 30 yr old technology....which has now been replaced by Infusion....
I think its great Kelly has invested some time , energy and $'s back into surfing...and trying to make a positive difference environmentally ....for the planet...
its not a scam or him trying to be "the Messiah,"...that's just Kelly's DNA......trying to better himself and those around him.....
I've been making a couple of bds for KS.....but just trying to get feedback and see if I can get him going faster and carvier.....but that's betweem him and I.....
dandandan wrote:It's not an attack on KS by any means - but his environmental credentials are pretty fucking minimal. I saw on instagram the other day that he flew from Panama to NY to Cali to Hawaii in a week, and he's done thousands of one day trips to remote islands to have a surf for three or four hours. It's pretty fucking rich for him to talk about the environment. Advocacy only goes so far, especially when most of that advocacy involves buying shit you don't need.
Want an environmentally friendly board? Buy the one closest to you.
(Just to be clear, if I was in KS's thongs, I would be jetting all over the place too!)
I think that one of main reasons he is going down the environmental route with his own label and now this, i guess he needs to feel he is making up in some way for what he has done.
he has had a lot of influence over surfing, one of the first that took a very professional approach when others where just running amuck, probably had the biggest influence over the direction of surfing and pushed pro surfing to the level it is today, had a huge influence over board design or at least showed to the mainstream those designs are valid, even things like fins, maybe now he can also help change the mainstream perception that PU/Poly boards are still the be all and end all, and help bring alternative more environmentally sound materials to the mainstream.
Hope the rumours are true, Nevs son also seems to have confirmed them on Instagram, will be very interesting to see what he brings to the table.
Indo..I don't think Kelly needs to make up for supposedly having toxic disposable s/bds.......this is the foundation of the current s/bd industry....that average s/bd is a toxic cocktail of chemicals and currently most Pros get lotsa disposable bds....in the search for a competitive s/bd.
One of the problems facing the s/bd industry is we accept that we ride one of the oldest toxic tech process's in any sport......and as its cheap and nasty we are all guilty,as there are alternatives being spruiked.....we can make s/bds greener...but they cost more.
One of the down sides of our current manufacturing is...there are very few younger guys coming into the industry...there is a world wide shortage of good s/bd workers......luckily Asia has become a powerhouse servicing world demand for s/bds....
We need to cleanup the industry and inject new process's and techniques to make greener stronger s/bds that can be made with better technologies ( Hydroflex) and where younger surfers see a career path making custom bds....and that's possibly where Kelly can come in and start changing perceptions which currently are...all surfers ride toxic s/bds therefore..surfing is....???
What the hell does a "sustainable surfboard company" even mean?
These things are made in Asia with cheap labour and then shipped thousands of K's before being transported by fossil fuel belching trucks to final destination.
You want a greener board? Get your local shaper to make one with an extra layer of glass. All my pu/pe boards last five years plus unless I snap 'em.
You want more sustainable clothing : head down the Op shop and buy second hand.
This notion that we can somehow consume our way to a Greener more sustainable world under the imprimatur of Kelly Slater is just dogs bollocks.
I was just out in the garden planting plastic plants to make my garden more sustainable, otherwise I use too much water and fertiliser.
Well that's the Earth saved....wonder what the rest of the day has in store .
Gee FR76.....bit of an unrealistic idea...that all surfers go to ya local shaper get and extra layer of glass so bds last longer.....ahh....what about the masses of urban surfers who don't have access to local shapers..??
the phrase " sustainable surf Co ," was used by the author of this post not Kelly........but the idea of TRYING to change the current toxic s/bd manufacturing to a more sustainable greener process gets met with ridicule......even though the culture of surfing has one of the oldest grubbiest,toxic , and unsustainable products on the planet.......and all surfers are responsible......
do you have any idea how many guys are now sick from surfboards?? Why there is no future for younger shaper/s/bd makers......??
If you are not working on the solution to a problem....YOU are the problem!
I have a foot in both camps here. It is the companies who want to pump out a million boards and swamp the industry (can I hear Channel Islands here, maybe Lost?) who are the problem not the local shaper. They will now swamp the industry with supposedly green boards pumped out in China. All for stronger, cleaner boards however if they come out of China it sort of defeats the purpose - ships, transport, etc.. I spoke to my local shaper and he said they have it so industrialised that they have separate sanding rooms for the grit size and everything is super clean and organised (bit different form swifty down here). With Brutus with the lack of another generation coming through, there isn't as I think we all have to admit it is a filthy process. And as for urban surfers maybe they need to spend more time on the coast and become part of it buying locally rather than raping and pillaging.
