More random photographs from around the surfboard factory...what could this mean. I'll tell you! The continuation of a sleepy start to the 2024 surfboard production year.
It's not too much of a stretch to call myself a veteran in the surfboard industry. In fact, you'd do less of a stretch in prison for murder than the years I've spent spraying surfboards.
It's strange how much has changed, and yet, just about nothing has!
The first time I sprayed a surfboard in a factory, for a shop or customer, I can't remember which, was in 1989. That was at the Hot Buttered factory in Auckland, New Zealand.
Iain 'Ratso' Buchanan, running the factory at the time, quickly realised I had talked my way into the spray bay with no experience whatsoever. With the NZ summer underway and little alternative on offer, I was told to learn fast.
So all those years ago, I taped up freshly shaped surfboards, popped open paint tins, loaded the spray gun and fired away.
That is exactly what I still do today. Sure, there are chapters, as mentioned in the last post, where designs and colourways change, a bit like fashion, but it all circulates back to the same essentials. Here are the same materials as used for decades, now paint, spray or draw on a surfboard to decorate it.
The reason for mentioning my self titled veteran status, is to highlight the 'feast or famine' nature of surfboard work, and the experience needed to meet the necessity to hold tight and not buckle under the highs and lows.
The surfboard industry has a way of spitting people out.
As Rory Russell once said, 'I've seen a lot of people come, and I've seen a lot of people go!'
While paint drys, it's quite good fun to wonder around the factory with a camera. Trying to find pictures, despite having seen the same things for decades. It's quite a challenge, but one that helps you look a little bit closer, trying to extract something visual from the repetitious nature of being around surfboard factories for so long.
Still, here are a few attempts from yesterday afternoon.
