Our Story

From a snapped surfboard to a better way to build

Sine Surf started in 2020, when Emile Theau's new surfboard snapped on its first surf. He took it back to the shop where he bought it and suggested there must have been a manufacturing fault. The owner walked him out the back and showed him a graveyard of more than 100 snapped surfboards. His answer was along the lines of 'this happens all the time, it's just how surfboards are made'.

Emile wasn't convinced.

Discovering wooden surfboards

Curious, Emile began researching how surfboards are made, and what more durable and sustainable alternatives existed. He soon discovered wooden surfboards. They are beautiful, and they can perform very well if they are built with enough precision.

Wooden surfboards are not common today because of the high cost of the timber and the large amount of skill needed to make them. After tinkering with designs, and with some new ideas on how to build them efficiently, the goal became bringing wooden surfboards back into the mainstream.

Building them with a CNC machine

Early in the project Emile met Alastair Pilley, who helped give life to some concept designs built around CNC machining. Together they set out to make hollow wooden boards efficient to build, so that wooden surfboards could compete with mainstream boards on build quality and cost. Sine Surf was co-founded by Alastair Pilley and Emile Theau. Emile worked in the business until early 2025, when he moved on to a new venture. We're grateful for everything he put into Sine Surf, and his designs live on in our boards.

With CNC machining, almost any shape can be turned into a hollow wooden surfboard: a hollow Paulownia core, solid wood rails, and a precise, repeatable build. That is how the Garnet, ButterCup, SunSpear, Strider, and Daywalker came about, each one tested by Sydney surfers and tuned up over several years.

Why Paulownia

Paulownia is a light, strong timber with a pale, even grain. It is buoyant, and it glues and finishes well, which makes it a good timber for a hollow surfboard. As we built boards we also learnt a lot about working with it, and that knowledge now goes into the timber we supply.

Where Sine Surf is today

Sine Surf is run by Alastair Pilley in Sydney. Along the way we found that other wooden surfboard makers needed the same parts we had been making for ourselves. Our vented leash plug is now our main product, alongside surfboard vents and fin boxes, and we supply Paulownia timber Australia-wide, cut to size and dressed here in Sydney, for wooden surfboard makers and other builders.

We still build hollow Paulownia surfboards to order in Sydney, with high quality, durable epoxy fiberglass lamination by the team at Eye Symmetry Surfboards in Brookvale. We also keep a small number of pre-made stock boards. We care about boards that are sustainable, durable, and precisely made.

Get in touch

Email info@sinesurf.com or call 0426 281 785. For builders, see our wooden leash plugs and surfboard vents and our Paulownia timber. To see the boards, visit our surfboards and stock boards.