Yea They’re sold out for now till they get their next shipment…
I bought somew of the last 1.8lbrs. Saturday
Jeff had actually re-rockered one into a 6’10" high performance shortboard he was going cut in Eric’s machine but I bought it to make me wooden 6’8" flyer ala Bert Burger with the pulled in tail bump…
Charlie bought 6 of the 1.4lbr’s to try out
I already made test boards of the 1.4 and 1.8 with no shaping involved just cleaned them up and lammed them as 7’6" fun boards… One out of balsa one out of Mahogany and Birch
The blanks are stringerless and are preshaped in a Jeff Johnston funboard shape so they are pre-rockered, bottoms done in a single to double with slight vee and rails cut. If you like the shape you just have to clean off the mold marks. Or you can re-shape them into anything you want that fits within the mold provided…
Since they are molded the denisty of the beads are tight and the surface skin is sealed if you don’t sand it troo much so it won’t suck resin like regular EPS and you don’t have to spackle it. Real easy to work with and real expensive for Jim and Jeff to make the mold $20,000 or more… Someone on the mainland is pouring them. Jeff is trying to convince Jim to switch to 1.5 versus 1.8 density…
My brother and I spent about an hour talking to Jeff Johnston at their factory while we were waiting for Jim to show up and Jeff showed and told us alot of neat stuff. Kind of eye opening stuff related to the business of surfboard manufacturing and the use of new technologies… Bottomline it’s all about sales and whos’ buying boards not to what Jeff or Jim might want…
Jeff is one of the parties responsible for Aviso and he showed and explained to us the whole project. The stuff’s been out and tested hard on the north shore over the last year and a half… Jeff’s real high energy and into epoxy and making light boards and they test everything even Greg’s stuff… Some are durable like Aviso (they start like $1500 for 6’2") and some are for safety/performance like the surflights. But they do hundreds of polys too to pay the bills. It’s amazing the amount if things they’ve got going on at the same time but you can see they battle being fought between making money to pay the bills and feed the family versus the mad scientist engineering track to create something better. It’s a difficult balance to maintain… But Bert and Greg there’s more going on with Epoxy EPS than anyone will admit too if that’s consolation for the “other” thread.
Funny part is that Jeff and Jim interested in this wood veneer stuff us grems are doing and may give that a go as well just to try it. We showed one of the completed balsa lammed 7’6" blanks and they were impressed witht he weight and strength. Jim even laughed when he saw Hicksy’s wininng Swaylocks logo on the tail by the rear fin…
Right now they are just glassing their EPS in various methods to get the lightest and strongest boards they can build for Andy to use… Yup trying to get Andy to compete on 4lb epoxied EPS with no one knowing about it… You go figure that one blue versus red…
Sorry for going off again… But it was a real eye opening experience again…
Oh by the way, we stopped over at the hollow wood board factory up the street and got blown away…
You would not believe what those guys are doing for the super rich…
The 10’-12’ Brewer wall hangers fullguns start at $15,000- $20,000 but are just absolute works of art.
A woodworkers dream…
They also make rideables but most of their work are the wall hangers…
The 1/4" intricate inlay work of Koa, Mango, Burled Walnut, Milo, etc is out of this world and they can actually make one of these in a week… It helps to have a complete woodworking factory occupying two warehouses full of wood and machines…
Their main business is custom hardwood inlay doors for the Multi-million dollar houses in Kahala, the big island or Hawaii Loa Ridge (like my bosses house) they usually take a board with them when they deliver the doors and usually sell them on the spot since it’s chump change for the folks living in these houses… I can’t imagine the cost of their doors…
What we saw blows everything in wood I’ve ever seen on sways to the next universe and then some… Would even make Roy want to crawl into a hole and hide with what he’s making…Yea and sorry Paul but these guys seem like they are in another league…
It’s amazing what’s really going on out there when you get a chance to peel back the onion…
