custom ROD laguna surfboards

tomas · July 20, 2013, 8:20pm

Anyone have any knowledge of a 60’s label longboard.

Custom ROD Laguna Surfboards

9’5", with topside stringer notations= S.S. J. 931

Interesting board came to me for very minor repairs, maybe ridden handful of times but exceptional original condition.

Owner “found it in Great Uncle’s attic!” Will attempt to attach photos. Thx. tomas

proneman · July 20, 2013, 9:01pm

I know the guy who ran this shop along with his dad and brother. I think they were in Santa Monica…I will tell him bout this thread!

roger

SammyA · July 20, 2013, 10:24pm

http://stokednboard.surfingheritage.org/pdf/Rod_Ca.pdf

proneman · July 24, 2013, 2:32am

e-mail

rrdoucette@hotmail.com for the info…

rogelio…

tomas · August 19, 2013, 9:44pm

Proneman (Rogelio) got the goods for me, thanks! Pretty amazing to hear from the shaper/owner in less than 12 hours after posting. I got a great email from Roger Doucette who owned and operated ROD Surfboards with his family. With his permission I’m going to pass on the dialog we had via email. Sorry for the delay in posting all of this Roger.

Email to Roger-

Sr. Doucette-

via Swaylock's Forum one of the guys called "Proneman" otherwise known as Rogelio provided your email. Last weekend a young man that goes to college with my son at the Marine Science Institute- in Galveston, TX. had him bring the board to my little shaping shack for a couple of minor repairs. He "found it in his great Uncle's Attic". Considering the age of the board it was in outstanding condition. and a very pleasing shape with an interesting outline with a pulled in tail and wide point forward. Lots of bottom curve/belly and relaxed rocker. Just wanted to know a bit about these boards for history sake.

This board was 9'5", T-band blank with pale yellow tinted rail panels, black 1/2" vertical pinlines with early removable fin system using flexible lexan plastic fin. Topside along stringer were the markings "S.S.J 931" best that I can tell. Thanks for your time and look forward to learning more about this label.

BTW- he is planning to ride this not shelf it as far as I know. Travis and I fixed 4-5 nickel size dents/dings and polished the bottom and it looked great.

Email Reply–

Tom
Thanks for sending the pics of this board, it’s really fun looking at what we did almost 50 years ago.
I really like the outline.
I have sent along a pdf of what they have at the Surfing Heritage Foundation.
We
were really a small family owned surf shop that out of need just wanted
to make surfboards for people to have fun and enjoy the ocean.
After rereading this I realize all the references are about the South Bay area, Torrance, Redondo Beach and LAX.
These
are in So Cal. Los Angeles area. The Rod Shop was in Sherman Oaks in
the San Fernando Valley which my father and Noll thought would be a
great place to open.
There were 1000’s of surfers in the valley.
Rod was the first local valley company to build custom surfboards, even though we actually made in the south bay area.

I
tried to send something to on Swaylocks but not sure if you got it,
Rogelio (proneman) posted my email at my request, he has been a friend
for 20 or more years and real good guy.

Hope this info will help.

Thanks for taking me back on the Rod journey.

The History-
The Doucette family owned Rod Surfboards in the early 60’s to early 70’s.
We opened the shop originally as a Greg Noll dealer then we started building our own boards.
The name Rod came from a combination of my brother and my first name and our last name
Rob, Roger and Doucette. ROD! This was our fathers idea.

“Laguna”
showed up on our second logo (the one on this board) and just looked
and sounded better than Sherman Oaks where the retail store was located.
And it was the sixties, Laguna had its own unique mystique.

All boards were custom made. We originally worked with Richard Deese out of his Torrance factory (South Bay Surfboards)
until he went to work for Tom Morey, he turned us on to Richard Furhman Fibreglassing and Keith Hackamack.
It was a South Bay thing. We used Foss Foam and Lindeman Blanks who blew his foam down by LAX.
Board in picture was probably shaped by Hack, because it has a serial number. I may have done it, but it was 45 or so years ago.
It
was glassed by Richard Furhman. All boards were glassed with 8 oz or 10
oz volan cloth depending on how heavy or light they wanted them.

We
closed up the retail store after trying to survive the short board
revolution, but continued for a while to build the Rod boards for our
east coast and gulf coast dealers.
The board you repaired was from
our dealer in Galveston/Houston, named Sam Jones, can’t recall the name
of his shop, but he was our dealer in Texas for about 6 years.
We sold a lot of boards thru Sam’s shop.
This past year with Scott Anderson
of Anderson Surfboards (Aquatech surfboard factory Marina del Rey),
Scott and I have recreated one of my boards which has become one of
Scott’s new “old” models.
It is called the Rod Laguna Anderson Doucette Redux and can be seen on his website. What’s old is new again.

Thanks again
let me know if this has helped or just confused you.

