Hey everybody, Im posting on here because I would like a bit of information about this board I have. It is a Tom Eberly Lightning bolt and it is about 7' with as few little dings nothing too mazor, I was wondering if someone can give me a bit more information about this board, and how much the collectors value would be. thank you 
…another clueless glasser who put the plug rod parallel…
I dont see any special value in that board
plus, is good to say hello in your first post
Maybe not "special" value..but it's certainly worth something. Probably 20 years or so old..maybe more. Tom did some shaping for lightning bolt back in the day. My guess was it was built in the Hot Stuff factory off of nordahl road in escondido/vista california sometime in the eighties. It is possible it was made on the northshore..maybe at Jack Reeves place..but I doubt it. If it was made at Hot Stuff or Jacks place it has a top notch glassjob. Tom is a master board builder..can do it all start to finish..as good as anyone. I personally like the bar on the leash cup going side to side..but not sure it devalues the board any. Jim
Eberly built Lightning Bolts at his West Coast Glassing shop off Nordahl and Hwy 78 in Escondido Ca in the late 70’s to mid 80’s. The shop also contract built Hot Stuff and Local Motion boards there during that time. Tom sold the shop and it’s gone thru many owners since. He eventually moved to the “Hill” in Encinitas where he set up a small shop in Bahne side of the building where he built his Eberly lable and occasionally built Bolts for shops that wanted them built by him. By the shape of that board it was most likely built in the Escondido shop. I think Tom lives full time in Nicaragua nowadays.
Care to elaborate on why the plug rod parallel to the stringer is worse than otherwise.
Back thenm, I always asked for mine parallel, as you cant easily pull your board towards you after a wipout unless your facing it.
A longer rod placed sideways would tug and pull the connecting string side to side in worst case, even pulling the board back in a side to side manner, wasting valuable time.
Parallel rod would pull more direct more times than not.
I could be wrong but would like contrary opinions.
Those rods were longer then than they are now and induced side to side
travel for the leash string. A parallel rod more often than not induced direct travel and less side sway.
BTW, most leash plugs and the rods are made so very small now adays, that my preference has evaporated as any side-effects positive or negative have evaporated.
Ok Reverb, I will take the bait… What’s your theory on the leash plug’s bar direction??
hey BB my theory is in the practice
I repaired a bunch of these parallel rod plugs (tooled from different companies) in which the plastic is intact and the rod was pushed out with the rope of the leash
never came or see any with this problem with the rod side to side
so my take is very easy; a practical one
-first I try not to depend on the leash, in the case that I or other surfer need to use it, the push is very hard on one of the extremes of the rod
now, as Otis mentioned, the mini plugs, in my opinion are better to solve this problem
-but you know, I am the guy who spend time in stupid stuff like after the glass reinforce nose rails and tail rails with 5 more layers of glass
and that is another practical stuff that I prefer to do and see the difference in the beach in comparison with other shop works and the way some surfers or w b surfers treat their boards, speacially outside the water (car parks, travel, etc-so they re hard on tails and noses)
IMHO the only way a leash string is gonna rip that metal bar out of the leash cup itself is if the cup was installed to shallow (or it floated) resulting in too much of the plastic being sanded off. Other than that I've had to remove many of those old style cups and I've tried using a large sized flathead screwdriver (shaft as big as your index finger) to try and pry that bar out of the cup and all it did was bend the bar. You gotta dremel away the plastic to pop that bar out if the cup was installed properly...
…no one of those plugs were sanded too much for what I have seen
almost all are the “hard” plastic types not the “soft” ones (these ones have a plastic “rod”) and yes, sometimes some sander needs to take them down cause the plug have too much thickness…but the rod break it apart in both extremes.
I repeat the rods that were pulled out let the plastic in very decent shape, barely a small crack in 1 of the extremes.
Wow! Lots of interesting takes on leash plug rotation and it’s function during wipeouts. I think this is a classic example of where Swaylocks gets WAY to gizmoed out on a simple subject.
I have made zillions of boards with and without leash cups. These boards have been consistently ridden in the biggest and most powerful (arguably) waves in the world. I have had so few leash cups fail that I can’t really remember any specific ones at the moment. The amount is probably far less then 10.
