hey guys,
i recently received a surfboard from a friend. the laminate says “eastern surfboards challenger” - see photo’s. there is no inscription on the foam, but etched in the glass, in front of the fin it says “bobs 9 574”
does anyone have any info on this company or maybe a time period it may be from? i should have taken some measurements but did not.
bottom laminate
deck laminate
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that Challenger Surfboards were made in R.I. or Long Island, NY. Jim Philips may have shaped for them at one time or another.
That is most likely a Phillips! You scored!
thanks for the info guys. the board has some brown foam, but is pretty intact. i will take some pictures and post them up in the next few days. i would like to restore it, but not really sure how. so i will ask for suggestions after i get the picks up and ya’ll can see what condition shes in. and if anyone else has some history on the label, i would love to hear about it.
incidentally, the gentleman who gave it to me said it belong to his son when he was younger, but it had been sitting in his attic for 30+++ years. appearently, he had been after his son for years to come and get it but to no avail. and his wife wanted it out of the house.
thanks again surfifty, and mike.
brasco
Challenger Eastern Surfboards, 1109 Ninth Ave, Neptune, NJ. Owned by Carl West. Phillips and West shaped them. In business roughly from 1965 to 1967. So, that board is a mid Sixties vintage.
Also, no relation to the current crop of fake Challengers that are made in China.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that Challenger Surfboards were made in R.I. or Long Island, NY.
Challenger Surfboards were from the San Diego area. Founded by Bill Bahne and Frank McCleary in 1961. Bob Thomas took over the label in 1965.
Bahne went on to found a label under his own name. An offshoot of that label was Fins Unlimited. Still in business, today.
Sammy A WRONG, Bill Bahne and Frank Macleary started Challenger, they were in financial problems and Tinker had a good relationship with Grubby. Tinker was an electrical engineer by education, shaped for Wardy, Hobie and the crew from South Bay. He did some impossible jobs for Grubby and came away with a stash of foam for his effort.
Frank and Bill were back in business, now with a new partner, Tinker.
Frank glassed, Ernie Vohs sanded, Jimmie Dalton glossed, Bahne shaped, wait we have a new shaper, Bill slowly got squeezed out of the partnership.
Frank came to work while still dark and got his glassing done by dawn and was out the door for the rest of the day, a joint and some waves, no time for the book work.
Tinker saw that the lions share of the orders were going to the East Coast and it would be only sensible to have a factory on the east coast and west coast.
Frank didn’t think much of this idea as it would require running a business and being a glasser.
Nothing could be worked out, there was a division of assets and Tinker went first straight cross country to Florida, the entire crew landed at Billy Feinbergs Oceanside Surfboards factory in Rockledge. It was a stopping point to put together an additional grub stake. With pockets filled, it was off to Neptune New Jersey, they had plentiful dealers in the area and it was the perfect location to serve north and south.
This was where I first came into contact with Tinker. Up to now I was the shit along Long Island New York and New Jersey beaches. This is where I get chopped down more than a few notches. BUT, this is where there was a MAJOR turning point in my learning how to really SHAPE.
Yes there was a connection between Challenger and Challenger Eastern Surfboards and the deal was Challenger Eastern was to not sell boards west of the Mississippi and when Bobby Thomas took over as the new owner of Challenger surfboards, he considered the old contract null and void and started a campaign to sell to the east coast, but this was at the time of the V-bottom boards and Challenger Eastern was on its decline as a major player on the east coast market.
This was the summer of love, and I have discovered love in many fashions, some still frowned upon by society and the law.
Tinker was not happy that I had brought myself to the attention of the local constablery, he said that I was going to get busted, that I was a walking bust.
I could now do more than the shaping load that was apportioned to me and quite well at that, so I stared whoring my self around to Rible Surboards and Surfboards East in Freehold.
This went over like a ton of shit with Tinker, he felt, rightly so, that he had imparted this knowledge and skills upon me and I was out delivering these benifits to his local competition.
Later that winter I went to California, got promptly busted, needed a job really bad and hitch hiked from Goleta to Del Mar to Bill Bahnes and Tony Chaninn and Diffenderfers factory.
I got hired on the spot to shape, although Bahne said he would have to re-educate me away from Tinkers Evil ways.
Tinker and I stayed on very bad terms for many a year, I went to a wedding for Ernie Vohs, the sander, several years later, and crossed paths with Tinker while riding around puffing one. I saw him running across the road to me from his still moving car, I raised my hand to signal a sort of wave and he was at my open window.
What happened next is not a blur, it was permanently burned into my mind so that lest I ever forget it, I may be struck by lightning.
his hand snaked through the open window and gently cradled the back of my head in the open palm of his hand.
His mouth opened and he said “Your going to burn my factory down?”
“Your going to kick my ass?”
Each sentence was punctuated with his other hand made into a very hard fist that kept connecting with my eye brow.
After more than a few of these “dotting of my eye”, it became time for me to say something in return… and that was…“hey can’t we talk about this”.
Tinker wasn’t finished talking yet and he said “You already done yer talking” and eased his hand off the back of my very beffudled head.
It was a real long time before we spoke again or CROSSED paths for a longer time.
It was one of the first life lessons that ever sunk in, we are once again very respectful friends and I don’t need a refresher course.
That’s good stuff right there Jim!
