SEXY SURFBOARDS, Off the Rack: scope em out

Most surf shops carry a wide variety of brand new surfboards. The here, the now, the happening the retro, longboards, guns, fishies, eggs, mid-range, concept boards, soft ones and epoxy ones, etc. Oh my, which one to choose. My advice back when there was less to pick from was, the one you just gotta have. That Channin / Diffenderfer semi-gun standing there in the corner with that Corvette red tint on the bottom and rails I can't live without. If you love it's looks, generally you'll love the way it rides. It might have been a bit tricky to surf on when the waves were tiny but that was still my take on purchasing a board off the rack. Now days I tend to look a bit closer. Think about what I really long for, for longer. When I'm finally ready to make that board mine I will require that it goes through an extensive nose to tail physical before making that final commitment. Here's how we do it, most shops have a set of well padded floor racks to set the board gently on. Hopefully placed under good lighting where you can see the elongated bulbs reflecting on the boards surfaces. Have the sales person secure the fins into the boxes. Check around the boxes for excessive air and for voids in the paste like filler that borders them. View the tail area looking for air bubbles and shatters. Put a bit more scrutiny into tails with wings and channels. Are they the same shape in the same spot on each rail? Keeping the board bottom up go to the nose and sight down the stringer, is the center fin in line with the stringer and standing at a true 90degrees? Are the side fins mirroring each other? Visually are they tilting the same amount out towards the rails? If they look at all funny to you, question it. Check the tip of nose for air. Take your hand and feel down each rail for remaining resin beads, just a difference in the feel could mean there was a factory oversight. Tilt your head from side to side glancing at the elongated lights reflection in the boards bottom. How true the reflecting light is, equals how true the work on the bottom is. Small defections are common its the bigger dips and lumps we need to be weary of. Search the board for slight color changes they could be results of massive air or silvering, meaning fibre glass that was subject to some kind of stress or contamination before being applied to the board. Small areas of this kind of blemish should not be cause for alarm its the obvious were looking for. One big advantage of buying an off the rack board is cure time, the longer the boards been sitting in that shop the more dent resistant its resin shell will be. Ask how long its been in the shop to be safe. Flip it over and give its deck the eagle eye scope out much like we did the bottom. Check for voids around the leash cup and heavy defections. Feel the crown of each rail if its overly lumpy you may want to find another sexy stick to feel out. Do me a favor when your searching out a new stick, remember that the production of a surfboard is not even close to rocket science rather it is a very soulful fragile handmade product, an art form if you will. Most of our fragile egos only need to be massaged with only the tiny est amount of respect. If your the type that over scrutinizes or wants their money back if that yellow was not the precise exact yellow ordered. Please do something else for fun we don't want your money or your ass in the water anyhow.

SKIP FRYE , "Wings over Baja" 1969ish

My most enjoyable time with the Wind an Sea Surf Club was watching a contest. Surf clubs from all over the place converged at San Miguel, Baja, Ca. Everybody who was anybody was there. Butch Van Artsdalen showed up and the now even more famous for their offspring, Irons brothers were rumored to be there. Leroy Grannis attended with his bigger than life telephoto lenses focused on the reeling three to six foot surf. And my favorite surfer Skip Frye was like usual, making perfection look easy. This was during a time when surfboards were getting shorter and powerful carving turns were in order to keep things moving forward.
That Sunday watching Skipper compete for the club was like poetry in motion. He would drop in, flow up and down with the smoking curl line, come gliding completely outside the waves shoulder, after a slight counter turn, Walla! Skip would pull off the biggest most beautiful roundhouse cutbacks on ocean. Wave after wave he would ride flawlessly with that stylish gracefulness only he seems to possess. Ultimately he secured the win for our club.
Up until that time Skip Frye did not compete on Sundays. Thor Swenson, then the director of Wind an Sea had to convince the pastor of Skip’s church, to convince Skip that it would be spiritually all right to surf for his club that Sunday. Somehow it all worked out.

Surfboards, Order Custom. Why?

