What ever happened to this idea by Jeff Ho. Was it a valid design or a hoax?
I know this is based on Greenoughs spoon but were these stand up models any good?
If they actually rode nice maybe a modern compsand version could be made with wood instead of glass in the tail.
I got this out of a 1975 Surfer mag that my friend found.
Cheers, JD
Here is a pic of the flexy fin that goes with it. It has veined cuts in it to help it flex.
i rember that add, etc. but do not recall any feedback on how they worked. KP would know. having a spoon and knowing how it doesn’t float too well, i suspect there is too much glass in the tail area of that board…KP??
I used a fin very much like the one in a picture on a 6’4" single fin summer board (kind of a Ala Moana Brewer style board shaped by Pat Flecky) back in the mid mid 70’s. I’m thinking Bahne made the fin but I could be wrong. Anyway, the fin went OK, but not good enough to use that design forever.
That board looks like it would be awfully tail heavy.
Mike
First off that fin and variations of it came about in the early 70’s via Ho and maybe others.
Bahne and Ho had a relationship…Bahne sold some surfboards through the Ho shop and Ho’s fins
most certainly were made/mfg by Fins Unlimited. to fit in their box…Bahne owned FU.
As to that fin, it was near razor sharp and coincided with the introduction of the leash and
the many home grown variants of the leash. Using that fin and some of the slingshot leashes, led
to some nasty hand and between the finger cuts on me and others. Not to mention the more serious
injuries that such a fin could lead to.
Jeff Ho was always innovating or experimenting and a visit to his shop would always give you a direct
gilimpse into avante’ garde(or some other appropriate word) surfboard design. As to the pic above being
an ad for the sale and promotion of spoon based standup boards…I highly doubt it.
Come to think of it, I remember seeing a tunnel fin on a Jeff Ho board in the used rack at his shop one day about the time that ad went to press. Don’t recall ever seeing any pictures of it though. It was a long low profile fiberglass tunnel unlike any of the others I’ve seen lately. Skip Engbloom was behind the counter that day and we spoke about it briefly. He didn’t seem very stoked on it… (?)
The fiberglass flex tails are still being made by at least two people I can think of… The Pendoflex boards down in San Diego are rumored to be made in that fashion, then the scoop is filled in with EVA foam which is reshaped to a more conventional dome deck contour.
Mitchell Rae in Australia is doing something like that with the deck scoop filled in with flexible foam. Those too are initially glass or carbon flex panels.
Without dissecting a couple, I can’t say for certain but I think the Pendoflex and Rae boards are pretty similar in construction.
Actually I remember a board with a tunnel section coming down the midline of the board.
Sort of a pipeline tunnel.
Yeah! That sound like it. It’s been a long time… maybe the board had a fin as well?