I've had a lot of fun picking through the second handers. Luckily there is a wide array of quality second hand boards on the coast. I might be sacrificing a little bit of pop in the board but I feel a lot less guilty trialling more boards.
if a urban surfer want a local shaper, all he has to do is next time he goes to the beach is walk into a shaping factory, shake the hand of the shaper and start a friendship
but what if the local shaper is not as trendy as CI or FW or JS/DHD.........or as good?
that's a lot of surfers to service and the bigger brands create the perception of fashionable brands, which means you look cool and fashionable in the surf!
Brutus, where I live (NENSW) there are no shortage of up and coming shapers. There's shed loads of 'em pumping out boards of all shapes and sizes.
The word I hear from most of the local experienced shaper around here is that far more are sensitive to the epoxy resins that the standard pe resins.
Granted though it is a toxic and horrible business. In the last twenty years I've seen hemp boards come and go, bamboo boards come and go etc etc. All promising a greener surfboard.
Best I can tell the greenest surfboard is still a stronger board made by a local shaper and held onto for a longer time. It's very easy for an experienced board builder to make a stronger board using existing PU blanks and modified glassing materials and techniques.
What do you reckon would be the greenest and most sustainable surfboard?
FR76...OK so you have lots of young shapers in your area....I am speaking of travelling globally and witnessing the opposite....but more than just shapers....there is a need for S/bd workers ....
As far as workers being sensitive to Epoxy...this is rare but does exist..and allergic reaction......but in General ,epoxies are getting better every year ,easier to use....now there are Bio resins made from trees...which FW are using...but Epoxy is more expensive harder to use......but Epoxy is stronger,lasts longer...and is way less toxic.....
in the USA now Marko blanks have recycled Blank......by spraying the board with a water based paint glassing the bd in Epoxy,using soap and water as the solvent.......you exclude the CFC's in blank blowing, no toxic styrene ,catalyst or acetone......that could be a start..
Whats in a recycled Marko blank....foam offcuts ...or foam shavings , whats there process to make a foam blank from waste and class it as recycled ,anyone know ?
EDIT: From Marko website its a regrind process of EPS foam offcuts etc.
Nyoongah people have been making tough bio-resins for centuries...
its an EPS/recycled blank from their offcuts and their machining.......there are others trying ..Variant foam uses Alcohol as its blower.......but it stinks to shape.......and the blanks is 3 times more expensive than traditional PU blank.....
"but what if the local shaper is not as trendy as CI or FW or JS/DHD.........or as good?"
The easy answer to that one Brutus is that most people don't benefit from a better surfboard. I've lived in some pretty isolated surf locales in Australia over the last thirty odd years and there is nearly always someone within a hundred k's making great boards.
Most urban surfers (including me) don't require much to surf to the best of our ability and improve. We just need a reliable hunk of foam that floats us. We wouldn't surf any better if we had the best board on earth than we would with something coming out of old mate's garage. Im not ashamed to admit that.
what about the old method, best surfers in town on the best local shaper being your inspiration.. learn more from watching live surfing than videos anyday.
Ray Finlay over there in Raglan puts a decal on tail of his surfboards
"Not made in China"
dadadan/din/udo.........the problem is the majority of surfers ,might fit your description DDD.....but fashion is a very persuasive factor that get people to buy brands.......its funny when you see surfers walking down the beach with a C I...they have bought the AM/Kelly dream.....even though Al hasn't been near a shaping room in nearly a decade........but the perception is....???
there is nothing wrong with surfing a bd from China , as DDD pointed out most surfers only need flat/paddle and a stable bd to ride.......China is not the enemy.......if the current s/bd industry was cutting edge ,state of the art designs and green stronger technologies...China would be where the cheap shit comes from....and your local designed and made bd would be in higher demand......and you would then have a sustainable industry....
Brutus if Slater has bought into Firewire i suppose that means he will be riding a fw board come Quicky pro on the goldie,any idea?
dandandan wrote:It's not an attack on KS by any means - but his environmental credentials are pretty fucking minimal. I saw on instagram the other day that he flew from Panama to NY to Cali to Hawaii in a week, and he's done thousands of one day trips to remote islands to have a surf for three or four hours. It's pretty fucking rich for him to talk about the environment. Advocacy only goes so far, especially when most of that advocacy involves buying shit you don't need.
Want an environmentally friendly board? Buy the one closest to you.
(Just to be clear, if I was in KS's thongs, I would be jetting all over the place too!)
Love your post. If Swellnet has annual awards for best post I believe DINN should be nominated.
In the big picture of the world I doubt it very much that saving a little on surfboard manufacturing will
save the planet.
No evo, probably not, but its a cumulative problem and if surfers want to consider themselves environmentally conscious they have a fair way to go.
At the expense of surfboards. I don't think so.
People are talking about two different things here. DDD and Indo D seem to be talking about big picture travel consumption stuff and Brutus is talking about surfboards.