Giving advice seems to be my passion lately so here’s some over qualified thoughts on successfully attaining your next terminally ill custom surfboard. Pick your favorite surf shop and order the board you really want. First choose a quality brand name and experienced shaper. Why?, No one wants to make you happier than your local surf shop and no one shapes better than someone whose done it over and over and over again. Order it when the weather is cool and humidity’s are normal. Why?, Resin gets a little temperamental when exposed to heat and humidity. Ask for the board to be shaped from an Ice9 or a King Mac blank. Why?, Because I care about you and I’ve done the research. Stay away from dark colors around the rails and keep the stickers to a minimum. Why?, Laminations are time sensitive and lap sanding can be tricky. Keeping things simple decreases chances for human error. Order their standard glassing with an extra three quarter patch of 4 oz. S added to the deck. Why?, It’s the smartest lightest most inexpensive way to prolong the life of your board. Hard on your boards ? Order glass on fins. If it’s a long board with a box ask for an oval or football patch for reinforcement. Patches that end abruptly in high stress areas may encourage breakage. If you’re a performance addict I’d recommend a 320 straight line sanded finish. Why?, Done quicker, easily maintained and seems faster through the water. Maybe you’re the meticulous type and having fun is your main goal then by all means go with a gloss and polish. Why?, What little you lose in performance will be way made up for in luxurious hand crafted beauty. Those who tend to want a bit more longevity built into their stick might want a sanded gloss. Why?, It’s a thin diluted gloss coat that doesn’t add to much weight yet seals any missed air and adds a touch more strength still keeping its high performance characteristics. Special thanks go out to Eric (Bird) Huffman, co owner of South Coast surf shops and Joe Roper for their input.

SURFING; IN A FIX

I stopped by to visit one of my long time friends today we were once co owners of one of Pacific Beaches most predominant left peaks. We met at his business, the busiest surfboard repair shop in So. California and rapped about surfboards for over an hour. Mr. Roper and I came to one conclusion pretty quickly, back in our day the most frequent pain in the ass repair was due to de lamination. Caused by the blank itself, a bad pour or maybe some kind of contamination contracted accidentally some where along the production line. Super blue and ultra light blanks seemed to encourage even more frequent separations between foam and glass. Laminated fiberglass becomes a very springy material. If it gets depressed into soft foam by a striking action it will cause a reverse gravitational pull away from the depressed foam. M.A's law. De lamination's and heat bubbles can also result from leaving a dark colored board exposed to the hot sun for to long. The early nineties introduced us to our first foam borne epidemic, gassing. It caused little teeny tiny air vents to amass on the boards finished surface called blow troughs or pin air. My suspicion is maybe the EPA may have encouraged Grubby Clark to alter his formulation. Or some newly installed foam mixing equipment could have been the culprit. When the glassing factories called him out on this problem, Clark claimed the glassers were at fault for adding to much MEK to the resin. Then told label owners if he heard of them purchasing blanks from any other supplier that he would cut them off completely. Clark's airtight monopoly gave him ultimate power over us builder types. That’s when some imaginative surfboard builder stumbled onto an acrylic floor sealer that acted as our quick fix surfboard sealer. It worked pretty well and is still in use today. Acrylic when scuffed back covers a multitude of sanding sins.
Today’s biggest problems like everything else in the world are more complicated. The influx of knock off, cheaply built foreign boards that are sold by discount chain stores are the new repair waiting to happen. And I am so sorry but the Styrofoam - epoxy built surfboards, custom or composite continue to be his local reoccurring nightmare. Some of the major eco friendly brands have completely disappeared. Water resistant in no way means waterproof.
Polyester, polyurethane boards have their share of problems too but they seem to relate more to a new product or procedure. I.e. Installation problems with fcs, futures, rookies fabricating glass-ons and areas that contain non subtle design gimmicks. More on mine and my righteous friends thoughts on surfboard building coming soon.

