“WOW, Flexspoon.com has tons of info!!”
Yes… and lots more than that behind the scenes!
Many thanks to George Daland, webmaster of flexspoon.com
Carl,
I’m always in awe of anyone who sets out to build their first spoon! I remember tracing the outline of Greenough’s spoon from an ad in Surfer magazine and making a plywood kneeboard.
Here’s a page with some views of the amazing flex that a Greenough edge board has/needs to function as designed.
http://flexspoon.com/all_flex/index.html And that board is stiff compared to Greenough’s edge board.
Feel free to PM me. I’m very interested in your project plus I spent some time with Paul Gross and Greenough’s last carbon fiber edge board just 3 weeks ago. Incredible stuff.
chipfish61 - He’s making a plug for a mold so the bondo is not an issue.
One of the things I have learned from owning spoons made by Paul is that sanding the board to tune the flex is the KEY. Both he and Greenough spent considerable time at this. Quite unlike a surfboard you can build a spoon that is a “non-performer” and then sand and tune it into a “winner”. In fact much better to “overbuild” and have to sand than “underbuild” and either break it or have to add material. Based on my experiences a spoon is never “done”.
Here’s a section of rail.
And here is edge board fin and Velo fin.
Congrats on “seeing the light”! When you eventually ride your spoon you will FEEL
what you have been missing. It’s the feeling.
Oh yeah - get your legs in shape - they are everything now.
Amazing inspiring job Carl.
Many thanks for sharing.
Coque.
“Special fin for low tide kelp on the point?”
Might want to check John Scott for that one…
T. Dogooder
Quote:
“Too bad Gross got hounded off of Swaylocks he has ALL the info on this stuff .”
I don’t know the story behind that , but I sincerely hope Paul returns here …please ??
His fins and design articles for Surfer , his boards …
I would LOVE to correspond with him here !
Paul , are you there somewhere ?
PLEASE come back , and bless us with your knowledge and experience again …
cheers !
ben chipper
perth
west oz
Every body needs Bondo !!!
Thanks for the photos.
Learning more and more each day
Ray
Quote:
I remember tracing the outline of Greenough’s spoon from an ad in Surfer magazine and making a plywood kneeboard.
Hi George!
do you remember how thick your plywood was? did the board float? and did it surf well?
sounds like something i’d be keen to try.
Thanks Mate
Well, got a bit more work done on the plug this weekend. The pictures are pretty self explanatory. Not perfect, but she still looks pretty. Hopefully if all goes well, I’ll be building the mold later this week. Enjoy! -Carl
Kirk- I’d love to see any pictures you might have. I’ve never actually seen one of these boards in person, so I am sorta flying by the seat of my pants.
doc- I’m gunna take the plug all the way to polished paint. Nice and smooth.
Benny- Yeah Elmers Ultimate is a godsend. I use it on pretty much everything these days. It shapes pretty easy, I usually have to come back and spackle any seams but definitely a lot less work than any other option.
Flexspoon- I love your website! Discovering it was the reason I embarked on this project. Any tips you might have to add, feel free! Thanks for the fin picture also! Thanks for the comments guys! -Carl
“…d’oh !..” [it’s a plug for a mould chippy , READ the whole thread , properly]
sorry , Carl , my apologies …
That looks to my eyes like a great plug , I can’t wait to see the finished product ! Your boards are always interesting …
cheers !
ben
will you be spraying / ?tinting / ? pigmenting ? the finished product ?
whats up carl i remember a ways back on here we jokingly argued back and forth on these things, at first i thought this thread was a joke i never thought u’d make one! looks sweet ur gonna freak on the speed you can get down the line applying your understanding of pumping a standard shorty not to mention tube riding it…have fun!
Can’t wait to see you riding it on the Point. My son has been hounding me for some time now to work with him on making one. He rides everything, short, fish, long, knee, mat. You will surely have a ball on it. Good luck.
Josh,
Plywood kneeboards were part of my progression:
-
bodysurfing/mat riding without fins
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bodysurfing with fins
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bodysurfing with fins and handboards/kicboards
4 plywood bellyboards(with bolt-on metal waterski fin)
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plywood kneeboards(with bolt-on metal waterski fin)
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Greenough type spoons
Plywood was 3/8" and we warped it(gave it rocker) by leaning against garage wall. Resined colorful flowered cloth to deck(it was the '60s). Barely floated(the way I like my boards). Everything being relative i thought they handled well(didn’t know any better). They(plywood kneeboards) only worked in steep waves and turning/cutbacks very limited. I actually tried riding a standup board twice because my friends could surf when I couldn’t. Was ready to buy the board and become a standup surfer.