The primary failures I recall seeing were not from the cups pulling out or the pins bending and pulling out. Nor was it the plastic plug cracking and releasing the pin. The primary failures happened in the early days of leashes when the stretchy leash material wasn’t able to absorb the shocks properly.
Because the attachments to the board were often just thin nylon line, or the stretchy leash material itself, As the leash bottomed out on its stretch, it would slice like a knife into the rail of the board all the way to the leash cup. The cup, would then flip over and be pulled through foam and out the bottom of the board where it would exit blowing out a big hole in the bottom.
I do recall, way back when, there being a run of pin failures one year, on some imported (I think) leash cups. The pins were made of a soft metal and they bent and pulled out of the cups. I don’t recall using these cups, so I don’t think I had any problems. But I remember others did.
As to the pin angle… In the early days of leash cups, I rarely installed them on center as I didn’t want to cut through the stringer. Boards broke often enough as it was! I placed the cup on the left or right of the stringer depending on the rider being a goofy or regular foot. There was NO EFFECT in wipeouts because the pin was off center!
The cup would have to be attached far up from the tail and way off center to create enough angular force to cause the board to react negatively. The reality is that the leash, in a wipe out, will almost always be pulling well off from one side or the other, simply because there is very little chance that the surfer would be directly behind the board in Hawaiian surf. So alignment, if the board is in the water, would only take place at maximum stretch or right before the board returned to the rider, if at all. If the board hops up out of the water on spring back, then alignment could happen almost immediately, and ducking would be in order!
I have a dozen or so 70’s boards in my shop. Mostly all guns. Many have leash cups. All are intact after zillions of wipeouts in huge surf. Among them, one of them is a 9’4" board I made for Shaun for Waimea Bay. One is a semi gun for Bobby Owens. And one of them is a short board for Margo that has been ridden to death. The plastic leash cup is cracked all around the pins on both sides yet the pin is still intact and still worked fine right up until the board was retired.
The leash cups in these board vary all over the place. Some are off center in the deck foam. Some are in the stringers. Some pins are parallel, some are perpendicular. A few are randomly around 45°. No one ever complained about the angle of the pins or its effect on the boards during a wipeout. I suppose some engineering student could do a white paper on the pin angles and their effects. But I am pretty sure this would be “straining at gnats”.
i'm probably jinxing myself here, but the only leash cup failure I have ever had was the oversanding problem, and the bar cracking out...not leaving enough plastic above the brass bar. Now I always use big plugs pushed way in, I score the sides and bottoms with a razor blade, I groove the inside of the plug hole, glass in the bottom of the plug hole, and I mix west System 404 in with the resin or epoxy.................guys they don't out very easily.
And I put the bar in parallel to the stringer...more aesthetically pleasing..flows with the board. Goes with the force of nature..better Zen etc etc. Bend like a willow grass hopper.
Ive seen one leash plug fail ,, the rod came out because it was too short for the cup,
I say manufacturing defect
if the rod on a good plug is parallel with the stringer then the force of the cord will slide aft and pull against the inside of the cup where the rod connection is strongest
If the rod is across the stringer then the force could be centered on the rod and it could bend and come out
just my take on this,,,,,
I use the small plugs and make sure the rod goes completely through
I like them parallel
edit: I like them in the stringer way back just behind the center box
As to the pin angle..... In the early days of leash cups, I rarely installed them on center as I didn't want to cut through the stringer. Boards broke often enough as it was! I placed the cup on the left or right of the stringer depending on the rider being a goofy or regular foot. There was NO EFFECT in wipeouts because the pin was off center!
im one of tose people that never paid much attention to where my plug was never mind the orientation of the bar inside the plug..just curious which placement of the plug is best for a goofy foot ..i would think left of stringer if your facing board? ive had them all over with no ill affects..to summarize where should the plug be for a goofy with the correct bar orientation and why? thx alot, glenn.