Jim,
that was a very entertaining read- Thanks!
hi jim,
thanks for the history on this label. is there any way to identify if this is particular board is a product of your handiwork?
brasco
Tinker, nor myself added any signature to the shapes, only the serial #.
At that time in history, about the only way to try and tell who’s shape it might be is by the accuracy, and Tinker’s would have still been better than mine. !
Tinker was and I have to say, of all the shapers I have been in the shaping room with over the years, the best mechanical shaper I have seen.
I saw a short clip of Skip in action and he was laying down the clean lines in the same fashion.
Tinker did NOT have surform in the factory, never used one, never saw the need for one.
The Skil 100 was his tool for shaping, no need for anything besides a block plane and the sanding blocks.
This was born out of the era of balsa, if you couldn’t finish it off with the planer, what the hell were you going to do then
I have a 1967 9’6" Surfboards by Challenger “The Hump” (stepdeck) model in quite good shape (some minor dings and a thrice-replaced finbox, but has great color on the deck (when I got it, it was 100% covered in parafin wax, which protected it from UV) which contrasts well with a lighly-tanned bottom.
I’ll post it up pics for prosterity when I get a chance, but it is currently in the attic of my father-in-law’s garage, and I’m nursing a back injury so getting it down to ground level is out of the question at the moment.
What a fantastic and entertaining history lesson, this really has set up my day. Thanks for sharing.
Chipper, come home!
Jim, that is a wonderful account. I remember hearing bits and pieces, but never the whole thing
laid out like that. There should be a way of bookmarking or setting aside these types of historical
posts in a special section on sways.
Back in the Magnolia Street days, you’d always tell me, ''Well, Tinker would say…" or ''Tinker
would do it like this…". I was too busy trying to absorb all the knowledge I could from you to
really care about who this Tinker cat was. Nice to know the lineage of your (and therefore my)
shaping knowledge and techniques. So THAT"S why you made me throw away my surform!
Mike, when the Surfing magazine shapers tree came out, there was a line from Simmons straight to Tinker. (Bill Bahne re-drew the line then from him to me after I had shown George Orberlein my lineage) omitting Tinker as my sensei, from there the line goes to Roger Brucker, Tom Hogan, you, Luke and Richard Chellemi. After that, the Brasingtons and Darrin Craig were that last of the Floridians to benefit from the Magnolia Street Porch Monkey Madness School of Surfboard Design and Construction scholorship.
2 vicious divorces in a row and my then factory manager smoking away tens of thousand of dollars of crack, funded by the factory checking account, was the end of the fledgling shapers program.
2 vicious divorces in a row and my then factory manager smoking away tens of thousand of dollars of crack, funded by the factory checking account, was the end of the fledgling shapers program.
NO WAY!?
Are you too nice a guy to have people go crazy like that?
Wouter
Wow. A line from Simmons to Tinker to you to me. Damn, that’s a lot of responsibility.
It was bad enough feeling like you are looking over my shoulder every time I go to work.
now I gotta deal with this…
Wouter, Jim really did have to go through all that crap, and a good bit of it happened because he
WAS (and still is) a nice guy. Sometimes when you help people they take advantage of you, that’s
what happened to Jim.
Somewhere on this thread we should point out that the storied Challenger label is currently being
defiled by a bottom-feeder who picked up the ‘‘rights’’ to the name, and has them done by the container
in guess-where. Tinker should go punch HIM in the face.
Wow that is a trip back in time.Jim Taught me to shape properly in Rhode Island at Phillips surfboards.He showed me how to use a skil 100 and I just skinned blanks for the first week or so.Then it was foiling,templating,rail bands and finish sand.I still use those same techniques today.I also taught a lot of guys what Jim taught me.His method is tried and true and will produce straight boards.(straight boards is an old time shaper’s term for “symetrical”)I learned other things from other shapers but it always comes back to the basics Jim drilled in to my young head.Lately I have been cruising utube and watching the shape videos.I laugh at some and get amazed at guys like Brewer,Terry Martin and others using the same techniques.Thanks Jim
Now, scuzbucket from Rockaway, New York, used to be what I would call a friend, has pilfered the hallowed name of Wardy too. He couldn’t wipe Wardy’s ass.
He even pirated Nectar’s lable, BYB was in the far east checking on how their “american” made boards were doing and saw all of the Nectars ready for shipment.
A call was placed to Gary McNabb on “I didn’t know you were getting boards done here too”, Gary’s head spun around a few times and it didn’t take long to put 2 & 2 together.
Sure enought Sena, he tried to get Gary to take a royalty to let the boards come into the country, Gary flatly said no and ordered customs to have them destroyed.
Containers of lables that others worked their lives to build up, only to have cheap knock offs built under the red star.
Yes, he is legally doing what these other people should have done, protect their trademarks.
I protect my trade mark with a Louisville Slugger and I always swing for the knee caps.
Tommy’s reply to disgruntled former lable holders, “that’s the way we do it in New York”
I like the way they do it in Hawaii, brah !!!
Now, scuzbucket from Rockaway, New York, used to be what I would call a friend, has pilfered the hallowed name of Wardy too. He couldn’t wipe Wardy’s ass.
He’s also pirated the Natural Progression and Canyon labels, among others. I had to laugh, yet felt a bit bad, when a friend bought a fake “Canyon” and told me about the great deal he got on such a well-pedigreed label. Sena is despised on LI, by the long time locals.
Anyway, you might recognize some of these characters, Jim.