Old School Hi-Pro

Sally is a woman who knows what she wants. She lives with four huge dogs, makes her own sausage, and has little patience for smalltalk. I suspect she has roots in a Rocky Mountain state. Maybe even Alaska.
A few weeks ago she called to order a board.
"I want a log," she barked into the phone. "Ten feet long and wide as hell."
When asked about her most frequented surf spots, she ticked off a list that would make our most hardened, heavily-bearded northcoast hellmen pucker in fear. Real ugly stuff--top to bottom suckout dredgers, sharky rock pits, thick horror shows with freakish appendages.
"A log?" I asked.
"Yeah," she replied. "And make it old school. Rolled bottom, single fin, heavy as a mofo."
"You might have some problems carrying a really wide board," I offered.
"What do you care?"

The information-gathering process was no less thorny. When I inquired as to her weight, she replied, "Somewhere between zero and a freaking million." When I asked her what she wanted the board to do, she replied, "Everything I can't, I'm forty two years old for God's sake."
I was smitten.
Complex women have always held me in thrall. Their powers of vexation seem unlimited, their motivations hazy. Psychologists might speculate that these women are embodiments of my self critical nature. That I seek them out to deflate an ever-swelling ego. That I attempt to recreate a dynamic with my mother, a complex woman with a penchant for making delicious kugels.
I took on the project--what else could I do?

As is my custom, I emailed her a few snaps of the freshly-shaped board. She replied a week later (message sent at 3:23am) with the following message, perfect in its litigious ambiguity:
You bastard.
The postscript read: get a haircut.

War Pony Chronicles

I have a policy when it comes to taking orders from guys who've been drinking: give them forty-eight hours, then call them back.
This particular decree was ratified a few years ago while dropping off boards at the Fattyshack. Local ripper Donnie was picking up a ding repair and, as can happen at the Fattyshack, beers were opened.
When local rippers see fresh foam on the glassing racks, their worldview narrows. They find themselves suddenly able to focus on three things only:
1. Touching the surfboard.
2. Ordering a surfboard just like it, only, 'with a few small changes.'
3. Drinking beer.
I blame not these men, attributing their response to the complex biology of manhood--desire, acquisition, celebration.
Donnie ordered a new board and, to celebrate, cracked a fresh Tecate, feeling like a new man. The problem was that that new man also wanted to order a board, then crack a fresh Tecate to celebrate.
Each new beer produced a new man, and each new man needed his own board.
When the evening was done, Fatty had to direct me to her guest bedroom. I had tried to match Donnie's beer-per-board revelry, failing somewhere between the balsa pipeliner and buckshot-weighted tow-in board.
My pockets were stuffed with new new order cards featuring everything from the old standards (twin and quad fin fish), to the experimental (finless wooden kelp-destroyer), to the downright perverse (an outer-bar gun whose length exceeded that of my shaping room).
Fats was in her shop the next morning when I woke, but she left a strong pot of coffee on for me. She's an amazing woman. When I found her later she pushed Donnie's phone number at me.
"Call him tomorrow," she said, smiling. "When he's feeling better."
Sure enough, when I called Donnie the next day it was clear that the forty-eight hours of sobriety had given him some time to reflect. His board order, at one moment numbering more than Ted Stevens' felony convictions, had been reduced to a mere two.
"I probably don't need the sixteen foot paddleboard just yet," he said sheepishly.

So, true to policy, I had to call Anton back forty-eight hours after he ordered his new War Pony (he had a few in him when he rang me up for the order).
Turns out he was still riding shotgun on the stoke wagon, using the intervening hours to decide on a glass schedule and color scheme.

The War Pony is a high performance fish design. It borrows liberally from the contemporary thruster in rocker and foil, but retains a lot of fish volume. The result is speed, maneuverability, and glide.

This one's a quad, for maximum ripability.

I like those edges crisp!
Anyway, do yourself and those around you a favor this election season: have a glass of your local brew of choice (currently, mine is a 2005 McKenzie Pinot Noir), call your local shaper, and participate in a time-honored tradition that may not be with us for too much longer. Order up a custom board, support your local economy, and really stick it to the terrorists.
Just don't be surprised if the guy calls you back in forty-eight hours.

The Child is the Father of the Man

A few years ago, Conrad moved from North of the Bridge to Really North of the Bridge.
He brought with him a hound dog, a tractor, and his father's 1973 fluted-wing single fin. It was his father's first custom order, and had enlightened him to the wonders of glide.

Three decades later, when Conrad's dad noted that his son was partial to chippy tri-fins, he intervened. It is every parent's responsibility to educate their offspring, so he handed over his prized board and a challenge:
Learn to feel the wave.
Conrad took his pop's fluted-wing single fin and did just that. He put the old blue board through its paces in progressively colder, larger waves. It glided, it swooped, it enlightened him to the wonders of trim.
And he found that not only could he feel the wave, but if he listened closely, he could hear it, too.
Unfortunately, lately he's been hearing a lot of wheezing coming from the blue board, some clicking coming from under the hood, a little squeakiness from the wheel area.
Retirement was imminent.

Conrad wanted another single fin, but with some modern refinements. Because the original shaper hadn't signed the board or placed logos on it, and because Conrad's father couldn't remember the name of the shaper other than it may have had an O in it, actually maybe a P now that he thought about it, the job landed squarely on my shoulders.
The board got stretched from 7'2 to 7'8 to maximize glide and trim possibilities.