Then I went to the opening night of Greenough’s Fantastic Plastic Machine in June 1969 in Hollywood.(had the surfboard in the back of my wagon). Standing in line with my non-surfer friend when some blond-haired surfer dude came out of the side door to the theater and walked right up to me like he knew me. “You guys want to get in for free?” he asked. “Sure!” we said. He took us in thru the side door, accross the stage and sat us down front-row center. “Thanks” we said and he walked away. It wasn’t until the movie started and they showed Greenough on the beach that we looked at each other and said “that’s the guy that let us in!”.
After watching Greenough run circles around the standup guys both on his mat and spoon I had to have one! I knew my direction. Fortunately Bob Bolen(the Greek) was making somewhat faithful copies of Velo(actually less hull and rocker) so I drove down to Greek’s shop and bought one the next day($95.00). I say fortunately because Greek only made egg-railed, Greenough-like spoons for a short time before he decided to incorporate his own ideas for the local Newport/Huntington wave conditions and made hard, downrail spoons that did not function like Greenough’s. Was riding it later that day. Returned the surfboard and never looked back.
So plywood kneeboard is cheap and easy and good practice for paddling and taking off and fun in tubey, beachbreak waves. Compared to spoons they barely work. What made Greenough stand out in the '60s to me were his roundhouse cutbacks which you can’t do on a plywood kneeboard.
I have a sneaky feeling that once you become accustomed to paddling/riding a buoyant foam board that the physical effort required to paddle a relatively non-buoyant spoon will put many people off. Just as paddling/riding a buoyant foam board would be completely foreign to me. I’ll bet Carl will give us some interesting feedback about this! Surfboard paddling = 100% arms, spoon paddling = 99.9% legs and .1% arms.
Carl - it makes me happy that flexspoon.com inspired you! I made it so I could learn. Here’s a pic from 1974 I found yesterday that shows how deep you can get.
flotation/buoyancy is not an asset in a spoon. It hampers paddling and diving under waves. Go for neutral and add flotation if/as needed(deck pad). A spoon is like a submarine and one of its most important assets is the ability to go down fast and deep. Any hinderance in this area can leave you in a dangerous position. Just think 100% opposite of foam boards.
Also shape the rails to create a good “handle” and don’t consider a leash. This all goes together - neutral buoyancy, rails that are easy to grip and no leash. Freedom.
Carl,
I was always in awe of how consistent Clark’s rockers were. We glued our own blanks through much of the ‘70’s. It was through this experience that I got an appreciation of the difficulties of gluing.
In November of 2004 you said, “I have checked the rocker over and over on thousands of Clark blanks, and I would have so say the one thing that they keep consistent is their inconsistency.”
Looking at the stuff that is available today, have you changed your opinion?
Well… It’s been a bit since my last update. I’ve had a couple of small setbacks, but I’ve gotten back on track. The mold turned out great!
The layup of the mold was, in order:
-
8 or so coats of mold release wax, and then a coat of PVA mold film.
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black gelcoat
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2 layers of 4 oz glass
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2 layers of 3/4 oz Chopped strand mat
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2 more layers of 3/4 oz CSMat
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1 layer of 6 oz cloth
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“Hotcoat” to cover up the sticky lam resin
This worked well, I would have used two layers of 1.5 oz CSM but Hawaii Fiberglass was out. The mold ended up being about 1/8 of inch thick and weighing about 12 or so pounds. I didn’t take to many pictures of the mold building process because it was so messy. I actually have bondo still stuck to my nice cannon digicam…
-Carl
Ok, btw, I decided to build the mold using polyester resin, just because I thought it would be a lot cheaper… and I’m glad that i did… I had to use a lot of resin! I used a jigsaw to cut off some of the extra glass. I’ll use a grinder to clean things up nicely later. The pics show how nice and glossy the mold is, it really paid off getting the plug nice and smooth before I made the mold.
Popping the mold off of the pug was a bit of a struggle, but in the end I won out- for a bit I was a little worried that I was going to have to grind the plug out… that would have sucked! I ended up sticking the mold back on to the plug to keep it from warping. I also added bracing to the mold tonight, to keep the mold nice and straight when I make the spoon. I’ll answer questions in the morning! -Carl
This is, hands down, my favorite Swaylocks Project Documentation so far in 2006. Nice work Carl!
A project like this really illustrates the difference in precision between a pro and most of us backyarders - even when Carl’s making something just for himself. I’m really digging the process, as an armchair reviewer 
Nice stuff, Carl.
Carl, beautiful work, impossible not to respond to and to good not to share. I’ve been posting updates on www.flexspoon.com and www.ksusa.com It’ll be fun to see where it leads. Pa’ lante!
Carl , very inspiring stuff…coming out amazing…have fun…