I had a visit with my mother today, she came out for the afternoon. So we had the whole family at the house. My daughters two girls are now teenagers and my mom was looking at them then turns to me and says… “ I never had to worry about you or where you were when you were a teenager”. I had never given this much thought but she went on to say… “ yeah, Dennis you were always out back in your surfboard shack. I always knew where you were… out back working on your surfboards”.

To think back now, I’d come home from school and go work on surfboards. On the weekends if I didn’t have a ride to the beach I’d be in my shack doing something on a surfboard. It really wasn’t a job for me it was just what I did. Who knows how much time I spent working on a ding repair? It didn’t matter what kind of repair I’d get to do either. If I’d never done anything like it before, like cutting the corner of a nose off and fitting a new piece of foam and reshaping and glassing it. I’d just figure it out and work at it until it was done. Then ask for couple bucks when the board was done…. remember every thing was a lot cheaper back then.

Learning by doing, and with no ones help… Like the first time me and a couple friends did some resin work… we didn’t know that you needed acetone to clean up with. We used some other solvent that of course didn’t work. Then went to wash up with soap and water in his mothers kitchen sink. We made one serious mess of that sink…. His mother was pissed!

My first planer? I bought one that the motor sat below the table.. you know that the planers we use to shape a surfboard are usually used by carpenters on doors. So they are usually used with a fence on them, we take the fences off to shape surfboards. My first planer was made with a permanent fence and the motor housing was part of the fence so the planer wouldn’t lay flat on the blank surface. I learned right away I needed a different planer. Had no one to tell me which kind to get but spent time looking at tool catalogs to find what would work and for the amount of money I could pay.

My little surfboard shack. I spent hours and hours messing with surfboards in it. Figuring out how to laminate a board better, or sanding one and realizing that if I’d do a better job with the resin work sanding it wouldn’t be so hard. How to get a gloss coat just right....

I loved every minute…. I really can’t say I’ve changed… My shack is a little bigger but I still love messing with surfboards.

D.R.