i opened my new store on the weekend, thanks to aps3000 i have enough time to shape and service custom clients in store. one of the first customers to come in brought me this old board to get a new one with a simular shape. i thought you guys could both be amazed at the type of construction and/or tell me more about the history of this actual boards making. its hollow and has a gel coat exterior with a seam on the rail. its skin has honeycomb simular to todays light fin cores. the fin box has not a mark or fracture near it and still has the screw in leggy atachment holding the fin in. the customer bought it for $120aud 23 years ago and still rides it regularly.
Wow! Brewer early '70’s Wave Hollow!
I had never seen one, even tho our shop carried the WaveHollows. Honeycomb sandwich epoxy, but the problem was the poly rails, thick matt that cracked, and materials incompatibility when surfed hard and flexed.
My boss, BobWise, was hired to straighten out the templates, tail, and twist of the AquaJet plugs (yes, all 3), and I got to learn some secrets of surfboard engineering. That would be the AquaJet DickBrewer plugs, very similar to your pic.
The valves was really a weak point, in 90% of the boards. That board must be the 10%.
They were so HARD, they’d decapitate your legs if you let it hit you. Always sounded like you were going a million, but average for speed.
Oh yeah, that’s a Hollow W.A.V.E. (Water Apparatus and Vechicular Engineering). I had two of them. Both swallow tails and drab green on the deck and white on the bottom. They had a spray traction on the deck similar to SlipCheck. The fin boxes were aluminum extrusions. There was a hole on the deckside nose that had a rubber stopper just like in the old toy squirtguns. They looked cool but just went okay. I found the hollow sound and the chatter on the water to be distracting. They had a very different flex feel compared to the status quo. The problems were water invasion and shear failure at the rail seam. The traction paint went bad right away and regular wax quickly replaced it. They went for almost US$400 new back in 1974. Regular boards were about $120. Nobody won a world title on one nor did they get a cover shot but still the novelty of a composite hollow board was kind of cool. Members of my family had hollow wooden boards back in the 1920’s and we still had those lying right next to the W.A.V.E.s in a heap on the side of the house. Everything got chucked or went away in garage sales by the '80’s…
The Aqua Jet surfboards I remember were a paper based honeycomb. You could actually see through the shell and view the honeycomb structure inside. Created by Neil Townsend according to Surfresearch.com. (http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000000x.html)
Hollow WAVE surfboards were created by Karl Pope in the early 70s. As any early 70s Surfer magazine ad will tell you, they had quite a stable of shapers. A precursor to the hollow carbon bisects that he is distributing from Ojai, Ca. Hollow WAVE boards had a different honeycomb core made of aluminum with a prepreg epoxy shell. If you pay him a visit at the factory, he has some cross sections of old prototypes and stories to tell.
(http://www.bisect.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2)
I’m not saying the Brewer plugs weren’t twisted, just maybe the similar brand names confused.
No confusion at all.
Wise straightened out the original 3 AquaJet Plugs…we’re from SanFrancisco…
We carried Wave Hollows a couple of years later.
Totally different companies.
Yep - that is what you said. I misunderstood. Sorry, Lee.
wow thats cool guys, thanks for the fo… this one still has the bunghole at the nose. and is quite durable… would compare them to the salomon project in thier time by the sounds of it.
I bought my AQUAJET back in 1970 and 50 lbs ago. It is a 6 foot roundtail 22" wide. It is in nearly the same condition as when I bought it new. I still ride it on really big days. Back when I bought it weighing 175 lbs I wasn’t thinking of its properties of great flotation. Sure does come in handy now at 225 lbs.
For 34 years this board has taken a pounding…the bottom, rocks, other boards and craniums. This board always comes out unscathed. I have made a few minor repairs to a few small fractures in the outer shell to prevent any leaking into the honeycomb sandwich.
As for speed…I can vouch for my particular board…it is very fast…and noisy. On crowded days and the grems are getting greedy, I am outside laying in wait for the monster I now need in order to be able catch a wave on. Once on the wave the weeners who don’t see me… hear the hollow drumlike pounding closing in on them.
My daughter won’t ride this relic…too ugly!!! She has a pretty board. So I save this ride for those “special” overhead days we have once in a while in Massachusetts just for myself…nobody else!
I will take a pic of my AQUAJET and post it in the very near future. SeeYa!