Onboarding with Tom Wegener | Crescent Head

In garages, under houses, behind sheds and at rubbish tips all along the coast, there are old learn-to-surf foamies that may never see the ocean again. Tom Wegener looks at this future landfill and sees perfectly good blanks.

Join legendary surfboard shaper Tom Wegener in Crescent Head for a start-to-finish demonstration of his innovative approach to giving old foamies a new life. Watch as Tom transforms a discarded learn-to-surf board into a beautiful paulownia-wrapped surfboard, using a process that combines traditional hand skills with a more sustainable approach to surfboard building.

Shaping surfboards since 1978, Tom began in his parents’ garage in California. After growing tired of the toxic fumes associated with conventional glassing, he spent decades exploring alternative ways to build boards with a lighter environmental footprint.

His latest method strips an old foamie back to its EPS core, wraps it in 2mm paulownia timber and finishes the rails in cork. The process uses hand tools and water-based varnish, making it possible to build a board in your own shed, without the need for conventional fibreglassing.

This is a chance to get up close with Tom’s process, learn about alternative surfboard construction and see how something destined for landfill can be transformed into a board ready to return to the ocean.

Give an old foamie a new life. Rethink how we build surfboards, one board at a time.