Roger (Rod Laguna) Doucette

From Surfing Heritage Museum-Rod Surfboards
One day when my brother and i were young teens our family decided to open a surf
shop, We call it Rod’s California Surf Shop. Rod came from the combination of our
names Roger and my brothers Rob with the D coming from our last name Doucette,
thus ROD!!
We started off as a distributor of Greg Noll Surfboards and all things Greg Noll.
As surfing grew in popularity and Greg’s boards became more in demand, it took
weeks, sometimes two or three months to get a custom board. Kids became pissed at
the time, so we started to make our own boards, with the help of Richard Deese, Dick
Fuhrman and Keith Hackamack.We called our boards Rod Surfboards Laguna, the
Laguna being a catch point for the east and gulf coast surf shops that started selling
our boards. Besides it sounded cool and looked better than Sherman Oaks where
our retail shop was based.
If you know anything about Greg Noll, this did not set well with him,
He came into the shop one afternoon and saw our boards mixed in with his and he
completely blew up, scaring the crap out of 2 teen age gremmies working in the show
room, thus ending our status as a Greg Noll shop.
The best part that came from this was that we learned what it took to make really
progressive hand made surfboards. Keith was a master shaper and showed me
(Roger) a lot of his tricks that have stayed with me to this day.
We grew into being one of the first real custom surfboard companies that were in the
San Fernando Valley, which was and still is a hot bed of surf culture. Our boards were
made for the great point breaks like Malibu, Topanga, Secos and Rincon, where style
and nose riding were everything. Our boards also worked great at beach breaks
which was good because Santa Monica (Ocean Park and Bay Street) was our home
break. We had some excellent surfers who surfed for our shop, in fact, William “Billy”
Katt, star of Big Wednesday, was one of our star riders. Ira Opper, legendary surf
filmographer also hung with some of the crew. Later the Valley produced such
excellent shapers as Greg Liddle, Ernie Tanaka, Glen Kennedy and Brian Hilburs
came on the scene.
The sixties were turbulent times, Viet Nam, Pot, LSD, LA riots and then the short
board revolution in the late sixties and early seventies changed everything.
I remember this guy who surfed for us, Norm Marchand, came back from Hawaii and
told us this wild tale about guys riding Sunset and Pipeline on these small narrow
pointy boards that had taken over the north shore. This, light years before
the internet. The surf mags, always 4 or 5 months behind what was taking place in
the surf world, were our only resource of what was happening in other parts of the
world. So unless you there to witness it first hand, you were way behind the curve.
Within a year most small surf board companies collapsed, while the new generation of
board builders took over. As anybody who has ever owned a surf shop knows, its
hard to feed your family from selling wax and t-shirts. We decided in the early 70’s to
close up shop and move on.
My brother Rob went on to teach photography in Pacific Palisades.
I (Roger) continued making my own boards and with the help of Greg Liddle, became
part of the “Liddle League” which was the stubbie hull cult at Malibu and Rincon.
I still surf displacement hulls. And to this day a lot of the old hull guys know me as
Rod Laguna.
I am a working artist, who along with my brother Rob lived in the heart of Dog Town
and being hull riders were outsiders in our own front yard (Ocean Park and Bay
Street, Santa Monica). I became friends in the late sixties with the 2 main dogs, Skip
Engblom and Craig Stecyk, along with their protege Nathan Pratt, who remain life long
friends.
After Greg Liddle relocated to Kauai, I made the majority of my own boards until Skip
hooked me up with Scott Anderson at Aquatech in Venice, who has become a master
hull builder.
At 64 I still surf 4 to 5 days a week and pretend I can still shape, thank God for Scott
Anderson. My brother Rob, also surfs at least 4 days a week. Design wise, we now
ride completely different equipment, but we still share the love of the glide.
I show my paintings at several galleries and work on occasion as a graphic artist. And I
still look at the Rod Surf Shop days as being some of my happiest and most fun
times. The work was hard, but it was honest and worth every minute of it.The surf
shop is the greatest club house for young groms to old coots who lie about
their abilities and the great waves they got that never happened. We had a wild time
in that shop, bands played at night, surf movies were shown after hours, and some
young hot girls were very impressed. The story, true or false, is what matters. Because
of surfing and my love of the ocean, the hard times don’t seem so bad, just one aqua
gem will change your whole day. Most of my friends are artists that surf.
My art and my life are all about the ocean.
Surfers are the ultimate gang members, You are in for life, enjoy the ride!!!
Roger Doucette
Rob Doucette

SammyA · August 19, 2013, 11:03pm

That’s one hell of a story. Shows where the real core of swaylocks still resides (despite the lamentations of a few on that other thread).

Just for the sake of accuracy, the photo posted in this thread is not a t band stringer board. It’s simply a triple stringer.

Got more pics?

artz · August 20, 2013, 4:45pm

Rodger if you should read this please post a link to your work As an artist I love looking at what other artist are doing. Particularly The work of Artist That are Surfers

tomas · August 20, 2013, 9:59pm

Sammy-

I’ve got a few that Roger Doucette sent me and a couple more that I took. This may bomb out as it has been hit or miss on uploading images for me. Here goes…

tomas

SammyA · August 20, 2013, 10:35pm

This photo appears to show a first generation Fins Unlimited fin.:

Thanks for posting these. Cool board.