We’re always reinventing the wheel I guess…
I guess I gotta grow me some tuoraf* muttonchops…
- “Farout” for the non-dyslexic
post of the year!!!
Hey Oneula, fantastic post, it got me to thinking about something I was thinking about before, with all this ‘so called new tech’, yep it’s been done before, the recent Randy Rarrick auction and we have em over here as well, not like that one apparently, anyway , what I was wondering, firstly, if there was any boards in there, that were’nt pu/pe, or if any of the new ones will ever make an auction in the future? Taj did good on the firewire from woa to go last year, he was still beaten by the norm. Has anyone ever won a major title on the abstract, materials or design[except last year], let it run, cheers, H.
A wise man, who in his life gained and lost more than all of us put together ever will, once said, “There is nothing new under the Sun.”
What’s old is new again. And again.
LOL!!
The best!!
Next we can all sing the (in)famous (ripof) Stones tune of “I paid for carbon but it’s fiber painted black…no carbon anywhere I want my money back…”
nat young won a title
simon anderson rocked the surf world on a thruster.
slater destroyed on those wafer thin concave and rockered out chips.
rolf aurness blew away the aussies who were riding tiny little boards with soft rolled edges in Johannasburg.( he was riding a longer board with nice tucked crisp edges that planed over the weak areas in the waves)
all of those were PU but it illustrates that as board design progresses it changes everything.
…prove that marketing, mags, well known names and hype can sell everything
in earlies/mid 80 s I surfed those hollow fiberglass type o boards
I didnt like it
Don’t forget Cheyne’s win at Bells, yep all pu’s, by the way it’s just Johanna, Johannasburg is in South Africa, H.
Good to see all those ads, etc. again. I was a high school garage shaper at the time, and all that new tech
was exciting but out of reach for my young behind. I’d bet that there’s some participating on this forum that
aren’t aware of all the experimentation (and marketing) that went on back then. For it’s educational value alone
this is a great post.
The rest of the story is that all those techs went down in flames, excepting Gary Young’s wooden efforts. Most failed
due to flaws in construction. Also,designs were still changing so fast that molded boards were quickly obsolete shape-wise.
A lot has changed in the composites business over the last 35-40 years. When molded boards started coming back 10
years ago, lots of people expected them to fail for the same old reasons. They didn’t. The technology had been developed
in the windsurf industry, and was just waiting to be applied to surfboards. The fact that designs had stagnated (and even
longboard classics were popular again) made molded boards more acceptable to the now much larger market.
From my current perspective, going off in a new tech direction is very exciting. I strongly believe in the custom board and
the ability to take it’s construction and performance to new levels. I have fun going to work everyday trying to do just that.
Mike
PS: If you’d put a different title on this thread I might have noticed it sooner. Had to wait 'til I was hungry…
One thing definitely stays the same… the ad hype.
Funny thing about seeing these old mags is that my brother “oneula” actually copied a lot of the ideas. He did a lot of weird stuff that Tom Morey was doing and a lot of the fin stuff from Hyson and the other guys.
We even had a friend here in Ewa Beach named Brutus who had one of those hollow honeycomb twin fins. Brutus lives on Maui now. Another friend who’s also on Maui named Kevin used to ride a Greenough spoon. I never could get that thing to work for me, but he really liked it.
The 70’s were a great time to be a surfer living in a beach community.
There were some ideas back then which never saw much exposure. In the Summer of '69, someone at
Surfer Mag got ambitious and went through the files at the US Patent Office.
Here’s two good ones:
Man that really takes me back.I used to ride a MP Hollow Wave Honeycomb board.I was shaping foam boards back then and took it in as a trade.I liked it for a few months until it started leaking.That shot of Mike Hynson shaping a board barefoot with a designer shirt is classic.I use to look at it all of the time and he was a Guru.I also started shaping barefoot.Thanks for the memories.
I went back through some of my old issues to see if I could add anything to this thread, but what caught my attention was that this surfer appeared in the first four issues I flipped through. Some pretty progressive surfing for the mid seventies.
Anybody remember him?
Thanks for this, Bernie 
The Gary Young scan is awesome… really took me back to my youth in those certain ‘coastal farmlands of west Marin’ Photo: Kirby Ferris is a hoot too: Kirby owned Live Water Surf Shop in Stinson Beach. Used to employ the 2 biggest surfer/burnouts in town to run the shop, so at least when they were stealing from him, they’d be on the clock too. Kirby was the pioneer of surf travel to Tavarua, taking groups of shop regulars out to Restaurants back in the mid 70’s, when it had been just a fishing & drinking destination previously. That shop used to have the most mind-blowing photos on the walls…
Kirby also invented (& patented) that red circle / slash “no sharks” logo. If its genuine, it’ll still say C . Kirby Ferris on the bottom. He went a little nuts on gun rights during the Regan years and lost the shop in a divorce. He’s up in Oregon now, still writing lots of letters to Sen. Feinstein. Live water has a couple Serftechs and a whole lot of clothes & sunglasses now.
Another long-time Bolinas regular offered me some sheets of cherry veneer that Gary left in town more than 25 years ago, after seeing my balsa-skinned boards. I had to pass, as it was heavy, splitting-dry, and waterstained. But cool of Rodney to keep the keys to Buzz’ shop so long and watch over stuff for Gary. He’s well-remembered around here. Many thanks.
Edit: BTW, there’s an eccentric at Bolinas who’s still working on the surf-skis design. 2 boards, straps & fins, skating along. He was out again yesterday with the most recent prototypes. And to think, people thought the Peanut was weird. 
Quote:
Quote:Anybody remember him?
Just some guy from Florida…
Jeff Crawford?