Aloha Glenn
Goofy foot left side. Regular foot right side. I don’t think it matters much really though. I just did it that way cause I had to put it on one side or the other if I didn’t put it in the stringer. So that was the logic. Hardly profound or consequential. I was mostly just pointing out that all the drama and gizmoing over leash cups is unwarranted. But it does make gizmo guys feel really good about their accomplishments in perfecting the installation and placement of Leash Cups! :-)
Bill, as to placing the rod coincident with the stringer on those old cups, I never really had that conversation with anyone else
before , just my pet-peeve and observation — but of course, I expect truth to be validated, so lets get one more person? 
On a more serious note, Is there anything deficient about the current practice of placing cups into the stringer
nowadays.
Do those placements break the board there on the N. Shore with any great frequency.
Ken
Considering that leash cups rarely fail, regardless of installation style, is there any “theory” of installation that really matters. Still…In the spirit of Gizmo Dude-ing this out to the max… How about this.
If the string pulls on the center… doesn’t it then distribute 50% of the force on each end of the rod at the plastic. This would then be stronger then 100% on one end, wouldn’t it? Especially since the rods never really fail. But then the cups rarely fail either so, these theories are pretty much meaningless in any practical sense.
I wonder, does the string move around that much on the rod anyway? And…who cares if it does, since rods don’t bend anyway.
I do all leash cups in the stringer these days. I think the two reasons I did them to the side, back in the old single fin days, was …
1, to miss the single fin box.
2, reason was breaking boards at the plug
That wasn’t so much of a North Shore issue. It was actually a small shore break wave issues elsewhere where the tail of the boards would hit the sand and break at the plug. Once people were 100% using leashes the boards rarely hit the sand tail first and the problem ceased to exist.
Leash cups never broke boards with any frequency here on the North Shore. I probably should have stated more clearly that this was a consumer perception stemming from the shore break issue above, that they didn’t want their stringer compromised. There was no substantial reality behind connecting this to the North Shore. Just a customer perception that had to be accommodated for awhile.
[quote="$1"]
[quote="$1"] SNIP.... if the rod on a good plug is parallel with the stringer then the force of the cord will slide aft and pull against the inside of the cup where the rod connection is strongest
If the rod is across the stringer then the force could be centered on the rod and it could bend and come out
SNIP [/quote]
Ken
Considering that leash cups rarely fail, regardless of installation style, is there any "theory" of installation that really matters. Still....In the spirit of Gizmo Dude-ing this out to the max..... How about this.
If the string pulls on the center..... doesn't it then distribute 50% of the force on each end of the rod at the plastic. This would then be stronger then 100% on one end, wouldn't it? Especially since the rods never really fail. But then the cups rarely fail either so, these theories are pretty much meaningless in any practical sense.
I wonder, does the string move around that much on the rod anyway? And....who cares if it does, since rods don't bend anyway.
[/quote]
Bill
well put
But I have seen one bent rod, but who knows maybe someone pryed at it with a screwdriver, it was one of the large cups
personaly Ive got better things to waste my brain cells on and realy dont care which way the rod is in but I do like the cups in the stringer, just seems stronger.
i have an eberly shaped bolt too. ours, like yours has a full template. after we patched it up, my son took it, i haven’t got a ride report yet. i guess it is from around the end of the single fin tiimes. plenty of foam- all the way out to the rails. fix your dings and ride the thing!
…we all know that you re a very good designer and fine shaper
and Im not a gizmo guy, etc (talking about that…there re some threads in which you pointed many of those gizmoes theories…)
also, like I said in the other comment, most glass shops put out boards that barely resist in the tail and nose a minimum hit.
but this is the STD and by no mean is the best way to do the glass…
so, in my stupid book of REALLY make boards from start to finish including making fins, etc, doing already now not only 30 years ago, to make a living
and seeing and repairing a lot from differents countries, with customers travelling everywhere including Hawaii
I prefer to put the rod side to side instead of parallel cause I really see those bars pulling out
may be the ones that I saw and/or repaired were from crappy plug brands or made with cheapo materials I dunno
seems that you should keep the plug brand that you had got.
your analogy about the forces…another gizmo reading could be that the forces distributes 50% to both sides so better than 100% pulling from one extreme.
it s ok for me that you say to your glasser or not say at all to put parallel or whatever
there s room for all