Yeah, and they had to narrow the tail to get sufficient V. At the SHACC museum they have some old wood hot curls that were cut down like that, it’s cool to be able to see history in the flesh, as it were.
2 thumbs up… way up!
This is an old hot curl made from a plank surfboard. Looks very similar.
Dude that’s magic.
By gosh this is a warm up. You sir deserve a beer!!! Heck gimmi you address and I’ll post you a 5. Doubt you can spend Aussie cash there.
wide-awake, that board is a thing of beauty! mike
Nice photo sharkcountry, really shows the bottom contour.
Thanks for the kind words guys!
And thanks for that photo sharkcounty - that’s is pretty awesome.
I got it out for a quick test flight on Saturday and was pretty pleased with it. Lots to learn in terms of riding it, but I could feel the potential.
I hope to get started on my wood build within the next few weeks.
I think that photo is George Downing’s board Pepi. He is still kicking and the only one left from the original group of Hot Curl surfers. Maybe you should contact the shop and see if you can talk to him. He doesn’t talk much, but if you explain what you want to do and why, he might have some really good insight and help.
Personally, I think those designs were replaced for good reasons. The original planks didn’t have much rocker, and with skegs and rockers we have so much more control. One thing I notice about your board is there is rocker in the blank, so you already have a hybrid version. If you are going for an authentic replica, I’d try to look at the older swastica boards for the dimensions and then try to work with that rocker.
My grandfather was Duke Kahanamoku’s high school classmate, but Duke never finished school. My grandfather’s younger brother was one of the old time solid wood board surfers at Waikiki. As far as I know, they didn’t have much rocker in those boards. So you need to think about what it is you’re trying to build. Jim Phillips did some of those a few years ago. You should ask him a few questions too.
Thanks for the info!!! I’ll see what happens!
The goal design wise was not really a replica but a version of the design with a little upgrade to it.
They are definitely not a very maneuverable but it’s still functional and does proved a ride/glide your not gonna get on anything else. You are much more a part of the wave than any other board I’ve ever ridden.
The tad bit of nose rocker really helps with the not so Waikiki style waves we got here haha.
Nice work. Lots of thought and mental mapping on that one. St. Andrews ?? Maybe?? Better yet Mondo’s down South. Slow Waikiki style.
Actually the waves those guys were riding are not the stuff we see today. The hot curl was used in big surf, and they rode them in big Makaha and Sunset too.
When we were growing up and learning to surf we would ride straight in. As we got better we rode along the wave as it broke and my uncle would yell hot curl whenever we did that. Too bad I never knew what he meant.
This guy in New Zealand is doing something similar. http://www.surfline.co.nz/surfboards/longboard/hot-curl-2/
Thanks for doing the work to repost the fotos. They are worthy of this correction to make it easy for more to appreciate this cool ass project!
I like the quonset hut shaping bay! Ah, the F-I-R-S-T real v bottom… lol.
What a gr8 project… props, props, & more props!
BF aka DS
(Roger Hall quote)
My Hot Curl Story Part One: The Beginning.
In the year 2010 over the months of November/December I shaped two Finless surfboards. The first board was the shorter at 6’2” and the second longer board being an even 10’0”. Both boards were based on the 1930’s Hot Curl that revolutionised surfing at that time, the 10’0” was a traditional based shape while the 6’2” was a futuristic exploration of finless design and as such, highly experimental. My goals seemed simple and fairly realistic or so I thought! For the Longboard my measure of success would be if I could sustain a noseride without the aid of a fin. My vision for the shortboard was merely to take off on my local favourite break, successfully navigate a lefthander kicking out at the end in relative control. That was all I really had in mind at the time, after all I already had a quiver of Finned boards comprised of cutting edge design innovations, experiments in concepts of flex, materials, weight and shape.
