I shaped this board in the early 80's from three inspirations...
Skip Frye built an egg for Gary Keating in the early 70's that was so thin, you could flex it by pushing down on the deck with your hand when it was sitting on the floor with a fin in it. Just amazing. Around 6'6'', as I recall.
Another incredibly thin, 70's era board was a hull shaped by Tim Bowler that he called "The Bottom Half." The deck was completely shaved off of it.
The third one was a bladed-out 6'8'' Dirt Machine Greg Liddle built for Steve K. It took a little bit of a wave for it to get going, but once it broke free, it went like a rocket.
So with those were the boards I had in mind when I shaped this one. I wanted minimum thickness still retaining a little bit of S in the deck. I think I used 4 oz cloth.
It ended up being a good board in clean surf head high or better...
3 comments:
Curious- what pulled you away from those extremes, back to a thicker, more heavily glassed board?
I can see how the lack of float would affect the wave catching ability, are you saying it also affected achieving initial momentum?
And was going with such a light glass job just economically unsustainable (and a downer for your shaping efforts)?
Not that I'm ever going to order one :) That money is earmarked for more mats :) Just curious.
This was a really good board, but because it was so thin, it just didn't want to go unless there was enough power in the wave to push it. But if there was, it flew.
And, the waves had to be super clean as well. Any bump made the board really hard to control.
The light glass was to keep the super thin board from being a complete "sinker" in the water. A regular glass job would have turned it into a submarine.
That is awesome
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