Be Cautious! Fake Firewire Website They say that if it’s too good to be true, then it probably isn’t—and that’s precisely the case with a fake Firewire website that’s been tricking lots of surfboard buyers recently. As you probably know, Firewire is one of the leading surf brands in the industry. It has revolutionized epoxy board construction and has a huge stable of shapers and team riders, ranging from Tomo and Dan Mann to Rob Machado and the entire Slater Designs team. Firewire also recently added the Thunderbolt line of boards, which includes designs from longboarding legends such as CJ Nelson, Harley Ingleby, Ben Skinner, and Kai Sallas. As you can imagine, with all of these cutting-edge designs and futuristic construction techniques, Firewire boards aren’t cheap. After all, you pay for quality, and these boards are as high quality as they come. But consumers who are looking for deals have been stumbling across a website called firewiresports.club, which purports to sell Firewire, Slater Designs, and Thunderbolt boards for 90 percent off the normal retail price! I wish! Unfortunately, this website is a full-on scam, and a lot of people have been throwing their money away ordering fake boards that don’t...

DAN MANN ANSWERS QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS NO BRAINER MODEL Dan Mann is an avant garde surfboard designer and shaper who has recently joined the stable of shapers at Slater Designs. Dan recently took the time to answer some questions about his No Brainer model, covering topics such as fins, sizing, skill level, ideal wave, and more. If you’ve ever considered adding the No Brainer to your quiver, here are some guidelines straight from the man who created the board. Fins: The No Brainer works best with a quad setup, giving you drive and speed through flat sections when you are groveling. Use your favorite template upfront, and then a slightly smaller template for the trailing fins. The reason for this is that the board is pretty narrow up front (compared to Dan’s other boards), so you want slightly less fin in the trailer. If you decide to go with a thruster setup (which is better in the pocket), do the same thing in terms of fin selection—go with your favorite front fins, then use a slightly smaller trailing fin for your middle fin. Here at Hawaiian South Shore, we suggest the Power Twin with Trailer setup for the No Brainer....

🍒 Cherry Picker 🍒 Ben Skinner is one of the world’s best performance longboarders, and a master shaper as well. But lately he has had to step outside of his comfort zone and focus more on traditional logging. Over the past year, the Longboard World Tour (under the guidance of Devon Howard) transitioned away from performance surfing and more toward traditional surfing, emphasizing single fin logs, extended noserides, and powerful, traditional turns. Ben loves logging as much as the next guy, and is an excellent noserider, but over the years had specifically focused on performance longboarding because that’s what was required in world tour events. Now with the focus returning to traditional surfing, he started tinkering with a single fin log, which he ultimately took with him to New York for the world tour event last year. After that event, Ben realized that this was the perfect time for him to really focus on developing a great traditional longboard—both for himself as a surfer and for his customers as a shaper. He took the board from New York and started refining it, going through three or four different versions before finally settling on the shape that would become the Cherry Picker....

Cutting-Edge Combination of Nature and Technology When most people think of Firewire, they think of TIMBERTEK. These are the brown, wooden-decked surfboards that first put the company on the map. Combining lightweight EPS blanks with a laminated wooden skin and proprietary parabolic rails, these boards look good and perform great. They are strong, lightweight, and snappy, utilizing the strength of paulownia wood to supplement the strength and flex of the EPS foam and epoxy resin. Paulownia is a fast-growing tree that produces strong, light timber, perfect for use in surfboard construction. By utilizing this wood in their construction process, Firewire is able to minimize the amount of petro-chemical products that go into the boards. The boards are still not entirely sustainable, but they certainly use less petro-chemicals than many other boards. Plus, because they are so strong, they tend to last longer, which is better for the environment. The TIMBERTEK surfboards are just as impressive for their performance. The parabolic rail construction eliminates the need for a center stringer, and instead moves the boards’ flex and life to the rails, where more torque and movement occurs. The result is a hyper-sensitive and maneuverable board that is stronger while at the...

