Maine surfers craft boards of red cedar Men follow state’s boat-building tradition

YORK – When the surf’s up, you’ll find Mike LaVecchia and Rich Blundell carving the waves at York Beach. Even in December.

Their surfboards, however, aren’t anything like the fiberglass-over-foam boards common at beaches around the country. Instead, they’re made out of wood, and they look like handcrafted pieces of furniture with their smooth lines, wood grain and glossy finish.

LaVecchia and Blundell made their hollow wooden surfboards for themselves and now operate a tiny company, Grain Surfboards, making them for others.

Many surfers, they say, are turning to wood as part of the trend toward retro surfboards. They see themselves as taking the skills used in Maine’s long tradition of building wooden boats and applying them to surfboards.

“Look at that grain!” Blundell said, pointing to the whirls and swirls on the red cedar planks of one their boards. “It blows my mind. That’s what it’s all about.”

Riding a wooden surfboard is nothing new.

Polynesians first harnessed the power of an ocean swell on solid wood boards several thousand years ago, while the art of surfing was perfected on wood in Hawaii, where chiefs rode hardwood plank boards as long as 24 feet. In the book “Roughing It,” Mark Twain wrote about his experience on a wooden surfboard in Hawaii in 1866.

But in modern times, classic wooden boards fell by the wayside as fiberglass, foam and composite materials came into vogue.

LaVecchia and Blundell had toyed before with the idea of making surfboards. When the talk last spring turned to making them out of wood, they got so stoked that they were up and making them in a matter of days.

The pair, both 39, set up a shop in their rented home, across the street from a bluff overlooking the north end of York Beach. If the surf’s up, you’ll likely find them in the water, not in the cramped workshop where they work their saws, planers and sanders.