Wow. Just, wow.
Thanks for sharing, that is a vision of beauty! Truly beautiful…
Aloha,…Now that’s not the WAVE I remember coming out of the Saticoy factory,…solid light blue or white with dark seam line and air gill.
What a surprise!!!
Aloha, Randy
Exactly the ones that Peter Townend and Mike Purpus rode looked nothing like that beauty, they may have lasted longer if they did.
I had that same model, except without the gorgeous custom paint job!! that is superb.
Not what I expected when I opened this thread. Beautiful work!
figured it was going to be like new, original, never been surfed, like it was straight out of saticoy the day it was purchased. that friggin' blows any of that away-by far!!
Did the owner have any info as to the when and who on that paint job? Pretty impressive. Certainly not a factory job. I’m guessing it was done long after the board was built. Possibly, to cover up some age and damage.
Paul, who built those and where. I’ve never seen those before. That paint work is truly inspiring!
Thanks for sharing.
Barry
The guy who had it painted is a show car guy…He bought it in Oregon for $300…It was pretty beat up …
He took it to an air brush artist, then to a hand-pinliner…$300 later it’s as it looks now, which matches his '77 fancied out convertible pick up truck…
He says the board helps to win trophies at the car shows…
If you click on the pictures then enlarge them, the details show better…The purple metal flake is stunning in the sunlight…He was wondering if I’d take it as a payment on one of my boards…Tempting, but he needs to keep it…I don’t think he really knows how unique that board is…Off the scale…
That’s a ridiculous price to pay for a beat up board made with failed, obsolete technology!
You did the right thing. Despite the fact that the board was a POS he sunk money into, the end result is too good to part with. Not to mention the fact that he has $600 into a board that’s nothing special, at its core.
I think you made the correct choice, too. I’m with Sammy. Cool paint job. Probably could have been done on any board for a car show. My recollection of the hollow WAVE boards is that they were gimicky, leaky, pieces of shit although I don’t know anyone who actually owned one. Even from a historical perspective I don’t find them interesting. Mike
Back in The day around 1974 or so a Friend bought a hollow wave board That was a Dick Brewer 6’8" design.
He bought it as his travel board after getting a board broken by an airline going to Puerto Rico. e took a trip down the Baja and I surfed afew waves on that board. I have to say that it was not all that bad of a ride. Butt ugly as I recall but not a bad board
had one . it was ok, but the leaking seams==kinda heavy too. plus, the way the 2 halves were connected, the rails weren't really rails. in otherwords, didn't have much shape as i recall.
nonetheless, props to them for thinking outside the box way back then.
the boards were made in saticoy, california(east ventucky). they did not come painted that way. perhaps google W.A.V.E. or hollow w.a.v.e. surfboards. mike purpus was one of the "big name" team riders at the time...
I had a 6’6" swallow during the early '70s. Lot’s of fun 'til the seams cracked. That seemed to be inevitable with those boards.
Interesting. Some 40+ years later and they are still trying to build two-piece surfboards. I’ve seen some recently built boards made of this construction come in for ding repair. Always the seams that split open. Probably from China.
Years ago, I saw a board at Lindens like this type. Clear plastic with seams that were taped and appeared to have been heat-shrinked with a tape of some sort.
They keep trying to take short cuts.
Foam and fiberglass still rules.
Barry
Yep…
I’d guess the cracks resulted from repeated expansion/contraction of the air inside the board due to temperature flunctuations. Think about it: one minute it’s baking in the sun on top of your car (this was before reflective board bags), the next minute you’re throwing it into 50˚-65˚F water and putting additional, intermitent pressure on the deck.
The W.A.V.E.s I had (the 6’6" pictured above and a 6’10" diamond tail) each had a little, plastic valve (called a “gill” by the company") that screwed into the deck near the tip of the nose. This was supposed to equalize changing air pressure inside the hull.
Obviously, the device wasn’t really up to the task assigned to it: the rail seams on both my boards eventually cracked (despite never having suffered any impacts of consequence) as did those of every W.A.V.E. ridden by any of my friends.
The rail seams came from the factory painted with a latex-like stripe that resembled the grip material you find on the handles of tools like pliers and pruning shears. The cracks would eventually breach even this relatively elastic stuff and the board would begin taking on water. There were also stantions of honeycomb material down the center line of the board which were supposed to act kind of like an I-beam to keep the deck from compressing under the riders weight.
I eventually sold mine to a guy who loved the things enough to be willing to periodically strip them down and repair the cracks, then “restripe” the rails. I’d be surprised if he ever found a permanent solution to the problem. He doubtless had to repeat the process over and over.
“kinda heavy too” That’s not my recollection: because they were so
buoyant, they felt quite lively: almost weightless to me. You knew immediately when the rail had split, though, even before you saw the crack: as soon as they
started taking on water/weight, the board’s performance would plummet like a
stone.
The early designs (shape-wise) were pretty doggie. The “second generation” shapes (which both of mine were) rode noticeably better. But all suffered from the same, fatal, rail seam durability defect.
There were other attempts at hollow boards back then. Hansen and Jacobs had fiberglass/high-density sheet foam sandwiches around '69 or '70, if memory serves. And then there was Aquajet Honeycomb, whose construction was similar to W.A.V.E.'s, with the sheets of composite cells.
I never owned or ridden a WAVE, but back then I and even now I really liked some of their outlines, clean and simple. They had quite a stable of designers, Aipa, Brewer, Yater, Morey’s G&S Waterskate and someone mentioned Bill Hubina. You gotta at least give them props for trying…this was like 40 yrs. ago.