Surfboards arent particulary nice, but if you get a good one every couple of years as Freeride explained its no big deal, especially compared to a surfers other consumptions, air travel, cars , boats etc.
Slater's other consumptions are way high hence the suggestion of perhaps him having some associated guilt.
Slater's and Brutus's board consumption etc. is also very high due to their jobs, so it seems significant, but really its pretty small in the bigger scheme of things for 'normal' surfers making it a very amicable but somewhat questionable cause, that they are trying to make fashioinable for gain or good.
Not a bad thing considering the many alternatives. But we need to know how much difference these warm and fuzzy causes make so we're not wasting our time. It cannot be that hard to calculate, that way we can dissect sentiment from greenspeak and make real changes.
Slater's green credentials actually arent that bad, I seem to recall him counteracting his travel with carbon credits at some stage. No doubt thats dropped off as carbon credits arent so popular these days. Bit of a shame in my book. Yes carbon credits free the rich of responsibility for questionable gain, but at least they got people talking and thinking about issues. A bit like his surfboard thing really.
Carbon credits also encourage the growing and preservation of trees, which as sheepdog has pointed out is a pretty good place to start if you are really concerned about climate change.
re. recycled blanks, the energy and resources used in the recycling proocess need to be considered or it just ends up like the dump truck scnenario, where the energy used recycling outwieghs the gains.
Perhaps the ASP or whatever it is called these days needs to put a lid on the number of boards a competitor can use in a calendar year in competition like tyres/engines in formula one. This could push the industry to develop stronger longer lasting boards rather than the pop sticks they use at the moment. For the older blokes on the list if you had more than one board in the old days you were a pro. Not sure how it would work but just food for thought. They are after all the ones who are influencing the yoof of today.
maybe nothing, but interesting KS has drawn a spray over the CI logo today at the volcom comp...
http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/quarterfinalist-decided-in-glassy-tube...
Nice to see someone asking for more responsibility from the asp
http://www.theinertia.com/surf/offsetting-the-asps-carbon-footprint/
I hate to encourage the incestuous organisation that is surfing sa but to their credit, I'm pretty sure they used to make the yorks classic carbon nueatral back when such things were more fashionable. Would have been a decent bill if they counted all the cars going over.
simba wrote:Brutus if Slater has bought into Firewire i suppose that means he will be riding a fw board come Quicky pro on the goldie,any idea?
it will be interesting to see which shaper/s he starts working with.........the branding isn't that important for him right now...I think it will be getting his head back into gear ,trying to get magic s/bds and possibly new designs under his feet as its been quite a few years since he really had his equipment dialed in...since Al M retired 8 years ago!
sypkan wrote:People are talking about two different things here. DDD and Indo D seem to be talking about big picture travel consumption stuff and Brutus is talking about surfboards.
Surfboards arent particulary nice, but if you get a good one every couple of years as Freeride explained its no big deal, especially compared to a surfers other consumptions, air travel, cars , boats etc.
Slater's other consumptions are way high hence the suggestion of perhaps him having some associated guilt.
Slater's and Brutus's board consumption etc. is also very high due to their jobs, so it seems significant, but really its pretty small in the bigger scheme of things for 'normal' surfers making it a very amicable but somewhat questionable cause, that they are trying to make fashioinable for gain or good.
Not a bad thing considering the many alternatives. But we need to know how much difference these warm and fuzzy causes make so we're not wasting our time. It cannot be that hard to calculate, that way we can dissect sentiment from greenspeak and make real changes.
Slater's green credentials actually arent that bad, I seem to recall him counteracting his travel with carbon credits at some stage. No doubt thats dropped off as carbon credits arent so popular these days. Bit of a shame in my book. Yes carbon credits free the rich of responsibility for questionable gain, but at least they got people talking and thinking about issues. A bit like his surfboard thing really.
Carbon credits also encourage the growing and preservation of trees, which as sheepdog has pointed out is a pretty good place to start if you are really concerned about climate change.
Carbon Credits ?
according to Australia...there is no climate change , the carbon tax has been cancelled , therefore Aussies cannot be responsible..and all this from Australias first surfing PM..he da Man!!
Kelly has become aware that there are Global environmental issues , and he has decided to be part of the solution , and one of the means is to campaign globally , by changing his earthly habits ....and offering solutions.
As far as bds go Kelly hardly breaks any bds as does JJF.......whereas the brands that support WSL surfers , seem to like to build masses of bds in the hops of getting a good one.....one surfer gets 180 bds pa...breaks and /or creases 100........
I have always tried to make bds stronger and longer lasting by using thicker stringers ,wider laps and have used epoxy resins for 20 years.....I haven't broken a board in....25 years!
