Nantucket · The Build Has Begun

Wood, Water
& Waves

A wooden surfboard, grown from an island tree, shaped entirely by hand.
Nantucket · The Build Has Begun

Wood, Water & Waves

A wooden surfboard, grown from an island tree, shaped entirely by hand.
Nantucket · The Build Has Begun

Wood, Water & Waves

A wooden surfboard, grown from an island tree, shaped entirely by hand.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

William Shakespeare · As You Like It · Act II, Scene i
One Tree · One Board · One Pair of Hands

One tree. One board. Grown on Nantucket and shaped by hand, from soil to surf.

The board is shaped by Rich Blundell, whose surfboard designs and build methods are used by hollow wooden surfboard builders around the world. The work happens in a small shack on Nantucket: no factory, no molds, no shortcuts. Just a design, a stack of cedar, and a plane.

The reasoning behind it takes a cue from paleohumans. Rich's work in human evolution argues that when Homo erectus knapped Acheulean handaxes, they were not only making a tool. They were working to a standard of beauty that usefulness alone does not account for — symmetry carried well past the point where it made the edge any sharper. Aesthetic judgment is that old. This board is built on the same logic.

Which meant turning down the faster ways. Rich could have used the cork-in-the-rail method he developed back in 2005, or simply gone with solid cedar rails. He wanted a rail defined as an outline instead, and built the board that would give him one.

Progress Report · September 2026

Nine feet of Nantucket cedar, sanded fair and oiled.

The design is finished and every frame is cut — the whole set numbered and laid out in order, bow to tail. Slotted onto the spine, the drawing finally stands up: nine feet of skeleton on the shack floor. The first pieces are glued up in a sunburst of red and white heartwood, and the deck and bottom planks are coming together too — island cedar edge-glued into panels wide enough to take the whole outline, then cut to it. The frame went down on its bottom plank, the box closed over it, and the rails came off the shaping stands with a contrasting rail outline running the whole way round. The fin foils are still in trial — different edges, different halos, one of them eventually wins. Then hours with a straight-edged block to sand it fair, and tung oil to bring the grain up. From here it is fins, and the water.

One tree, one afternoon, and a mill small enough to carry to it.
The first cut. You never know what is in there until the blade tells you.
Purple heartwood and cream sapwood, an inch apart, straight off the log.
This is the color cedar keeps to itself until you open it up.
Rough-sawn, live edge still on it. All of that gets cut away, but not yet.
Every strip gets a feathered edge by hand, so the glue-up closes without a gap.
Every frame cut and numbered, bow to tail.
Nine feet of ribs, standing in line for the first time.
Island cedar, live edge and all, waiting its turn at the shack door.
Sunburst cedar — red heartwood and white, laid up ray by ray.
Fins cut from the same sunrise.
Nine feet of deck plank, board by board, clamped down and left to set.
Deck and bottom out of the clamps, read side by side for grain before either gets cut.
The outline comes off the drawing and lies down on the wood. Last chance to change your mind.
Who needs bar clamps when you have door shims? They are great for squeezing panels while joining.
I spy a butterfly
The skeleton has a floor at last — ribs down on the bottom plank, nose block and all.
Nine feet of it from the tail, and everything is where the drawing said it would be.
Testing a halo on the edge — a pale line that follows the curve the whole way round.
A fuller foil, glossed up to see how it reads.
Hanging where the light is good. Eventually one of these gets the job.
New shaping stands, built for this board and padded so they give nothing back.
Nine feet balanced on two uprights, out where there is room to walk all the way around it.
The first rail strip is on, and the outline it draws is already the thing your eye follows.
Rails get worked outside, where the dust has somewhere to go.
Under a coat of its own dust. Nothing has gone on this wood yet.
Then — the raw planks, live edge and all.
The board now stands where the raw planks once stood outside the shack door.
The disc sander does the heavy lifting. Fast, loud, and never quite fair.
The part nobody ever sees. It's ironic how the only way to get a fair curve is with a straight-edged sanding block and six hours of sanding.
Tung oil goes on, and the grain comes up like it has been waiting all summer to be seen.
I've got a full house in the shack tonight.
Oiled and out in the afternoon sun, the rail outline drawn clean the whole way round.
The oiled cedar board standing upright in the shack, nose to tail, beside the kitchen counter and a mug of coffee
Almost done
The finished cedar board lying on sunlit grass, fin up, shadows of leaves across it
Out on the grass in the last of the sun, fin in.
A cool adaptation for a wallhanger (tap for sound)
Rich standing beside the finished cedar board on its stand in a gallery hung with framed pictures
Installing the board in the gallery
The finished cedar board standing on its stand in the middle of a bright gallery
Beautiful. I only hope I can do the tree justice
The gallery placard, laser-engraved on cedar: Nantucket Cedar Series No. 1, Wood, Water & Waves, with a description of the board and a quote from Rich Blundell
The writing is on the (gallery) wall.
As Told Elsewhere

This work has been written about for twenty years.

Wooden boards, and the ideas underneath them, have drawn writers since the first hollow cedar boards came out of a small shop in York, Maine. Four of those stories are below, along with a short film — and the next one is already being written.

Coming This Fall · N Magazine
A feature on this build, and the philosophy behind it.

N Magazine is writing a feature story on Wood, Water & Waves and Rich's philosophy of life. Tentatively titled A Surfer's Guide to the Universe, it is due out in the October or November issue.

