A guy in New Zealand has this Hansen gun. How it got there? Damned if I know. But the shape and construction say mid 60s in a big way. The board looks like a typical Waimea gun from those years. I don’t recall ever seeing a Hansen gun before. This has to be a really rare board. Hoping Bill T can chime in and add any info, such as who may have shaped it. Owner claims it has no numbers or marks of any kind
A very good friend of mine, one Mike McDonough, made his first North Shore trip in the winter of 1962. Upon his return in the spring of 1963, he described the Gun that was ridden that '62 winter by Mike Doyle, that had a strange shallow rectangular fin. This appears to be the board that Mike described to me. Both Mike and I surfed WindanSea on a regular basis, and were well acquainted with the Gun designs of both Al Nelson and Pat Curren, which were the ‘‘yardsticks’’ against which all other big wave board designs were measured at that time… It is likely that the board in question was shaped by Don Hansen himself. That is certainly the fin that Mike described to me back then, that was on the Mike Doyle Gun. Hansen started building boards in 1961, so the subject surfboard dates from either 1961 or 1962, quite an early Hansen surfboard. I’m sure the ‘‘life story’’ of that board would be very interesting.
See above.