True!
Howzit deadshaper, I get the feeling we are from about the same era. I started playing with resin in 60' and by 64 was doing ding repair for a shop. by 67 I was doing boats and i 69 Gary T from Plastic took me under his wing and the rest is history. One thing I remember was every body wanted to be a shaper and not the glasser but and I had more expierence with resin at that time. When I wasn't in the laminating room I was hanging with the shapers and eventually they taught me the ropes but they were the gods of surfoard building and not the glassers. Even when I started Kokua Fiberglass in the early 90's and started putting my co lams on the boards the shapers would give me some flack but I told them tough and the buyer has as much right to know who glassed the board a much as the shapers name. You see alot more glassing co logos on boards then back in the earlier years. Aloha,Kokua
Kokua:
I have a friend “Jim Wade” that was a shaper for Plastic Fantasic in the 70’s. Did you work with him?
Not a legend by any stretch - or rather, a positive one here or anywhere else but please notice an additional consistent theme running through the comments:
Carrying a project from dream to engineering/design to construction to finish to test to use to maintenance to analysis to death and recovery separates good from great however any industry - this one included - employs more good people than great.
A person passionate about being a part of the board building business may have to settle for being good at one or more of those areas professionally while pursuing the rest privately.
The questions may not be “what do I have to do to get a job and garner experience?”.
The real questions might be “am I passionate enough to get scut jobs and hang with them till I either move up, along or out?”
One of the guys I work with put it pretty well:
“You don’t need to build a great resume, you need to build a shelter to work and live in on the front steps of the place you want to work at then stay there till you get invited inside or cited for being an nuisance”.
Howzit surfding, Name sounds familar but remember it's been 40 years and my mental hard drive has been full for a few years now. I know Bruce Jones worked there and Wayne Land made appearances between being our strong arm collector. Was lucky to get Danny Callahan to shape a board for a plug andafter I made the mold I finned it and later took it to Oahu and it worked great there I stayed with Gary after the fire and worked with him and Jim MIzell as Aquatic Energy doing boards to pay for the Honeycomb boards which was a joke and another story. Also remember watching Gary use a heat light box to try and get kevlar to basically almost melt and fit it self into one of the molds I made for the honeycomb project, didn't work.Finally they ran out f money and I started doing boards in my garage on 7th st in H.B..Can you imagine that today. Aloha,Kokua
Great History! Remember the factory on 17th and Olive? Crazy stuff when down there back in the early 70’s.
Aloha Kokua, Surfding, and all............... technically my first shape was the destroyed hand-me-down Greg Noll a friend gave my brother in '59........ I was 8! But I really started like many others in the 60's when Greenough, & McTavish spun off everyone's heads with Nat winning the World Championships on 'Sam' and Witzig spewing the article "We're Tops Now"................ the "Surfer Magazine" that ignited a war between USA and OZ.
The claim that Nuuhiwa was "a poser" and that Young surfed circles around him and everyone else in Amerika fixated on noseriding was contentious and a real powder keg. It probably sold a lot of magazines no doubt. But getting back to the case in point, Surfding has well founded statements in his post, as well I would expect him to. Anyone that reads Sway's for any period of time will surmise that SD and I have done a fair amount of collaborating over the past couple years or so.
As I am pathetically slow in getting my models for SD to create files, I have to say I am the only one to blame for this. The grunt work of truing blanks before I even start the 'real work' of creating a design is time consuming and altogether unnecessary in this day and age, and most recently I have been faced with such an increased demand that I have BECOME MY OWN BOTTLENECK which has prompted me to expedite the concept to completion process.
One of the most challenging (and most enviable) positions to be in our industry, is to come up with a design that is so successful that throngs of prospective customers come seeking it and thereby beat a path to your door! Yes Mildred, that can happen in today's times albeit it rare to the point of an anomally.
