| IS IT A BIRD... |
 |
 |
| News | |||
|
Cruising tight in the curl, so close to the face your eyelashes could touch it. The lip curving over your scalp as spray flies, spinning then turning as you rocket down the line, sucking every last drop out of the wave. Then back out for another. And another. Whatever your board of choice, there’s no denying a session like that would make for a pretty hefty dose of stoke. But what if you were riding a 17 inch slice of wood that you’d carved yourself? Welcome to the world of handplaning. Relatively new to England’s shores and set to take the nation by storm. Clare Howdle gives us the inside track on a rather interesting experiment...
17 May 2011, Seed Surf Co. Filmmaker Shayne House sets up his tripod, finds the shot and presses record. In front of him a hunk of poplar sits on a tool bench with Seed Surf Co.'s Mikey Koskela standing still over it, sketching out designs with his thoughtfully chewed pencil. The idea is simple. To use as little energy as possible to ride waves in a new way. To make something different, natural and organic that delivers maximum thrill at minimum environmental cost. To film it, write about it and muse on it until we find out just how it feels to surf green. Really green. So here we are. On a mission to make and ride a handplane, recording it as we go, to see where it takes us. Fancy coming along for the ride?
Getting a measure of the task ahead. From poplar plank to honed wavecraft in one morning?
Circular saw. Five minutes. Keeping a tab on the energy we use to equal out the environmental impact, later.
It’s all in the eye. Plain hand drawn lines for drawing handplane lines...
Tail deviations. Experimentation is everything.
Taking shape but taking time. Two hours in and the realisation dawns. This is going to take work. A lot of work.
It’ll be worth it, though. We can see it now. In the emerging lines; the promise of form. In Mikey’s deeply furrowed brow and Shayne’s twitching filmmakers’ eye. This is going to be good. Really good. Come back soon to find out how the planes shaped up - on the bench then in the water. -- For the full length feature check out www.driftsurfing.eu in June.
|
