Surfboard construction has barely changed in half a century. Firewire Surfboards has spent nearly two decades methodically dismantling that convention, board by board.
The origin point is December 2005, when Clark Foam — supplier of roughly 90 percent of traditional polyurethane blanks — shut down without warning in what the industry called “Blank Monday.” Shapers scrambled toward expanded polystyrene foam, which introduced new problems: approximately 8 percent more buoyancy than polyurethane, a corky feel that left surfers riding on top of the water rather than through it, and a fundamentally different flex pattern. Australian shapers Nev Hyman and Bert Burger responded by engineering something categorically different.
Their solution, which became known as Future Shapes Technology (FST), used a sandwich construction: 3-mm thick aerospace composite skins vacuum-bagged to the top and bottom of an EPS foam core, replacing the traditional central wooden stringer with two parabolic wooden rails running along each side. Those rails offered more precise control and, according to the announcement, delivered additional exit speed out of turns.
Mark Price, a former Association of Surf Professionals World Tour surfer and then vice president at Reef, rode a FST prototype in 2006 and left his position to co-found Firewire with Hyman and Burger. The competitive validation came quickly: in 2007, pro surfer Taj Burrow won both the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay and the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach on a Firewire board — the first time an elite World Tour competitor won a major event on non-traditional construction. In 2015, Kelly Slater, the most decorated competitive surfer in history, became the majority shareholder of the brand.
A decade of iteration produced Helium in 2017, stripping roughly 15 percent of the base construction’s weight through improved foam, refined vacuum processing that reduced resin volume, and rails that shifted from solid balsa to a balsa-paulownia blend. The result was a softer, more forgiving flex and faster turn response.
Three Boards, Three Purposes
The review covers three boards from Firewire’s current lineup, each built around distinct wave conditions and surfer profiles, tested across fall and winter sessions.
The Neutrino, priced at $995, uses the Helium construction. The Machadocado — shaped by pro surfer Rob Machado and also priced at $995 — likewise runs on Helium technology. The third board under review is the Revo Max. Firewire’s 21-step manufacturing process now draws on aerospace-grade foams, carbon fiber, and bio-resins across its range, with each material choice serving a defined structural or performance function rather than a marketing one.
What the Testing Found
The boards perform demonstrably well across the conditions they were designed for — a finding that carries weight given the surf world’s longstanding preference for traditional polyurethane construction.
Each model in the lineup addresses a specific gap: different wave types, different surfer weights and skill levels, different performance priorities. That segmentation reflects how far Firewire has moved from offering a single alternative technology to building what amounts to a performance matrix across its catalog. The price point of $995 holds across at least two of the three models reviewed, positioning them as premium but not exceptional outliers in the current surfboard market.
Photo by Darla Hueske on Unsplash
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