I disagree strongly with the premise that ",its no big deal if you just get one evrey couple of years,".....
it is a big deal that the art/sport of surfing is one of the biggest polluting sports on the planet and also that we have a culture that no mater what ,"don't mess with our cheap toxic s/bds,"
I think this is more of an Australian thing and its easy to see how the PM of Australia represents all those surfers who believe ........ah its only s/bds.....
"it is a big deal that the art/sport of surfing is one of the biggest polluting sports on the planet and also that we have a culture that no mater what ,"don't mess with our cheap toxic s/bds,"
I think this is more of an Australian thing and its easy to see how the PM of Australia represents all those surfers who believe ........ah its only s/bds....."
Mate, you're way off track there. People are amenable to better materials and higher prices but they have to be an improvement and they have to surf well and they have to be priced so the guy on an average wage can afford them.
Trying to conflate Abbott with what the average aussie surfer (if there even is such a thing ) thinks is pure hyperbole. You've been hanging out with too many Americans.
Fr76......how many epoxy/eps s/bds have you ever ordered....and the extra $100-200 per bd to get one.
which manufacturers here in Australia offer more expensive greener alternative??
what do you think the percentage of toxic s/bds are sold in Straylia VS greener??
so the average guy has to be able to afford one...what price would you suggest is reasonable??
nothing wrong hanging out with too many Americans at least they are trying to do something......about better greener s/bds...back to Kelly...he's having a crack.....and the Aussie Surfers and their culture...a reflection of Abbott's Philosophies.....hence this conversation....Australia is a backwater!
Don't agree Australia is a backwater at all. I think that kind of cultural cringe died out years ago, or should have.
I've only had one EPS/Epoxy. It doesn't suit me. I don't like the way they feel but more importantly I surf Rocky points most of the time and eps/epoxy hates rocks.
I've got boards with pu cores and epoxy resins. That seems to work fine.
Mate I've paid close to a grand for high end surfboards and snapped them in less than six months. Thats unaffordable for a bloke like me with a young family. Mostly my boards last well because I get them made well and cure them properly.
Hard to think of a similar priced piece of sporting equipment where catastrophic failure is just accepted and met with a shrug of the shoulders.
backwater ....I mean there is very little R & D....in producing stronger lighter greener bds...in the USa there lots of alternative glassing methods and been big leaps fwd in Epoxy resins whiteness,easier to use ,even on P U bds which is what I prefer......I haven't seen any design break thrus in Australia....in 20+ years......so compared to the USA ,Straylia is light years behind now....
As far as personal use goes....if ya don't like the EPS/Epoxy feel...try P U Epoxy.....with a 4 ply stringer and see how a 25 year old tecnolgy is still better than your current bds....and the manufacturer should be responsible for curing the bd......I have had ovens in my factory for 30 years...which cures them before leaving the factory.....
and the only reason we accept catastrophic failure ...is because their are manufacturers and sponsored surfers have led us into the disposable mentality.....
hey and if ya can't afford a s/bd.....well there will be less surfers...now that's gotta be a plus...
KELLY AND TOMO........AWSOME..... HERE COMES THE REVOLUTION.........
Rode my first FireWire a few hours ago . A Hellfire quad at a head high gin clear beachie over blindingly white granite sands with a searingly hot offshore wind. Rip rights reeling with two out.
Fun board for sure. Easy to paddle and catch waves. The quad takes me by surprise still with its last second grab. Fast down the line. Hard rails towards the nose were a little unforgiving in beach break conditions . Would go beautifully at a down the line barreling reef.
Good luck Mr Slater. Hope shit works out for you and you can assuage any guilt regarding you're carbon footprint. Maybe give denial a shot ? That's the barrow I'm pushing at the moment .
Ol Baldy has also teamed up with PB Teen to design 40 pieces of sustainable furniture.
Interesting related read "Kelly day trips with the firewire fan"
See Kelly changed middle of his heat yesterday to a Tomo EVO but didn't get to ride a wave. He has been riding throughout the waiting period
brutus,great insider knowledge n very informative on the dirty business of making surfboards.thnx
buy second hand clothes n get an extra layer of glass,i do all of em.
really?thats the best awnser on trying to improve the dirty indusry??
such cutting edge tech,so sophisticated!followed up by a racist comment...........sounds like a rocket scientist who never built a rocket
in quikkie store yesterday, kelly swapped board for channel island- al merrick- asked about firewire and got a smirk
Dekka Rielly over at Beach Grit talking imminent changes at Firewire:
http://beachgrit.com/just-in-kelly-to-own-firewire-in-nine-days/
reckon he's got the hots for you Stu? Cheeky little winks across the newsroom?
Stab Mag is reporting kelly slater has brought a large stake in Firewire and plans to turn into sustainable surfboard company with the worlds leading shaper...
Anyone got some intel?