Milestones, everybody has them…. an important event or turning point. As well, a marker that tells us how far we’ve gone. For the New Year most of us look back and reflect at least a little and say we made it through another one. The marker.

Important events can happen any time of course, and can be something pleasant or not so pleasant. A turning point? Sometimes we can go a long while before we even notice we had one. Then it’s “hey, things are different now and you know what? It all started way back when”. I’ve been going through a turning point for the last half of this…now past year. So I guess you could say it’s not a turn but a long curve. I’ll save the story for another time.

Sometimes turning points can really change your life direction. When it comes to your vocation all of us will usually have a few through out our working days.

I’d have to say for sure one of the biggest turning points in my surfboard building career came one day early in the year of 1967. I was out surfing at the point in Ventura when my friend Peter came racing out into the lineup and said “Dennis, Bob Cooper is on the beach and he’s looking for a shaper. I told him I know a guy that shaped, he’s out there surfing right now. Would you like me to go out and tell him you’d like to talk to him?”

Cooper had come down to watch the surf while on his lunch break. He was Forman of The Morey-Pope shop at the time.

I paddled in, met Cooper and set up a time to go by the MP shop. When I got there I was directed to an empty shaping bay, given a blank and out line and told to shape a board. When I was finished Cooper gave it a look over and said “looks like you can shape” and gave me a job. I was only 18 years old, very fortunate and little did I know it at the time but, my life was going to be changed forever.

At the New Year we look back and we look forward. And who knows what events and turning points there may be. Work hard, do your best and be hopeful.

Happy New Year!

D.R.

Surf memories around Christmas time.

I was given a surfboard blank for Christmas when I was 14 that became my first surfboard.

Got my first wet suit, a farmer john, for Christmas when I was 16. Went to Malibu to try it out in the afternoon on Christmas day with my older brother, he drove, and my sisters boy friend. It was over cast and freezing cold. And Malibu is a summer break not a winter break so it was dead flat. But, ‘ya gotta go out anyway’. Sat there on my board and froze. Farmer john wet suits were about all there was at the time.

It’s nice if you live at the beach, because of the holiday, crowds can be a bit thinned which makes Christmas day a good surfing day.

A few years ago my son gave me a case of surf wax for Christmas. I still haven’t gone through it all.

Tools for keeping my block planes and finger planes sharp… only a guy gets stoked over tool gifts… my wife thinks of everything.

Surfing on Christmas day in Hawaii, forget the wet suit…do I miss that?

Being with family… 5 grand kids jumping around the house, we’ll have a great time.

Merry Christmas!

D.R.

Christmas day wet suit pose.

Learning to surf a shapers view post 3

Learning to surf takes time, a boat load of repetition, the right height to weight ratio surfboard and a good attitude about knowing your limitations.

It really is possible to hurt yourself and others in the water when surfing… or attempting to surf. When I was in high school there was a guy that went with his dad to the Dewey Weber shop one day after school to buy a board. Picked one out and proceeded directly to the beach at Santa Monica to try the new board out. Took the board out, caught some white water and stood up. When he lost his balance he dove off the board into 2 feet of water, hit his head in the sand and broke his neck… true story, I was there and saw it happen.

So don’t be in a rush to go pro! I know first hand how pumped you can get about surfing. But the learning curve can be steep, take it one step at a time. The best surfers are relaxed in the water. Start out by attempting to stay relaxed and as you advance the relaxed attitude will be a part of all your sessions. As well, know your limitations.

Knowing your limitations is part of the judgment thing. This past few days we’ve had some pretty good sized surf….finally! Of the west north west swell variety. North west swells in Ventura bring on a heavy long shore current that sweeps down the point rapidly. The surf was to large and the currents to strong for the beginner or novice surfer. Even so, there were some beginners attempting to go out in conditions way beyond their abilities. What happens is they get swept down the beach in the surf zone and end up at the pier, where they can then get in a world of hurt, being swept through the pier, bounced off the pilings or worse, rapped around a piling and drown. It has happened.

My personal opinion is that beginners shouldn’t attempt going out if the surf is bigger than head high. So how do you judge the size of surf? If there are people out in the lineup watch to see what a wave looks like when someone is riding one. If when a rider is standing close to straight up and the wave is curling about where their head is then the wave is head high. It’s also a good idea to watch the surf for a good 10 to 20 minutes to see how far apart the sets are and if by chance when you first get to the beach there has been a long lull between sets and you just haven’t seen the bigger ones. Also if smaller waves that are breaking inside of the surfers in the line up and you don’t see anyone riding the smaller waves it’s most likely because the sets are bigger and the surfers in the water are out far enough so as not to get picked off by the larger waves when they come.