EPS Surfboard Foam: Choices

Happy New Years to all, in order for these observations to make more sense please read them in posted order. EPS, ENHANCED-PENTANE-STYROFOAM, I made that up. Glassed with BGF Aerialite fiberglass drenched in Resin Research epoxy is another fairly popular method of high performance surfboard building. As a builder I find epoxy construction to be more problematic than polyester. Due to the relative newness of this epoxy we lack some badly needed effective tricks and techniques to put out a truly tightly built EPS product, yet. This is when the panel of foam mowers really blew my mind. Just because I’m old school, tried and true, I thought the conversation would go differently. They clearly recommended EPS not only because it makes ecological sense. They genuinely enjoy the way their own personal EPS boards ride, despite there lack of rack appeal. Another claim is that they don’t break down near as fast. And the sanded finish version closely resembles a poly finished in the same manner.
So my four shapers, after educating me into the present recommend only two EPS blanks. Scary….
Austin Foam, offers great service, selection, water resistance, densities and sizes.
Prop Foam, fills their needs for the more custom parabolic type blanks.
My intent for writing this is so you the surfboard riding public can be confident in ordering custom boards from your favorite professional builders again. And have your own ideas of the matierals you’d like your board built with.

Clark Foam RIP: Solutions

Lets go back to poly’s and find out who might be the top four blank suppliers in this area. I questioned four professional every day shapers, not a wanna be in the bunch. Rusty, Rick Hammond, Hoy Runnels and Mike Russo. What I found out shocked me. The first credible blank co. that tried to save the day was Walker Foam, they had been around for as long as Clark and may have even been partners for a time. Anyhow after attempting
the impossible, Walker Foam suffered some quality lapses and dropped the ball a bit. It was a noble mission on their part but they ended up going under, from what I heard.
Just Foam, was a fairly new upstart foam co. at that time. I think they bit off more than what was chewable and didn't make my list.
Back to my panel of shapers who made it very clear that from a shapers stand point the new foam produced by Ice 9 and King Mac has proved to be superior to
the old Clark Foam.
Ice 9, high performance qualities= lightness and best compression strength. It’s creamy coloring may be its only downfall if any. I recommend this pick for your short board needs.
King Mac, excellent service, coloring and shape ability. Not completely perfect but try it I think you’ll like it. Mikey does.
U.S. Blanks, is my third pick they seem to have some know how and money behind them. Some of us get the feeling that Clark is only a phone call away. Selection and good service would be their attributes. Lower compression strengths may be the only reason for my number three rating.
Blair Foam, is my panels final forth pick. Personally I don’t know much about this foam, but my prestigious panel sticks by the Blair Foam Projects high rating.

Surfboard Foam: The Problems

Dear Surfboard purchasing public,
How are you? I hope your doing well, Personally I must say I’ve missed you. Its been since early December a few years back on that fateful day when the foam died. I kind of felt like I had to withdraw, step back and see what surfing's great minds had in store for us. Industrious anything to make a buck people got creative. Lets try and make newer, safer, better and friendlier foam. Some of them came up with fairly descent foam. But didn’t have the know how to finish their product.We can’t really laminate a blank when resin is leaking all the way through it. A couple of entrepreneurs with uppity credentials, like aeronautical engineers went poor quick. They tried and tried and never could produce anything close to a decent blank. Easier said than done. For a couple of years these guys had me convinced that Grubby Clark must have been an absolute genius.
Reintroducing Styrofoam and epoxy, lighter more Eco friendly. More likely to blow up, take on water, melt down or cause major allergic reactions to certain human beings. Not enough flex is another problem. Don’t worry research has shown that if we weaken the epoxy by over sanding it we can provide greater over all flexibility which equals increased ride ability. But that non positive grabby feeling might still remain.
How about these composite boards, man do they look cool. Years ago when I worked for Hi Tech Sailboards we vacuum bagged, skinned and structurally strengthened cores with high density foams. The strongest = lightest known materials were used on every board we hand made. They were lightweight, state of the art flying machines. In most cases after one years use they retained absolutely no resale value.
Molded surfboards should take up only a small space in the surf shop. The beginner boards and buoys section. Some where within the area labeled, for kooks only. Oh yeah there a pretty good deal for the sellout pro or label owner who feels a need to pad his wallet. Molded sailboards are another animal all together. No flex, no problem. To light, just right. Guaranteed against defects for a year or your money back. And they put us custom sailboard builders all but out of business. Only a small contingent of the old faithful wind surfers remain loyal to polyester. On the other hand surfboards have a life uniquely all their own and its completely about flex. To much or not enough and a surfboard will become lethargic or unresponsive. Forever, will the molded surfboard be taking up room in our landfills. Please if you own one pass it on to the next kook.

Solutions coming soon....