These new Finless boards were just going to be a shapers check, an exercise I had set myself to learn about an area of surfboard design which I knew very little about. What started out as a novel excursion down a side road in design soon saw me hurtling full speed ahead down a rabbit hole from which I am still to emerge almost 10 years on! Had the boards been an instant success and my goals reached with boxes ticked, I think I would have played with the idea as part of my surfboard quiver, riding finless as a refreshing change to my normal finned surfing and left it at that. Truth is at first both those boards seemed almost impossible to ride! As time progressed I was having to dig pretty deep to come up with any kind of acceptable ride, especially on the 6’2”.
Time would reveal that the difficulty I was having coming to grips with the boards was basically down to two things: 1) short falls in my design mostly in the era of vertical component. 2) My complete lack of understanding in the dynamics of how to ride a board with no fin. The fact that I was so challenged by these two early attempts turned out to be the best thing that could have happened and once I started to surrender and let the boards show me the way, the door to finless design started to open. The first clues came from the Longboard, which looking back is pretty obvious when you think about it.
The one thing I needed to learn and get very clear in my head was simply- “get forward and stay off the tail”, once I had that phrase going round and round in my head anytime I was paddling into a wave on either board my success rate was markedly increased. The trouble was that I was also riding my finned boards. I learnt “how” to ride the Longboard first, the shortboard had remained elusive until one day I took off on a left with a long wall, I jumped up forward with my weight dispersed evenly over both feet which were relatively close together. The board seemed completely at one with the wave and held its line on the wall for the length of the wave. It was as if I was riding on a paper dart. I paddled back out and repeated the exercise to the revelation that it had been me all along and not the board!
. . . stand by for- My Hot Curl Story Part Two: A Change In Tack.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2182618511763530&id=153788507979884lo
Sharkcounty - I have found that bigger is definitely better when it comes to riding this thing. I’ve finally figured out how to go both left and right and even get a bit of control to my ride.
Huck - thanks for posting that. Roger has been doing some really cool stuff.
Also the the last board posted about josh is a real cool one. Before I built mine Jeff (who josh is talking about In the post) drove up here and let me ride a few of his boards. A 10fter like mine and the yellow 8fter spoken about in the post by josh.
If you follow Jeff on Instagram he just posted a shot of hims of on a pretty manly wave doing a bottom turn on his double hotcurl that josh built him and it blew my mind.
I’ve gotten my board out twice now and I’m starting to really pick it up. It’s a blast to ride.
I have done 2 Hotcurls, one, my favourite collapsible, is riding very good and holds a line, whereas the second slides ass. The difference, which I assume, comes from the different tail shape. The second looks more like yours, if seen from the bottom back it i a triangle with more convex sides; the first forms a triangle with concave sides. In the moment I do not find any good uploadable pics on my office PC, but I can link you to my build threads on WBF.
And not to forget, the idea on building hotcurls comes from Huck!
This is the second, the “ass slider”
https://www.woodboardforum.com/forum/design/workshop-tool-ideas/3730-8-2-hotcurl-translucent-hot-lucy
This is the first:
https://www.woodboardforum.com/forum/design/workshop-tool-ideas/1734-my-challenge-6-10-hotcurl-balsa-collapsible
WOW just read the whole thing , you are one very talented surfdude .
Thank you, unfortunately my talents are more on the building than surfing side, wished it would be vice versa. But I started surfing very late, in my fourties and the next ocean is 1000km away, so I’m only able to surf on vacation. so there was only little improvment through the years. But I’m getting up and getting my waves (chest to heqad high is my maximum). A little proof that the boards do ride is included. It shows one of my surf teachers in Dakar, Senegal riding the collapsible…
(If anybody wonders about surfing in Senegal, the first wave in endless summer, was exactly there, Ngor Right. But the picture is a surfspot 5km away, called Secret, which is not a secret at all)…
Interestingly he is riding in the front too, he almost noserode it, being only a 6’10’', but it has about 60l volume, its made for older dudes…