A Surfer's Guide to the Universe
A ‘Surfer’s Guide to the Universe’

How a wooden surfboard can improve our cosmic relationships.

Feature · Jack Shea · 2015 · PDF →
Rich Blundell Connects the Cosmos to Art on Cape Cod
Connecting the Cosmos to Art

Exploring the natural history of surfboards on Cape Cod.

Profile · Susannah Elisabeth Fulcher · 2020 · PDF →
Wooden surfboard makers carve small market niche
Wooden surfboard makers carve a niche

The wire story that carried hollow wooden boards to Honolulu.

Star-Bulletin · Associated Press · 2005 · PDF →
With the Grain — WoodenBoat
With the Grain

A glimpse into a tiny wooden-surfboard shop.

WoodenBoat · Scheherazade Fowler · PDF →
And the Film

The soil that fed it. The rain that swelled its grain.
The water it will ride. The wave that is older than memory.
One board, made from all of it.

Rich with his quiver of wooden surfboards
Frame by Frame

Previous builds.

No molds, no shortcuts. The log is milled into strips, feathered along their edges for a seamless glue-up, and worked over the frame plank by plank until the hull takes its shape. Nothing here is veneer — the deck and bottom planks are structural, and that is what lets the board be hollow, light, and strong while carrying the whole story of the tree it came from.

Rich beside three boards leaning at an open barn door: one faced in bark, one in cedar grain, one in shingles
Three boards, three textures: bark, cedar, and shingle, lined up at the barn door.
The bark, cedar, and shingle boards hung side by side on a sunlit gallery wall
The same three, hung on a gallery wall.
Close-up of a laminated wooden fin set against the striped board
Rich's ‘Moonrise’ fin option
The striped wooden surfboard in side profile with its fin
In profile: a long, low line, and the fin at the tail.
Built by the water, for the water.
Twenty years of boards.
In the Water

Where every board is headed.

Display Stands

Made to stand on its own.

Rich also builds custom display stands, so a board can stand free and upright in a home or a gallery. The design lets it be seen from every side, and the fin fits into slots in the base, so the fin is on display too.

A striped wooden surfboard standing upright on a custom display stand beside a grandfather clock
No wall, no rack. It just stands there in the room.
A striped wooden surfboard on a free-standing display stand at the foot of a staircase, fin set into the base
Walk all the way around it. The stand is built to be seen from every side.
A visitor studies a striped wooden surfboard standing on its display stand in a gallery
In a gallery the board stands at eye level, where people can walk right up to it.
A painted surfboard on its display stand beside matching custom sign stands
Custom signage on matching stands, so the story stands right beside the board.
A striped hollow wooden surfboard standing upright on its display stand, seen from the back
Stripes of light and dark wood, run true from nose to tail.
The display stand on its own: a flat-cut crossbar on a slotted post with four curved feet
The stand on its own. It slots together flat, with a slot in the post for the fin.
Project Details
What

A nine-foot hollow wooden surfboard built by hand from a single Nantucket cedar — light, strong, and made entirely from the island's wood.

Method

Hollow wooden construction, worked over the frame plank by plank. Rich's designs and build methods are used by HWS builders around the world — he has helped amateur builders and professional shops get established in the US, the UK, Europe, and Australia.

Rails

An integrated rail band method Rich developed to prioritize symmetry and aesthetic value. Laid up in a contrasting wood, it draws a rail outline the whole way round the board — structure and drawing at once, not trim added at the end.

Standard

Nothing is given up on hydrodynamics or integrity — and nothing is given up on how the board looks. No cork. No seams out of symmetry. It is going to surf well and look sweet.

Where

A small shack on Nantucket, a short walk from the water.

Status

Designed, framed, planked, shaped, and oiled as of September 2026 — sanded fair by hand, finished in tung oil, the rail outline running the full way round in contrasting wood, and the fin foils still in trial. The build is open to being documented from here to the first wave.

For Editors

A story about craft, place, and slowing down.

Wood, Water & Waves has a clear arc and it is starting now: a tree, a design, a stack of frames, and a board that ends up in the water. The whole build is ahead — which means a story can follow it rather than arrive after the fact.

High-resolution photography, build footage, and interviews are available. Rich is glad to talk on the record about hollow wooden construction, the builders and shops his methods have helped start on three continents, and where a board comes from before it is a board.

Request the press kit Arrange a visit

Rich Blundell

Builder & Shaper

Co-founder and former chief designer and builder at Grain Surfboards, Rich pioneered hollow wooden surfboard construction. His designs and build methods are now used by HWS builders around the world — he has helped amateur builders and professional shops get established in the US, the UK, Europe, and Australia. His work bridges craft, ecology, and the wonder of the natural world.

Duxbury, Massachusetts is his home habitat, and he is a Cape Cod and Islands organism. Wood, Water & Waves is his own build, done alone in a shack with hand tools, and documented as it goes.

He is looking for people to build with. More boards, made with more artists who share the same life philosophy — a love of the ocean, of nature, of quality objects and quality experiences, and of the good life that is still possible.

The future is beautiful or there isn't one. So let's make it.

Let's make it.

Rich is looking for collaborators — artists and makers who share a love of the ocean, of nature, and of well-made things and the experiences they open up. If that is you, say so. Or tell the story, follow the build, or ask about a board of your own.

omniscopic@gmail.com