Board Approval

An East Falls duo makes a longboard that's suitable for hanging.

by Brian Hickey

RIDING THE WAVE: Ric Allison (left) and Charles Barrett with a Rayskin Longboard in Allison's East Falls workshop. Photo By: Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Ric Allison and Charles Barrett don't call themselves surfers. They paddle out from time to time, sure, but it'd be presumptuous to claim any expertise. Yet last Wednesday night, in a cramped studio at an East Falls arts incubator, both men proudly showed off the results of their passion project: an exquisite 9-foot, 3.75-inch longboard that, should things go their way, might one day represent their "retirement fund."

Allison's a high-end, sought-after furniture designer by trade; Barrett's a Web designer who, according to his client and now-business-partner/friend, "is able to translate what I want into the real world." So about a year and a half ago, Barrett dived into another one of Allison's "cryptic" e-mails. The artisan mentioned he had an intriguing idea.

Allison read a story about how the world's most prodigious producer of surfboard molds — Clark Foam — unexpectedly ceased operations in December 2005, a move that sent the wave-riding community into an unprecedented panic. Worried that the world's supply would soon dry up, people were snatching up boards like bread and milk on a blizzard's eve. Even though this more directly impacted the market for the regular boards you'll see kids and weekend warriors shredding ripples off at Sea Isle, Allison smelled an opportunity.

"A huge market had opened up," says Allison, who studied environmental design and architecture at the Otis College of Art and Design and had been teaching at UArts. "I was originally embarrassed to tell anybody, but when I did, everybody I talked to said, 'If you don't do it now, you're stupid.'"

The e-mail caught the Web designer's eye, so he immediately called back with a question: "What are you talking about, man?"

With the answer, Rayskin Longboards was born.

From an office that offers a view of a brick wall and the aromas wafting from trash-hauling trains that pass a couple of times a month on the nearby tracks, Allison immediately got to work on a scale mechanical drawing of what his board would look like, both inside (hollow but for a precision airplane "fin-ply" skeleton; longboards are generally made of wood or composites) and out. He then sent the images over to Barrett, who created vector graphics that ultimately allowed them to use a laser cutter to get the symmetry of a model down to the millimeter.

The model would then — through Allison's craftsmanship and several thousand dollars of investments from each man — become a prototype with exterior skin made of spruce and mahogany; a decorative veneer of mahogany, white birch, fiddleback maple and bird's-eye maple; and a coating of epoxy, 5 mm fiberglass and varnish.

"I've been here for six years," Allison says of East Falls' Sherman Mills section, which, when he arrived, sat amid crack houses and decay. Now, his neighbors are sculptors and stained-glass makers. "But never, not when I was making the nicest pieces of furniture I've ever made, did as many people pop their heads in to see what I was up to like they did when they saw the surfboard. It really tapped into something."

Currently awaiting a patent — though much of it qualifies as their trade secret, it'd be for the skeleton frame that enables them to keep the interior essentially hollow — they've been toting the board to Maine, Cape Cod, Strathmere and Long Beach Island and letting surfers take it out for a ride to get their impressions. (They're Cali-bound next month.) Neither man worries about damaging the product, which they say has gotten good reviews from surfers who noticed one peculiarity: When you're riding the wave, the board inexplicably whistles. Allison figures it'd take a "volcanic eruption" to ding up the 35-pound ride. (They hope to get the boards, originally weighing in at 60 pounds, down to around 28, without making them too light to glide through the water as gracefully as the stingrays they named the company after.)

As neighbors, friends and relatives toured the studio during last Wednesday's opening party, both men readily admitted that mass production isn't for them. The board's price alone — anywhere from $4,700 to upward of $13,000 — makes niche marketing a necessity.

With plans to get two more into production, with two more to follow immediately— each will take about six weeks to build — they'll target a wealthier market; say, million-dollar shore-property owners who'd be inclined to hang the board on the wall as decoration, and take it down for a ride.

"We're not really looking at selling this to young kids, unless they're in the Hamptons, driving around in a Ferrari," says Barrett. "Inside to outside, this board is a Lamborghini. We're building high-end furniture that you can play with and ride. It's not just a surfboard, it's a piece of usable art. But, it's really all about performance, and this board will perform."

(hickey@citypaper.net)

For more information, visit www.rayskin.com.