Hi, no they are not Surftech tuflite construction. The boards pictured were know for their build quality issues. The bamboo might be a better choice if you want either.

Thanks for your input, guys.

I was just talking to a guy that used to carry the later versions of Lairds boards and he said he preferred them over the Surftech because they are thinner and lighter.

Below are a couple from Lairds now defunct website. The grey one is the 9' CARBON Surfer at only 16 pounds would be sweet! Used Lairds are hard to find in the US too. People really hang on to them here.

Zoom in and on the bottom of both boards in front of the center fin box you can see the "Xterra Boards" label. Couldn't find anything online about Xterra. Anyone know?

I have the 11 footer in that dodgy construction. Almost every time I use it it gets an injury. It keeps dinging and I keep repairing it. But for an 11 footer it is a nice board to surf. I have been told the 9 ft boards were good for surfing in their day.

I thought the painted boards from the laird website did have a really good construction and shape. I had a carbon one held up pretty well until I sold it. I took some small chips out of the rail with my paddle as it was one of my first boards and was just wide enough to hit combined with my technique. Didn't seem to bother my carbon paddle though. The deck was really resistant to dents, but I think carbon is more brittle in terms of impact resistance.

slsurf said..
I thought the painted boards from the laird website did have a really good construction and shape.

I happens, not all boards were bad at these cheap factories.

But if 30% of your boards are defective, you go bankrupt.
... meaning that 70% of the boards were still good enough, so you CAN find not-too-bad ones even if the construction was bad enough to doom the company.

I remember a rep on Maui for Hot Sails Maui telling me that if you wanted stuff made in Asia that you had to have a guy there always inspecting the product and basically baby sitting to make sure the quality was consistent. In the case of Hot Sails Maui then, someone would fly over and personally inspect the entire order before loading everything into the containers.

Obviously I'm guessing, but I assume Laird stopped making boards because the SUP surfing market pretty much took a nose dive. (At least that's the case here in Southern California.)

I don't like heavy boards so I'm going to make my own again by having it CNC'ed and then I'll finish shape and glass it myself. I am already going through the Shape 3DX Warehouse and looking at longboard surfboard designs that I can tweak the dimensions. The reason I'm going over the longboard surfboard designs instead of long SUP designs is because most of the long SUP designs there are funky. Not done yet, but there's some pretty nice ones. Ultimately I will end up with a very surfy 9'er with an outline and rails similar to the yellow or carbon Laird in the images I posted previously.

I have briefly owned several Infinity's and didn't care for them. (To each his own.) The latest was a factory carbon 8-2 RNB. I wanted to like it cuz it was so light and looked super cool, but for me the rails were way too thick, outline was too straight and the tail was too wide. Having said that, the construction of their factory carbon boards are super light and absolutely bombproof. Like a moron, I jumped off a little retaining wall and the full weight and force of my 200 pounds jammed the rail into the top of the pointy edge of a boulder and it did NOTHING! Unbelievable but true.

This is may be bigger than what you are looking for, but there is a 10'6" Laird surftech on CL in Ojai. ventura.craigslist.org/spo/d/ojai-laird-surftech-sup-by-pearson-arrow/7625606856.html

Surlygringo said..
You must a least like The New Deal. I seem to remember you were considering buying a used 9'x26" just a few weeks ago.

I do like the New Deal and would like to find a good deal on a clean production carbon that is 9' to 9-6 x 29. After the initial major drop off from new price of $2000+ they seem to hold their value fairly well in the $1000 to $1200 range.

I have often thought how good would it be for the original lairds to be redone in the latest pvc/ carbon build,light/ strong ,I personally think they would be popular again

Rossall said..
The new 2023 Kalama's are pretty dam close and built to last.

Rossall yes, Kalama,Infinity,Jimmy Lewis,all kinetic by the way!that's the build quality I was referring to ,but with the timeless lines of the Pearson/ laird,,just saying.