Surfding is SUCH the knowledgeable machinist, that he understands that subtle nuances that demand successful cutting of blanks to net maximized strength to weight ratios utilizing files on the best blanks possible. Because Mike (SD) has been (and IS) a handshaper, he brings a depth of knowledge that experience inherently brings to the Board Cad/CNC table. And I am in complete agreement with him that although I could send him all the numbers and such to create the current design I need made to file, that it is ultimately a superior approach to have that design scanned and exhaustively compile the info needed to produce from optimum blanks with the deck rocker, contours, and other criteria to produce the optimum end result.
The point that I was making about hand shaping versus......... er, not even versus, I mean the point I was making about handshaping and CNC machining is that a 3" planer blade has finite limitations in its approach while shaping from a 1/4" cutting head of a CNC machine. That's just a given. If I could shape the entire blank with a router with insane precision and consistency, then perhaps I would be on par with Mr. CNC. Profiling machines where a stab in the right direction, but probably a fair analogy to it would be Orville & Wilbur's early aivation attempts compared to a 747.
So to bring this all around to Leadfoot's quest. It really depends upon what YOU want to learn more extensively with the industry. If it is general construction techniques like laminating, hotcoating, sanding, fin work, airbrushing, polishing, then yes, there could be opportunities somewhere from someone to learn those facets of board building. But when it comes to shaping, the industry has largely, though not quite yet exclusively, moved to CAD, digital, scanning and files, versus one off hand shaping. And yet, the very best stuff comes from the mind's eye sending signals to skilled hands to create those one offs that earns terms like "magic" and "fave", and "go to" that earn the right to become a file. It would seem that a 'magic' board should NEVER become a file, but many would disagee.
Just to run the 'way back machine' for a brief moment. Yes kokua, you and I and Surfding (Michael Ward) come from the same era. It's funny that "Plastic Fantastic" is mentioned here as when I was early on as a paid working shaper for "Owl Surfboards" (Surf n Wear), Al (Merrick) was learning his shaping chops on Arlington Avenue in SB from his "Plastic Fantastic" shop. This was PRE Channel Islands. We were coming on while Yater, Bradbury, and Wilderness were already household words in every Santa Barbara surfer's vocabulary. Owl was a 60's label, but it had been shelfed and put aside until I revived the passion then got to busy managing multiple stores and passed the torch to Andreini who had ridden Owl's since before puberty (LOL).
But in closing, I would only say to Leadfoot, that it would be sad for hand shaping to become extinct in the huge wake that the digital age has created. You should aspire to take your handshaping to elevated heights where you can actually due your thicknessing from the bottom while changing rocker curves and/or installing bottom contours into the blank ALL AT THE SAME TIME on the fly. Work that lever and think about it in your quest to FEEL THE FORCE.
P.S. too long and bothersome to go back and spell check! ;0
Dead (Bruce) thanks for positive comments.
Leadfoot I hope you find a factory that takes you in. It always speeds up the process when you work around experience craftsman. Walk with the wise and become wise. I was very lucky to work with some outstanding craftsman over the years. Took a lot of abuse but learned to have thick skin after a while. Five years from now if your still building boards your skin with be like an Alligator.
…hello DS,
many good points there to discuss but I have to work!..right now ha ha.
One, is that may be we can do a comparison between the machine and the music (songs, recording and instruments too)
Remember in the early 80s when digital started to appropiate of all
and all the articles, people, etc claimed how fantastic and good was (is)…really??
Apart from being a surfboard builder, I did and do other things with my life.
one is be a musician; in that road, I did several things, from playing, performing or composing in several music styles to stage manager or handy man for other bands, recording, etc
In recent years I have been checking that most “pop” music is made with digital virtual instruments and techniques
only vocals are natural…at some point.
In this manner, the way to record and mix, etc a song is somewhat different and the final cut is not natural
what we hear in TV or CDs is an un natural sound (volume, dynamics, etc). Digital world.
In a less % still we have real people and instruments that record songs or music in many styles, but happen that there are audio engineers (may be new generations) that really dont know the natural sound of the instruments or what we try to evoke, so these guys record this stuff with a digital sound (check a lot of classical music CDs…50% are impossible to listen in the proper way, totally unrealistic sound; digitaloid sound) and is a no no.