Although the board received a thoroughly modern foil, the beak nose was preserved for the bitchin' factor.

The tail was thinned considerably, but the fluted wings stayed put. Why mess with a good thing?

The Original blue, 1973, fluted-wing, rounded pintail trim master about to be put to pasture. Two generations of stoked surfers can't be wrong.

Spoony Love

In the 1940s, the Pacific Ocean, the United States Military, and Bob Simmons aligned for a few brief moments.

The collision was the equivalent of a surfboard design Big Bang—an expanded hydrodynamic universe whose effects are still being felt, scrutinized, and elaborated upon today.
Bob Simmons’ influence on surfboard design is so vast, so cosmic, that virtually every surfboard shaped in the last sixty years contains within it, somewhere, a molecule or two of Simmons DNA. If you’ve ridden a board with rocker, convexes, concaves, a tuned-in tail shape, round rails, a precise foil, domed deck, or sandwich construction, you’ve bumped uglies with the master.
His spoon design, which featured a scooped nose, parallel rails, concave/convex bottom, and wide tailblock with a single low-aspect fin on each rail, has enjoyed considerable attention these last few years.

Two Girls, Two Spoons

Recent tributes include Greg Noll’s incredible balsa Simmons Spoon reproductions and The Swift Movement’s mini-Simmons series, including shrunken-down Simmons spoons in various sizes, some featuring impossibly wide swallow tails.
The boards were revived, in part, by fish enthusiast/Hydrodynamica stoker Richard Kenvin (“RK” to those who know him so, clearly, “Richard Kenvin” to me), shaped by Joe Bauguess for The Swift Movement, and researched by John Elwell, a San Diego surf pioneer, Simmons biographer, surf historian, 1950s North County lifeguard, and witness to Simmons drowning death in 1954. Their flagship design, a scaled down styro version of Elwell’s original 9 foot, twin-finned balsa, was dubbed ‘Casper.’
It is rumored to rip.
I am a man—weak, suggestible, easily influenced by curvy things. When I first saw a picture of Kenvin’s Casper, I was smitten.
I was also thrown off—it didn’t look right, and like all forms contrary to expectation (extra toes, extra nipples), I was drawn to it. Because North of the Bridge is somewhat of a design-trend hinterland, I took to the phones, talked to some unsuspecting folks, chased down rumors that a nearby shop actually had one on the rack.
I got nada, or, as my people would say, bupkis.

Necessity breeds surfboards, so I got to work shaping my own based on rumor, innuendo, extrapolation, the occasional blurry online photo or video grab, and a few lengthy consultations with my friend, The Mendocino Brewing Company’s Red Tail Ale.
My partner, a grumpy old stringerless Walker blank, gladly swapped out its original nebulous form for the Simmons-inspired one.

It was a joy to shape, to think carefully about every step, every planer pass, each curve and flat.

And to keep in mind that Simmons contemplated all the same choices--except that he had no reference points for his ideas. He turned curves where there had previously been flats. He thinned tails that had previously been thick. Added a fin where before there had always been just the flat bottom of a wooden surfboard.
During the shaping session, I felt I was standing on the shoulders of a giant. Until I realized it was Simmons who could see farthest, standing on the carcasses of the surfboards of his era, staring down the future, challenging it to go on without him.

So far, it hasn't.

The Heat is On

Did I mention my shop gets hot?

The official start to fall brought scorching temps to the North Bay. Took a break this afternoon, found a shady nook in the backyard, and set about foiling some fins.

Cold Tecates were involved.

A Man of Many Faces

Derek is a man with many names: D-Dog, D-Day, Double D, WonDerek Woman, Bro Derek, Dericky Martin or, if you're over 30, Dericky Schroeder.
He recently commissioned a "shaper's choice" board, which gave me pause--what do you build for the guy who owns property at J-Bay, paddle-battles PWCs in triple overhead French beachbreak, founded an eco-surf startup, has a ponytail, and hikes into mysto Mexican heavers, living off of bugs and his own hair clippings for weeks on end?
Answer: Hi-Pro twin finner.

6'8", full template, pulled in nose and relaxed rocker for glide and snap.
Double wing pintail=maximum fun in the pocket.

Secret surprise in the back!

Home-made marine ply twinnies with a modified MR template.

Can't tell you about the glass job, as I'm turning it over to Fatty as a "glasser's choice," but I can tell you this: I like surfboards.
And watermelon after Labor Day!

Five Fingers of Fun

It's a real pleasure working with guys like E from Up North. Open-minded, willing to put up with my more, um, obsessive board-building tendencies, and stoked out of his mind.
He's also got a bitchin' Northcoast blog here that highlights stoke, fog, and his impressive photography skills.

This Campbell Brothers inspired egg measures in at 6 1/2ish and features hand-foiled bamboo blades by 101 Fin Company's Marlin Bacon--just the right combination of snap and soul.

Glassing (including fins, opaque bottom wrap and pinline) by Leslie Anderson, who once got drunk and told me she had a crush on Mitt Romney.

This board is designed as an all 'rounder, but I predict that on the morning the first long-period NW of the season starts to show on the buoys, this little egg is going to creep into bed with E and begin to whisper...