My Story post 27

There are a few boards that have stuck in my memories from all the boards I made myself during the evolution days.

That first 7’2 was sum what of a tear drop shaped outline…. That is it had a fairly straight hip area, wide point was above center and the nose tapered more to a point. The next board I remember having was one I made at MP before I left in the spring of ’69 and moved up with Mike, Richie and gang to work at Wilderness in Santa Barbara.

Anyway, the board was 6’8 and for some reason I couldn’t get the deck line to work the way I’d like and it ended up with a long sweeping curve in the deck that peaked back of center…. Not a typical “ S “ deck line. The board worked well except the fin was made from a green pigmented panel which gave the thing a soft flex. The learning curve was continuing… don’t use pigmented panels for fins if you want a nice stiff snapping fin. The green finned board was a little different and I got teased about it some but it still rode good enough. Because of the fin it worked better in short beach break type waves, which during that particular time we got a number of great days on the back side of Faira and at Over Head BB. Now try surf Over Head BB, the place is way over crowded. Back then… we were the only guys there.

Another board I remember making was about in the middle of summer ’69. I wanted something that would float real well for the small summer surf so I made a generic type flat bottom board with soft rails around 6’6 x 21 x 3 and kept thickness out on the rails. The board floated me great but wouldn’t hold an edge for nothing. So, I put a resin bead around the apex of the rail from the tail two thirds up. This added about a half inch to the over all width of the board. I shaped the bead so the rail now had a nice edge on it. Ok, now I was set… set for a fall. The edge, added width and over all thickness made the board too stiff. I would have needed to gain about 50 lbs to be able to turn the darn thing. Almost every time I’d go to set an edge on a wave bigger than waist high I’d fall flat on my face. I wanted to rail surf the thing and didn’t have the body size for it. The learning curve continued…

Learning what worked was all trial and error. Board lengths, thicknesses, rail profiles, widths, outline curves, rockers… finding all the right ingredients. Ya know what? I wish I would have taken notes. Though there may have been others, the only guy I ever saw take notes was Nat Young.

D.R.

Something similar to what was.