With all the talk about asian surfboard construction and the possible negative ramifications on custom board building I thought I would start a thread on ordering a board from your local shaper.
First up I’m in awe of guys who build their own, I’m not a DIY guy. I’m fuken hopeless with my hands and my skills with fibreglass are limited to basic ding fixing, apart from a very crude fibreglass underwater housing which I will post up one day for you guys to laugh at.
I do love surfboards though and I love every single element of getting a new custom shaped creation from a local shaper who understands my local conditions and the way I want to surf.
This could be a long post, I’ve had a couple of beers and am fired up, so this will be a good point for crew to exit stage left if they aren’t interested.
I’m lucky where I live because the surf is unreal alot of the time and the place is loaded with very experienced shaper/designers who have historical significance and have been around long enough to see the wheel of surfboard design fashion revolve a few times.
I guess this thread is a celebration of the process of ordering and riding a custom board complete with photos and video and an invitation for others to share this unique and marvellous experience. So here it is :
The Shaper
Chris Brock was a champion surfer from Bondi back when that beachside suburb was a bastion of working-class Australia. He was part of the first generation of surfers who migrated north to discover and surf the perfect pointbreaks of Northern NSW and QLD. Chris was an integral part of the shortboard revolution and proponent of the idyllic surfer lifestyle captured in Morning of the Earth. His shaping lineage comes from that extraordinarily fertile period started by Greenough and passed on to McTavish, Ted Spencer, Kevin Platt, Nat, Russel Hughes et al. These guys took boards from 9’6" logs to 5’10" hulls in the space of a couple of years. Brocky has lived, surfed and shaped at Lennox point since 1968 except for sojourns to Hawaii, New Zealand and an epic voyage across the Pacific with Greenough on the Morning Light in the early 70’s. His boards are short stubby carving machines designed to flow and carve. He abhors “stop/start” surfing.
The Quest
I need a shortboard for my local waves. We get a good variety of waves and a lot of 'em are in the 2-4 foot range…points mostly and plenty of beachies. This is one of the most consistent areas I have seen in my travels…you can surf over 300 days a year and 200 of those will be days of good shaped waves. I guess that is why it was such an important area for progressing surfboard design. I want a small board that goes fast , paddles well, carves and can surf top to bottom.
Ordering
Getting a board off Brocky is an exercise in patience and due diligence. He’s never advertised, never had a website, never been affiliated with a clothing company. You have to know him and get his phone number and keep calling him till you get him at home with time to spare. He lives in a shack on the beach at the base of the Point. Hanging out with Brocky, we talk about a load of different stuff, slowly getting round to the board. He says he’s been having long conversations with Ted Spencer, who is living in Hawaii and starting to shape boards again. He says it’s unreal and is clearly stoked.
The board he will shape me is a roundtail sort of disc/stubby/hull 6’2" by 20" by 2 1/2 with a tri-plane bottom (double concave either side of a vee) tucked under edge rail up to about the front foot where the rail becomes a sort of beveled chine rail. (photos coming).
A few random photos
Out the back of Brockys house under the trees is a veritable surfing museum, i posted some shots of Brocky laying it over on a starfin a while ago. I found this board outside under a tree. Here it is.
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