SPONSORED
Christian Sellers came up with the idea of Pushfins while he was living in Lake Tahoe and working for a surfboard company that was using a new, eco-friendly bio-epoxy in its manufacturing process. When a friend asked Sellers to replace his broken surfboard fin, Sellers grabbed an old skateboard deck and reached for this epoxy. Today, he has perfected the craft of making surfboard fins from the salvageable parts of pre- consumer North American Maple plywood cast aside by skateboard manufacturers for flaws such as cracks or knots. He glues these veneers together as if making a skateboard, trims and sands them into shark fin-shaped surfboard rudders, and then wraps them in high-quality fiberglass scraps from surfboard glassing shops. All this takes place in his Portland garage. World-class surfers have told Sellers that his fins deliver a unique slingshot effect. When the surfers dig into waves, the maple cores spring back, driving them through steep and flat sections of the waves.
“I just had this theory that with this bio-epoxy that isn’t nasty to work with, with maple piles, and this scrap fiberglass, I could make a higher-performing, dramatically more sustainable surfboard fin.”