The formation of Surf Classic was not a choice, it really was fate. All of our boards are made on an original 1960s steam press, and we are proud to be the current custodians of this wonderful piece of living history.
Our personal story starts on Porth Joke beach North Cornwall
On the eve of the solar eclipse we purchased, fell in love with and had so much fun on what must be simply the purest form of wave propelled activity. Essentially chucking ourselves into the sea on a “simple” wooden body-board, pushing off hard when the surf was almost on us then heading in towards the beach and letting those crossing pairs of Atlantic breakers shoot us forwards and how still laughing and spluttering, we finished up literally gliding in up the beach in less than an inch of water, to be left quite literally “Beached” we couldn’t get to our feet and back out there fast enough.
Not rocket science I know, but truly exciting non the less, this is for us the very DNA of the “Body Board” thing.
What we couldn’t realise at that time was the boards we had purchased from our Crantock Higher Moor campsite hosts, Sue and John Dennett, was that they actually made them on site.
Not just that, but they created them using a vintage, locally designed and engineered “electro-steam bender” to form the unique decreasing radius curve on the front of our boards, it was this feature, though we didn’t realise it at the time that enabled us to push down hard and get the board to really fly on the incoming waves.
Fast Forward to 2015 still loving the “Fast Flotsam boarding” experience and having made a few boards ourselves for friends now had a proper and growing respect for our original Steam bent boards.
Sue and John had decided that due to the growing popularity of their campsite and horticultural business they quite selflessly would like to gift the Briereley Electro-Steam Body-board Press (to give it its proper title) to us in the hope that we would pick up the baton and keep on putting smiles in the surf for future generations.
Well, we did and we have and what a journey it has been, we will be forever indebted them trusting us as the 3rd generation Stewards of this unique piece of Surfing Heritage.
Given its grand age and limited production capability we now produce low volume, high quality unique body boards, in two sizes, the traditional “Surf Classic” and shorter “Surf Glider” we also produce boards to your individual designs.
You can view our boards in the shop.