Bing Vincent -- 1968

The Bing Vincent was one of the earliest transition shortboards in So Cal that featured a pointed, pulled-in nose. The diamond tail was very broad at the back, and the wide point was forward....which netted a long, straight tail relative to its short length. There was little or no V in the tail. The fin was set forward.  

 



Greg Noll's comparable model was the "Ironing Board" They set the fin a little further back...


Rick -- another South Bay builder -- also had their own version, with the fin even further back...  
 
 

I never rode any shapes like this, so I have no idea how they fared in the water...but they quickly disappeared from the scene. Either they didn't work, or were never properly tuned in. Could be an interesting project to sort out with today's backlog of hull knowledge.

6 comments:

Quiver said...

I'm very interested in this design and would love someone to chime in with some stories of how they ride. I feel like the template could migrate towards a Lis Fish, maybe modernize the bottom contours, and this would be a good board for Northern California. We have plenty of soft days on the reefs, or soft days at Ocean Beach, SF. I imagine the shape would still ride well as the waves got more powerful, but not quite handle tube riding.

Unknown said...

I was working at Rick Surfboards at the time. I had a 9' 3" Barry Kanaiapuni pintail "mini gun". So I had been surfing a board that was stiff and edgy in beach breaks for months, struggling with the "short" length and catching rails a lot. I was out in the water and John Leininger paddled out. He had just shaped a 7'3" shape very similar to the one pictured. (Yes, John shaped a few). We called them the "Greenough Baby" shape. No Vee in the tail. John and I traded boards, his being 2 feet shorter, but the wide tail made paddling easy. This was the "Critical Mass" point in my surfing career. At the first wave, my surfing EXPLODED. All of a sudden I could climb and drop and maneuver where I wanted to on the wave with that big molded Greenough fin! I refused to give it back to him to the point that he went to work in the shop carrying my BK mini gun to the store. I walked in with all the cash I had and paid John for the "Baby" and put my mini gun up for sale . A friend out in the water didn't even recognize me that day because my surfing was so "out of my head"! My recollection was they felt "skatey" but this was coming from a world that was only longboarding and some Vee bottoms up to that point. The big fin prevented spin-outs of that wide tail MOST of the time. Big carvey cutbacks and "vertical" surfing for the day. Six months later we were riding narrower round tails with the wide point 3"-4" fwd. of center and getting as much turning with longer projections out of the turns. --Speedshaper---

Quiver said...

Thank you Speedshaper. You've cause a spark and a slow burn is the result. It's been over a year since I've wanted to try a new shape, now I'm itching to try one like this. As Paul points out, this is a very rare shape, and one that hasn't been rediscovered. Since I won't be able to borrow one, or find one used, or even find one in a shop, I'll have to think about which shaper is most likely to correctly translate this shape. I know there are probably holes in my understanding that a shaper would have to fill with their experience.

Paul Gross said...

I think Quiver's comparison to the Lis Fish is good. These outlines do look like stretched out fishes.

My instinct would be to use Liddle's 2 plus 1 fin arrangement, and fairly straight tail rocker... like 1" on a 7 footer.

Unknown said...

I looked through old Surfer Mags last night from spring '67 through winter '69 to see if Rick's or someone else had pics of something like the "Baby" shape. Nope! It was a real flash on the scene and disappear. Did find the Rick roundtail ('68) and flextail ('69) ads that seemed to be the first ads for those designs. We experimented a lot with all kinds of things, a very open-minded shop back then.
Considering the time and my faulty memory, I surmise that there was a shallow belly in the nose, kind of a "pinched" rail dropping to a low, but rounded, thinned out rail in the tail. Paul is spot on for the tail rocker, I remember it being very flat. Paul, would the 2+1 would have no toe in like Greg did on the board he shaped me in 91? Then a skinny Greenough fin instead of the "slab" that the original had. Man, now I'm getting stoked to shape one! Please, Quiver, let me know how it rides. I guess I'll sign up for the blog instead of linking from Surfmatters! --Speedshaper-- aka George

Unknown said...

One thing I forgot to mention: All of those boards that Paul featured were manufactured within 100 yards of each other! There was a lot of information exchange between the shapers in "Pollard Valley" as the short board revolution hit. Bendickson, Becker, Eaton and Noll and certianly others. Everyone was trying to get back on their feet after the short board revolution hit. The owners were competitors, but It wasn't cool to be a greedy capitalist back then. --Speedshaper--