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The artist, Jimmy Boyer, with his completed pin-up board.
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Sali Boyer (at age 11), the CEO/Research & Design Partner and reason for being of King City Longboards.
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Sali’s unicorn coming to life;
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The “bones” of a stand up paddleboard.
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Turtle surfboard in the workshop.
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Completed turtle & unicorn boards.
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Up close & personal with the pin-up girl.
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Old school wooden longboard.
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Trey Gregory with his special personalized King City longboard.
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The King City logo.
Step into Jimmy Boyer's Ocean Blvd. apartment and you just might think you have been catapulted into a 1960s surf shop complete with Dick Dale and the Del-Tones blasting the paint off the walls. Standing in the corner of his living room is an 8ft. tall, cedar and cypress surfboard with a cedar tribal turtle inlay, standing guard over two 40” wooden longboards that he and his daughter, Sali, ride. A 9’ 6” stand-up paddleboard made of cedar and cypress with mahogany rails hangs in the master bedroom. Jimmy has deep roots on St. Simons Island, with Sali being the 5th generation to call these beaches home. "In fact," Jimmy says, ''she is the reason I began building these boards again."
''My first project, years ago, was a 14'' cedar strip canoe that I built on the deck of my first apartment. Over the years I have had many projects, ranging from canoes to surfboards,” he explains. “Then, about two years ago, I decided I would build one last surfboard,” he continues. “My plan was to give it to Sali, she would learn to surf and live happily ever after. Then the SUP craze hit and she had to have a paddle board, which, in reality is a surfboard that is paddled. The board I was working on was too small to stand on, so I set about building a longer board that was a little wider and thicker. And that’s the board she paddles now. Since she was 11 at the time, she had me inlay a unicorn on the top deck.”
All of Jimmy's boards are built by hand using an old school method known as hollow core construction. He says his woods may be more exotic, using tigerwood and mahogany from Brazil and maple from Canada, but the method is definitely old school.
Surfboards and paddleboards are built in the same way, each beginning with a spine and ribs that will give it shape and strength. To remove weight, hundreds of various size holes are drilled into the skeleton. Strips are then glued on to the ribs forming the decks. Jimmy says this is when the magic happens.” Generally I have laid out the strips so I can match nuances in the wood's coloring and markings. I start in the middle and work out mixing the species and bending the strips to the design that grabs me.” After much sanding, the wood is sealed and a layer of fiberglass is applied, followed by varnish. Jimmy says, “I love working with the local red cedar because it has such rich colors and unique markings and contrasts well with the cypress. Both of these species are naturally water and bug resistant. Paddleboards are extremely time consuming and would be cost prohibitive to market; however the surfboards will stay on the menu.”
Where do longboards fit in to the picture? Again, it all began with Sali wanting a skateboard. Jimmy says, “I could have bought any cookie-cutter fiber composite board with some tired graphics but that’s not me. I wanted her to have an original old school wooden board.” Longboards are skateboards more than 30 inches long that have wider trucks and wider wheels. These boards are designed for cruising only and because they are made of wood, it is not recommended that they be used in skate parks.
Jimmy confesses the first attempts were disappointing with “several epic failures” but, through trial and error and with Sali as a willing CEO/ Research and Development partner, they successfully came up with the perfect jointery and combinations of soft and hard, light and dark woods. After the eventual design success, Sali had her longboard, and Jimmy built his own to ride along with her. Soon, some of Sali’s friends wanted their own boards and King City Longboards was born.
Longboards are relatively simple in design. After gluing up the chosen woods in the chosen pattern, Jimmy says it’s just a matter of shaping them with wood planes and sanders. After a sealer coat, he then adds the design or art work. No two boards Jimmy makes are ever alike in design or art and his work differs from other builders in that his graphics are on the top deck, protected by multiple layers of varnish. He also uses very little, if any, non-skid, believing it’s unnecessary on a cruiser.
Why the name King City? You may not be able to find that name on any tourist map, although it exists way back in the archives of St. Simons Island as the narrow area that runs from where Pier Village is now all the way to the Frederica River, from the shore line to just the other side of Kings Way. It pops up as a location on your cell phone if you live in the Marina area or near the Sea Island Golf Club.
“The short time I have been making longboards as King City Longboards has been a surprising success,” Jimmy shares. Longboarding still hasn’t quite caught on here the way it has in other beach communities and college towns. My boards are available at Davis Love’s Paddle and Putt and I’m excited to have been asked to place them in shop near Tampa.” He doesn’t plan to stop designing as long as he keeps finding inspiration, adding, “When the time comes, I hope Sali will like driving the wooden car I'm designing.”
