over on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Surf-Board_W0QQitemZ7186366362QQcategoryZ22710QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
does anyone remember these boards from the mid 70’s I had one in the UK around 78 or 79, all I can remember about it was that I had to surf it way forward to get any speed from our mushy waves…
Now you did it. Get him, Ben. Mike
…starting bid $1??
“cheap as chips”
REMEMBER THE STINGER???
What a questiion…lol,
I think they are the reason that the boards are narrow today. They are and still are the best way to get a large surface from releasing pressure from the bottom of the board.
Ben, thanks for such a insight.
surrfdaddy
they were a passing fad here back in the day, somewhere between 7’ s/f pintail ‘shortboards’ and the dawn of the thruster.
FWIW the board on ebay is a lopez lightning bolt stinger [currently at about $120… sure it will go much higher, even tho it’s a bit of a shed - condition wise]
As a kid I remember walking into SurfLine Hawaii and just drooling over all the Stingers on the rack back in the 70’s. I had no money but I thought, one day… A few years later after they were old news I got to ride one and thought, “Thank goodness I didn’t have the money!!!”
hahaha …
…thanks for that carve ! it’s not just me then !!
ben
[I made one , and I also rode a couple of the “originals” [or , at least , Australian copies , I should say] . I discovered from that …buttons , mark , larry and dane are / were even better surfers than I thought [and I already really ADMIRED their surfing !]
Shaping a 6’1 x19&1/4 x 2&3/8 swallow tail stinger today
Aloha! The sting design was an attempt in those days to break up the traditional, long, single fin rail line. The big sting, and even more rad, the step- bottom stinger, definitely loosened the things up. Don’t forget moving the fin way up! I made a bunch of the things back then, I was most impressed by the way the board would pivot off the center, kind of like rotating off the wide point. It wasn’t long before the twin fin craze though, and the idea kind of vanished… What really impressed me though, was a ‘quiver’ article in Surfer around 1972 (?), Dick Brewer’s personal 6-6, yellow tint, red glass-on ‘Brewer’ fin, slot concave in the nose, big, hard stings with flute concaves under them, and a total tail concave that was actually an ‘inverted vee’. So, one day I went to surf San Miguel, solid head high, and roping. I was sitting in my friend’s truck thawing out after surf, watching this blond hair guy tearing it up on a bright yellow board. Whereas the regular single fins were going slow and turning off the bottom, this guy was burning down the line, way high up on the face, just whacking the lip with every pump. Sure enough, the guy comes in and walks right up to the truck next to mine, and puts it in the back. I got a total eye-full, it was the magazine model. Years later, I was over here, and I was ‘the Brewer guy’. One day, we were driving to town, and I told him that story. I got the whole scoops on that board, and also a lecture on ‘inverted vee’ versus a regular curvy concave. My whole life, I’ve studied surfboards, of all the boards I’ve seen that impressed me, that board is one of the top ones. Aloha…RH