The success of Signal Snowboard’s Every Third Thursday has spawned an entirely new “sponsored” show called Cardboard Chaos. In this rendition, Dave Lee and Marc Wierenga will apparently introduce the manufacturing of strange things out of cardboard each episode while Earnest Packaging Solutions foots the bill. Not a bad gig. And truthfully, we’d watch Dave Lee make paint dry. Seriously. In this episode: Surf Prescription’s Doc Lausch shapes a surfboard out of paper. For more on the show, follow the jump.Signal Pushes Paper In A New Video Series Cardboard Chaos.
It’s safe to say that our Every Third Thursday series has changed the culture around here at Signal. We love it! It let’s us blow off a day of work to be creative and find a new way to build something we love in an interesting and innovative way. Our show has taken on a life of it’s own and it has opened many doors that allow us to think differently. It’s also opened up many opportunities to work with interesting people in other industries. Last season we worked with a friend and his company Ernest Packaging on a Paper Snowboard. They are the leader in Packaging here in California, which means they deal with a lot of paper and cardboard. It’s easy and very normal to see tons of boxes and packaging supplies when you walk into the giant warehouse that is Ernest. Not us, we see opportunity to build things that can take on a life of their own, things that can be ridden and products that you would not think could be built with such an out-of-the-box approach – pun intended. So today, we drop our first collaboration video with Ernest Packaging called Cardboard Chaos. They are working with us and letting us do what we love – build cool shit! We have been itching to move beyond snowboarding and start building in other areas like surfing, skateboarding and beyond and this is our first go.
This first episode we build a surfboard out of honeycomb paper with the help of legendary surf shaper Jeff “Doc” Lausch and Mike Martinez, Ernest’s creative director and design lab mad man. As you know, paper does not like water. When we first got into this build we had an incredibly optimistic view and thought, “oh shit yeah, this is no problem. We got this” After a month of trial and error, we started to worry a bit. We went through many paper blanks and hours of head scratching so huge props to Doc for having the brain space and patience to deal with shaping such an unorthodox material into a surfboard. Once we started to dial out the shape and work with the honeycomb paper in an efficient way, the board started to come together quickly thanks to Mike and Doc’s dedication stiffen up the material. Doc has been shaping surfboards for a long time and once he was feeling good about the blank, the actual surfboard started to take shape quickly. Trial and error is a big part of this show and how we like to work and this one, had plenty of both, but paid off big time! We had a blast surfing the Paper Surfboard! It’s always fun riding something that you feel shouldn’t ride, it opens your mind to what’s possible. And this, well this could actually be something real. Think SUP boards, or even progressive surf shreds for that matter. This is not a puzzle cut exoskeleton that is pieced together; this is paper surf blank that can be shaped like the industry standard foam blanks. Additional coolness we quickly learned from this core, you can see right through it! You can see the fish swim right under you as your sitting and waiting for a wave, how cool is that?
Check it out when you have a minute and let us know what you think. We’re excited to get the chance to expand the show into new concepts, new products and new worlds.
