Can’t argue with that.
I personally love seeing all your boards huck, please show us more…
Jim, it is my opinion that you are severely underpaid for your level of craftsmanship. While you seem to do what you do at least partially as a labor of love, I am sure you can understand someone not wanting make the same financial sacrifices.
…hello Jim, never saw that buyer commitment outside California. Also the niche for exclusive boards is only in California (selling to Japan, etc).
Normally nobody care about high quality.
Is not possible to have a big bag of clients the way you do; only there.
My first fish was handshaped by a buddy of mine in his garage. He made the fins, and glassed it too. It was magic! I loved that board, so many good waves. As far as I know he made two boards in his life, his own fish, and then mine, after I tried his. They were hard to find in a surfshop back then, this was around 1975.
Thanx! You’re on 
That Pintail looks beautiful Jim.
When I first got into the surfboard biz, Hank Byzak told me to learn it all. Learned a lot from him. To me that was the best advice he ever gave me. Get good at each facet of board building. I soon realized there were very few guys who could do it all. I mean glue a blank together, spray it or glass beautiful colored lamination, Fin it, sand it, gloss and polish it.
This was the group of guys I wanted to be in with. Pro from start to finish.
It’s a small club.
Getting even smaller.
I contend that many here have more skills than most board guys. Many are one trick pony’s.
And Oh yeah, many have a killer logo, hats and T-shirts well before the is an actual board line.
So in short, learn it all. We need more true craftsmen in the club.
Strive to be like Jim.
A true craftsman.
a good shaper is someone who makes good boards. a good board makes the rider of said board stoked.
experience typically is an advantage (but not always).
as soon as you involve money or recognition things get cloudy.
The 10’11" balsa I have been working on is polished and in the bag, the laminators were out looking for a new house, this board had to be done this week.
I got it sealer coated twice top and bottom, lam’d the bottom and deck with a 4 & 6 oz., I was a small amount apprehensive laminating a show board, balsa and very big. Shot the resin at 12 -13 cc’s, wet the rails immediately, pulled the deck 3 times, tucked and cleaned 'er up and baby at for the next 10 minutes while it set up. Sanded the laps the next day, flipped the deck, had the fin laid up and foiled already, set the glass loop on the tail as the resin gelled. The rope and patches were pre cut for the loop, mixed up the small batch and got it out of the way, as soon as it started going off, flipped the board, tacked on the fin, went back to shaping until it was firm, did the lay up, shaped more, came back and trimmed the fin, styrened the cut marks, taped 'er off for the hotcoat, pasted the laps and fin, hotcoated it 10 minutes later and walked out the door. Next morning pulled the tapes, sanded the seam, pasted, and hotcoated.
Yesterday the laminaters were in checking to see how badly the old man had F’d up the board, they walked away scratching their heads
Wow, the Mona Lisa of surfboards - a masterpiece!
I think we all would like to have Daniels royalty check too .
love the 12-3 cc’s comment -
I can’t imagine Jim meant 12-13ccs per quart. Unless he drank a lot of coffee that day and was moving like the Flash!
Awesome gun Sir Genius. Best of the best.
Sorry if someone already posted this to the thread but hear it goes: "Here is how you build a good board. You build the damn thing. If you like it, its a good one, if you dont, it isnt. -Greg Noll
here is the original quote from greg: “here is the way a surfboard works: you make the fucking thing and you put it in the water…if it works , then you have a good board. if it doesn’t work, then you don’t.” to see more quotes from Greg for a pig surfboard article i wrote a while ago, check out: http://surfapig.blogspot.com/2010/06/greg-noll-pig-discussions.html
Hey gnargnar are you the creater of Surf A Pig? If so, I just wanna say that your blog rocks and inspired me to build a pig for myself. I actually made a big mistake while truing up the outline and had to bring the width in a bunch to correct it. Because of this it didnt turn out as porky as I wanted it to. Board still works great though. Gonna build a true pig soon!
thatd be me. Stoked to hear it.
Sucking is your job; Mate.
Your response sucked! very lame Dong, lame (I shake my head)
You can do better…get back to your spackle, and try again lolol
The best boards and the best at telling the stories. That was great. Talking about Jim P. Mike