My story post 3

So I had a surfboard blank. And as would be, I got around $20 from my grand parents for Christmas. I don’t think I waited more than a day after Christmas to get someone to drive me to the Van Nuys Standard Brands Paint store, you remember Standard Brands? That was like the original discount home center, and they carried resin and fiberglass. So I used my Christmas money to by the fiberglass and resin for my surfboard. I was set.

Surely no one dreamed of where this surfboard thing was going at the time. But, I think my parents were quite supportive of me and how much I wanted to make a surfboard and go surfing. No doubt it some times bugged the heck out of them. At the same time seems it became a good tool for them too. Any time I’d get myself into trouble they had the “ok you’re on restriction” line and it would be no more surfing or surf stuff for X number of weeks. Yeah, but did they know, I would hide in my closet to look at the latest issue of surfer magazine?

I got started on my surfboard. Had to sand the blank a bit and clean it up. Cut it in half and glue a ¾ inch redwood stringer in it. Clean the stringer up. Then glass it. Sand the glass job. And the fin? I made one in wood shop. Mahogany with a Maltese cross cut out of it. I got some orange pigment and did the final color work of stripes along the stringer and panels along both sides of the board. All in all it turned out good enough, probably weighed in at about 32lbs. The picture is me in the first stages of making my first surfboard.