If you get to the beach and no one is out you can judge the size of the surf by perspective. Look for an object that you can tell is a certain size and try to project its image out into the surf zone. You can also walk out to the waters edge and get a pretty good idea of what size of surf is breaking by just watching the surf for 5 or 10 minuets.

Be smart, stay relaxed, think before you go. Develop and use good judgment. And as the life guards say in Hawaii…when in doubt, don’t go out.

D.R.

My story post 8

The back yard of the house my family lived in when I was making and repairing surfboards had a big cement slab that was pretty good for skateboarding. There were some mean cracks in it, but possible to navigate.

The house we lived in before that had a killer circular drive way. The house set below the street maybe about 8 feet. So the circular drive way ramped up to street level on both ends, made for great skateboarding. I would walk to the top on one side, jump on my skateboard and ride down the drive way and up the other side, turn and ride down then up the other side again, back and forth for hours practicing and developing my skills. No doubt all that skateboarding helped my surfing. I didn’t get to the beach but once or twice a month back then but I did the skateboard thing constantly.

But how’s this for a near miss? In 1964-’65 my dad worked for a company in Newbury Park, which was about an hour drive from where we lived. Wanting to live closer to where my dad worked my parents found a lot in Oxnard Shores… a beach community that was maybe 25 minuets form where my dad worked.

The property was bought and an architect hired to design the house for the lot. The lot BTW was about 6 lots up from the beach. Well, right when my parents were shopping for a construction loan to build the house on that Oxnard Shores lot, my dad was laid off his Newbury Park job. They had actually already sold the house we lived at the time so we had to move… all be it not to Oxnard Shores.

My parents rented the house with the circular driveway that I loved to skateboard on in the interim while they found a house for the family to settle into in the same area we had been. All was not lost I guess, because the house we moved into was the house I was able to put my little surfboard shack up at.

Though sometimes I wonder what life events would have developed had we moved to Oxnard Shores. The The Campbell brothers are from Oxnard Shores… we would have most likely hooked up and surfed together… probably would have gone to school together. Duncan I can’t remember ever meeting. Malcolm and I have been acquainted for a long time. Some 6 or 8 years after the would be family move, in the early seventies, Malcolm and I were in the same geology class at Ventura College. We sat next to each other the whole semester. I never new he made surfboards until one day on a class field trip we started talking about surfing and boards. So, it seems we went to school together after all, a curious circumstance.

D.R.

Surveying Oxnard Shores property circa 1964

How much has shaping surfboards changed over the years? What has become normal now was not accepted once, or at least looked at with some scorn. Shaping machines, profilers, even molded boards are Ok. It’s interesting don’t you think, the way the surfboard industry has evolved and changed?

I can remember when one of the first shaping machines in California ramped up their business. They had to try and keep their business location secret so vandals would have a hard time finding them… Yeah, guys thought shaping machines were going to ruin everything… kill the soul of surfing. So hindering their operation was considered a good thing. Now? A shaper could get the impression that if he didn’t send his orders out to be pre-shaped by a machine his boards weren’t ‘state of the art’ and therefore of poorer quality than boards shaped by machines.

There was a time when massed produced surfboards made in a big factory by hourly employees that didn’t know the first thing about surfing was considered ‘not a good thing’. As well, surfboards made via a mold process also were considered ‘not a good thing’. Now? Massed produced boards made with traditional materials or molded sandwich construction or molded hollow core… it’s all considered good.

In the sixty’s surfboard production was pretty concentrated. In the U.S there were maybe about a dozen labels, mainly in California, that made most of the boards we all rode. Then at the turn of the decade things changed. By 1970 the industry started fragmenting. The dominating labels could not keep up to the changes being made to board design so small shops started popping up all over the west coast and east coast. The surfboard became a local thing. The board you rode came from the area you lived in or frequented for surf.

Now it seems it’s been changing into the dominate label thing again. And, with the increase in overseas production in Thailand and China it almost doesn’t make sense for the shaper that produces 1000 boards a year to make boards in the U.S. Because it’s cheaper to have a China production shop machine a shape in mass, produce boards start to finish and ship them directly to dealers.

I don’t know though… I think it’s very strange to see the little labels on surfboards that say “Made in Thailand” or “Made in China”. Call me old fashioned.

D.R.