This analogy to try to say that we have here both worlds
parallel at some point, in my opinion.
We as a surfers do not need machines
we as a businessmen, do need those machines.
We as a surfers do not need machines
we as a businessmen, do need those machines.
Well said!
That is my downfall. I was a “businessman” once. I did not like that guy. I am a much happier surfer.
Great comment.
Yup commersh music era........ remmeber when Madonna got rid of any musicians around her to fatten her bottom line. Techno pop and such. Maybe she was a disciple of the ancient one man band, but I doubt it.
your statement about music just brought up a line from Saturday Night Fever where the DJ says to everyone on the dance floor:
"I love that new polyester look"!
...........really?
I have lived in a few rural surf areas and a few urban surf areas. I have seen guys go to work for glass shops and shapers claiming they were not the competition. In less than a year they were in buisness for themselves. Not all shop employees wind up that way, but there are always a few just trying to see what they can learn to set themselves up. You stated that you have been taking your blanks to a glass shop. So does that mean you have never glassed a board on your own? Have you perfected the ding repair process? What I am saying is; Are your shaping abilities the onyl experience you would have to offer a factory? Secondly; Have you considered moving somewhere that is a "hub" as someone stated above. When shapers or glassers are entrenched in an established market they are not as likly to feel threatened and may not veiw you as future competition. The future competition thing I spoke of above is just a fact of life. Everyone who has been in the business for awhile has seen someone work his way in under of the wings of someone more experienced and after they have learned every trick, go out on their own. Simple case in point; Dale Velzy--------Dewey Weber
Share nothing, divide and conquer?
In a land long forgotten there was a time all surfers were brothers.
;0
The statement made above by myself is NOT a personal statement. Has nothing to do with my own personal beliefs. It is merely an observation (and a good one) of the Industry as a whole based on several years of being around shapers glassers etc. If you search the posts that I have made in the many years of frequenting this site you will see that I have shared plenty. I wasn't crazy about giving away little tricks and secrets that others have handed down to me at first but warmed up to it gradually. Are there still little tricks, tools and secrets that I haven't shared? Absolutly! Will I ever reveal or "share" some of the most guarded of those. Not likely. Shapers, glassers etc and hard core "live for it" surfers are some of the very best people in the world. I'd rather be around them on a daily basis over any other group of people. That's about as far as it goes for me. I'll let you and SD pontificate on the virtues of sharing. My attention span is short. I never bought into that "brotherhood " crap .
**I’ll let you and SD pontificate on the virtues of sharing. **
What’s your deal?
You must be kidding me?
No deal and no kidding. Just figured you and DS would have more to say on the suject than I do. So do you?
Everybody wansta’ be the shaper. Wanna-be shapers are a dime a dozen. Like little dogs humping your leg to get that all illusive, super sexy shaper job. The reality is that the real need in the industry, is for good production laminators and sanders.
As a far as sharing or being secretive about what you know, I don’t have any problem about offering what I know. There’s a big difference between knowing how something is done, versus actually being able to do it well consistently.
Howzit atomized, It has been that way forever,everybody wants to be a shaper. Shapers are the ones who get their names on the shaped blanks and they are the ones that usually are the most well known. The laminators and sanders are just in the business and very few get well known for their end of the process and who wanted to be the lowly sander. Plus the sahpers make the most money for their time involved as opposed to the others who are just as important when it comes to making boards. Some things never change. Aloha,Kokua
Just my 2 cents but…Leadfoot has most likely bailed but to anyone else who is reading this I think starting a small ding buisness is a good little venture to gain more experience if no one can offer you work. Your pretty much doing everything, glassing, sanding, installing fin boxes ect… and you’ll see every different shape available. It is possible to make good money doing dings too if you run a good buisness with good turnaround. Starting out working for a glass shop they’ll put you on dings till you show any form anyway so…plenty of shapers were glasses/sanders first.
Good point Kokua, hey was the thruster invented by the shaper or the glasser? who was foiling, glassing, sanding them? (Rhetorical Question)