Early Popout Construction

[MrJ]

@$1

60s popouts as I recall them were done much the same way cleanlines
describes. A layer of mat was fused to the foam when the foam was blown
in the mold. Many of them had fake stringers routed into the deck. Some
had actual stringers. After the blank came out of the mold the fuzzy
halo of mat around the rails was ground off. Then, a single layer of 10
oz cloth was layed up, followed by fin,  hot coat, and color, etc.

The Morey hollow boards were honeycomb construction. The Hansens
were done with foam encased in a top and bottom skin with foam
stanchions inside. Hansen called them their “Stratoglas” line.

Here’s a photo of a Hansen cut in cross-section:

I love these historic posts. This one from the The list thread which unfortunately got locked.

Some of us were brought up on popouts - myself on a school project built popout and Sharkcountry and Oneula on the Dextra popout. Cleanlines was involved in early popout manufacture.

So to some of us popouts are fond memories and we have not got used to the way the term currently gets used/misused on this forum.

Anyone got any pics of the early Dextra popout or any other types and information on their construction?

[SammyA]

I used to glass popouts when I was in high school. We built mainly rental fleets for concessions and the like. I also did glass work for backyarders who were hand shaping their own stuff. It was just before shortboards came along. I think the rapid changes of the times killed the popout because board length was dropping at a rate of about 6" every six months. Popouts were no longer feasible because they’d have to keep building new molds to keep up with the changes. When board lengths were still averaging 9 to 10 ft it was easy to maintain a stock of popouts in those lengths because styles were pretty stagnant for a number of years.

Anyway, here’s two Dextra ads, as requested. Shown are the “Dextra Custom”, Royal Hawaiian, and Cutlass. Along with a bellyboard in the B+W pic.

[MrJ]

cheers, I did do a search for Dextra and came up with a pic of the Dextra Custom, which I then assumed was a normal layup.

in darkest Wales which was hardly the epicentre of surfboard production we were familiar with the term popout but wrongly called everything else custom even if it was a stock shape. There was a feeling then (the 70s) that the popout was an inferior board. On the other hand the hollow Hansen sandwich you posted earlier does not look like it was aimed at the inferior market, so yes I can see how your suggestion that rapidly changing shape development would have been partially responsible for its demise.

[SammyA]

@$1

cheers, I did do a search for Dextra and came up with a pic of the Dextra Custom, which I then assumed was a normal layup.

 

I’m pretty certain that was a popout. I repaired a few back about 40 years ago, but cannot recall what the glass job looked like.

I think they used the term “custom” to distinguish it from their lower priced models. It had wooden nose and tailblocks and I believe they promoted those features as being exclusive to their “custom” line.

Hell, the popout builder I worked for ('67-'68) marketed his stock boards as “semi-custom production boards”. You could order any color job you wanted or a beaded wood fin at additional cost. That made the boards “semi-custom” according to his reasoning. We did some ugly-assed color jobs for customers who insisted on their own designs. I wish I had photos of some of them.