Pulled up to the Point (Ventura) this morning, just in time to see Walden walking down to the water with an interesting design. The board has the standard Walden planshape, 9’4" or 9’6", but the deck seems to be raised about 3/4" to 1" above the rails. There seems to be about a 4" rail band from the outside of the rail to the inside of the deck. The rails appear to be 60/40 so nothing new there, but the deck itself seems “raised”.
He’s always experimenting with new shapes and designs and I just wondered if this is NEW or something that has been done already?
What are the pro’s and con’s of this design?
I would have asked him myself but, he was already heading into the water by the time I had wrapped my mind around what I saw.
By the way, beautiful waves this morning. Head high sets, light offshores and nice clean lines. Would’ve been stubbie-hull heaven!!!
The PU/PE 7s superfish board from China/Thailand has a similar deck to what you described. Keeps the volume in the deck with thinner rails. A differnent way to give the deck concave, instead of “scooping” it out like Bert, its a built up concave.
And yes this morning was nice. Had a few awesome ones at Rincon before work on my quad fish.
I remember seeing him on a board kinda like you described, only it was 1990. The thing looked like he roughed it out and did not fully blend his railbands out. I even remember him taking apart his kid’s train set for the aluminum and put it along both sides of the stringer. He even used to put shiny silver mylar on the bottom of his boards. I guess he had to do something with the mylar when he was running Spectrum Silkscreening. He does interesting stuff with his boards.
I remember him letting me try velcro footstraps on my longboard long ago. I sucked in a lot of water because I could not detach my feet very easily. Steve Walden defintely has an open mind to new ideas.
It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it??? I had mine out Wednesday afternoon and had an incredible time. Yesterday my wife guilted me into longboarding with her…I’m glad she did. :)~ Sunshine, new sandbars and a clean little left!
Schroeder,
I believe he has that board mounted on the side wall in his shop. Pretty funky. He’s definitely not afraid to try new ideas, just take a look at the variety of test boards in the back racks and rafters. There are few variations of the Stealth in there as well.