The sad thing with that original logo is that had the glass over it been sanded down and then coated with thinned resin before glassing it would have looked pretty good.
The board is restorable. It’s just too bad the owner didn’t have since enough to get a recommendation from someone who knew what they were doing, before he stripped the glasss. When you strip a board like that it goes from being something historically significant to just a piece of balsa. At this point it is a “has been”. It’s one thing do to something like that when you are young and ignorant, but another to destroy something of historical significance when you should know better. An aside; There is at least one fake Hobie Balsa floating around out there that fooled the experts. Might even be on display in a museum in The OC.
Mexi - beautiful board! How much did you have to ‘clean up’ on the original shape after the old glass had been taken off?
McDing, that is cool! I might have to get one made for this beast…
Mako-The sadder thing is that it has been lost since the picture was taken…
Bill- I was hoping he still had the area of lamination with the logo to put back on the board with the new glass job but it’s gone…
From a woodworking standpoint, the board is very restorable. Reproduce the logo using either a custom-cut stamp or a rice paper laminate printed from an image, glass to somewhat original specs and bring her back so that the next several generations can get a kick out of it.
Not my board, so not my choice, but it would be a bummer to see that reshaped into something else. Plenty of balsa out there for the purpose of making a more user-friendly surfboard…
Well said, Jeffrey
I finished stripping the glass and cleaned it up to level out the ripped up spots
The fin is just a tiny little guy. It was tacked on with some metal pins!
I might get hammered here, but I was thinking of just cleaning up the rotten nose. This would keep the outline and overall design the same but at 10’0 instead of 10’6. The benefit would be no new wood scarfed in.
Do NOT reshape this board, I have done frame offs for Kivlin, Quigg’s. Velzy’s.
it is a slow and deliberate job of the rebuilds, but a good job is a job worth doing
Those ‘‘metal pins’’ are in fact two finishing nails, after being tapped into the wood of the fin, had the heads cut off with cutting pliers. The cut nails are then aligned with the centerline of the board, and then shoved through the botton lam, so the rope and glass can be added, without losing the alignment of the fin. This was the technique taught to me by Ronald Patterson, when he was glassing for Wayne Land (Burland Surfboards) in 1958.
I saw Jim’s finished work on those boards first hand. Simply OUTSTANDING, in every sense of the word. Please follow his advice, and his example. You will not regret the experience.
The bottom 2 photos are the same board, a Kivlin brought to me by Rorce Cansler and a Paul Naude.
The poor survivor had suffered abuse by many hands over the years, it had been badly repaired using auto body Bondo, Plaster of Paris and surfboard foam.
Termites had done a fair amount of damage also, I had bass wood straight edges I screwed into the wood and ran my plunge router with a template collar to remove rotted and damaged balsa down to a 3/8" slot that I would hand fit 25 year old balsa as a new skin, I repeated this on subsequent planks until I had removed and replaced nearly all the wood…
it sits center place in Sun Diego board sports in Carlsbad.
a previous Kivlin rebuild went for 37,000$
Those boards were nasty Jim. You breathed live back into them and carried them on in history.
I didn’t, I bought that board at auction, it was Danny Brawner’s board and he restored it.
yes
getting a woodie…
pure porn…
anybody got some old growth
figured balsa contacts
to encourage this
impressionable laddie?
if not just buy a length from[frost?
and use the leffovas to make a hand or body
tool…ambrose…
what grand fortune
to be involved in
this Noble quest.
CONGRADULATIONS…