The Firewire Omni

The Dominator II with Dan Mann  “The Wire” Podcast Summary Shaper Dan Mann recently sat down with The Wire podcast to talk about Firewire sandwich construction and his new Dominator II shape. Feel free to check out the podcast, or read on for a summary of the highlights from his conversation. Kevin Schultz has been ripping on the Dominator II, which has been a pleasant surprise for shaper Dan Mann. Kevin tried one of Kelly Slater’s Dominator II's awhile back, and is now genuinely stoked on the board. He is especially excited about the sandwich construction, which is something Dan Mann first heard about in 2003, in the context of windsurfing boards. In 2006, when he went to Australia, a bunch of guys were doing sandwich construction boards there, and that was an eye-opener for him—especially once they were able to use balsa rails. Sandwich construction is at the core of Firewire boards. It turns boards into something like a set of Legos, in that you can build the board how you want. Shapers have refined their designs to the nth degree, but now that you can open up materials with sandwich construction, you can tweak layers and weight and...

The Slater Connection—How Akila Aipa Became a Household Name Akila Aipa was content to quietly create beautiful, custom boards in the Waialua Sugar Mill, without much fanfare or hype. But when you are a master craftsman (and an excellent surfer with an undeniable pedigree, to boot), people will eventually begin to take notice. A few years back, Kelly Slater (which is from the same generation of pro surfers as Akila) asked Akila if he would like to collaborate on a quiver of boards, to see if they couldn’t dial in something special. Akila ended up shaping seven boards for Slater—a handful of thrusters between 5'7" and 5'9", and a 5'5" twin-fin. Slater ended up surfing the boards in a number of events, and putting together amazing performances at Keramas and the Surf Ranch—and just like that, Akila’s name was on the map. From there, things started happening quickly. Demand for Akila’s boards skyrocketed, and suddenly he couldn’t keep up with demand from his small shaping bay in Waialua. He started looking for a larger area to produce boards, and at the same time began dialing in a twin-fin board to add to Slater Design’s quiver of models, produced by Firewire. ...

Firewire is known for leading the surf industry in terms of modern, high-tech board construction, and recently they have added a number of different construction options to their boards. Two of the most popular—LFT and Helium—provide similar all-around benefits such as light weight and durability, but also have their own specific advantages, depending what you are looking to do on your board. Rob Machado has been designing boards for Firewire for the past few years, and has a lot of experience on both types of construction. He recently did a little video to explain the difference between the two, and what conditions each thrives in.   “The LFT construction has durable deck skin and controls flex down center, with high-density foam from nose to tail,” says Rob. “Helium also has a durable deck skin, but controls flex in the rails through a mix of paulownia and balsa wood.” He continues to explain that “Helium is light and lively, and great for generating speed in weak waves. LFT is still light, but a little more drivey and solid, and great for controlling speed in better waves.” Helium  Each Helium shape is cut from the lightest foam blank in our stable –...

Helium Hydroshort  California’s Timmy Reyes has been a free surfing fixture for two decades. From his young days as an up-and-coming grom to his current legend status as a feral explorer of frigid barrels, Timmy has been shaping surf culture since he was an adolescent, and his edits continue to get us pumped up to drive a bit farther, pull on some rubber, and have an adventure. As it turns out, Timmy Reyes is influential in the surfboard design realm as well. Timmy got on one of Kelly Slater’s Hydroshorts (made by Tomo) a few years back, built in Firewire’s LFT construction. He connected with the board right off the bat, and ended up having Tomo make him one in Helium construction aswell. Timmy took both down to Baja with him to shoot an edit called Love Letter in Mexico, and had the chance to ride both boards in pumping waves—the perfect way to compare the two construction styles. While both construction styles have their benefits, Timmy felt like the Heliumconstruction just brought the Hydroshort alive—it made it feel livelier and moreresponsive, particularly good waves. The spot he was surfing has strong, consistent offshore winds, which are normally difficult to surf...

NEWSLETTER JULY 2020 Staying Safe in the Sun   Understanding the UV Index and How to Stay Safe in the Sun   I was chatting with FCS rep Keoni Watson the other day, and he mentioned that the UV index was going to be super high this weekend—pushing as high as 11. That sounded pretty gnarly to me, but I realized that I didn’t really know what the UV index meant, or where it even came from, so I decided to do some research. I found an online guideline from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and discovered some really interesting information.  As it turns out, the UV index was created in 1994 by the EPA and the National Weather Service, as a guideline to help people plan outdoor activities but avoid overexposure to UV radiation, which can cause a variety of health issues (including sunburn, cataracts, and skin cancers such as melanoma). The UV index was then updated in 2004 to serve as a more comprehensive, global UV index that provides daily guidance for UV radiation in different locations. The number provided on the UV index for any given day is projected for the time of day with the most...