Just trying to find out any info about my old Dewey Weber. It's 9'6" and appears to be mostly balsa with strips of foam off the center. Numerous redwood stringers. All original. Weighs in at just under 40 pounds! Any info concerning date and model etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Interesting board.
Would like to get a closer look. A few things don't look right. The fin, the yelllow lines, the whiteness of the foam. I'm even suspect of the logo/lam.
McDing, LOL at your inane statement. That board is real, authentic and a perfect example of a “show board” from the early sixties. That is, a board made specifically for a show as an example of their workmanship and detail not seen in “stock” boards. Then they were usually retired to the wall of the builder’s shop. I’ll wager this board was in Dewey’s booth at the 1963 Surf-O-Rama at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
The only wood in that board is in the stringers. What appears to be white foam is actually pigmented resin. The parts that have no pigment have turned yellow/brown and that’s what you are mistaking for balsa.
Here’s what I see:
#1 center stick - Redwood and either HD foam or balsa
#2 plain old polyurethane foam that’s yellowed a bit.
#3 White pigmented resin panel w/ dark pinline
#4 Is either a 1/4 inch redwood strip, or another pin line.
#5 Redwood and balsa offset stringer. Looks like 1/2 inch balsa w/ 1/8 inch redwood.
Thanks for taking the time to comment! Here are some closer photos. The large center piece and both rail pieces really look like balsa. Peace!
I've got a picture of Dewey and Carol at the SM Civic Surf-o-rama. I'll dig it out and we'll see if you are right. Have you seen this board other than an internet picture? I don't know a damned thing about old boards. I don't remeber a thing about all those Brawner and Seymour auctions I went to, the boards I bought, restored, resold etc. lost money on, made money on . I do remember seeing a Hobie Balsa hanging in the "Beach House" that Renny Yater thought he must have shaped back in the Day. Well he was wrong. A friend shaped and glassed the balsa blank and put the old Hobie stamp on it a couple of months previous. I once had a board go thru my shop for ding repair and a re-gloss, It was a Caster or a Challenger. I can't remember. I made a pass across the logo/lam and "poof", it was gonna. A fake. So I called up the owner to tell him his board was not what he thought it was and had no other identifying marks. So I asked him "What kinda board he wanted it to be"? He said" Dewey Weber". So the next morning I called him and told him to come over and get his "Surfboards by Dewey Weber" It pissed me though that he sold it and made a bunch of money on it. I only did it because I thought he would hang it. That fin iis heavily suspect. The speed with which you jumped on my post tells me that you've been reading too many old magazines and no very little of which you speak. I made a simple staement that a few things don't look right. # one being the fin. Having said that I could be wrong. Seeing the board in person would "tell the tale".
Trying to tell if that board is a phony from the picture is kind of like calling out some of the members of this forum, real surfboard craftsmen. From the pics the board looks bitchen. I don’t even like Weber’s old, or new.
Reading old magazines? No, I was there. I used the Surf O Rama reference because it was the only “show” I could come up with at that time and place based on the fin. The term “show board” (at least in the South Bay) at that time also meant what “wall hanger” does now to all the lame azz collectors out there. You know, the guys at those Rarick auctions. The ones that don’t even surf anymore, if they even did in the first place, that pay big bucks for restored boards so they can look at them on their wall. In the shop I worked in at that time we glued up blanks like that on very special boards. Only special boards. If the board is fake, it’s fake. The fact that there’s a market for that crap is bad enough. Go on with your restorations. Talk about them in the parking lots of San O, Tourmaline, Waikiki and the Third Coast. I’ll be surfing somewhere else where there’s a real wave.
I bought my second board from Dewey at his Lincoln Blvd. shop in 1961. The stringer choice on stock boards when I ordered was 3/4" redwood or 2" balsa. He had a bunch of very ornate customs on display in his showroom at that time:
Howzit pointdog, I wet to that Surf-O-Rama that year but I can't remember any thing about it other than I had a lot of fun. Went to 2 of them and once again can't remember if the other was the year before or the year after, darn I hate getting old and my brain hard drive is just to full and needs to be defraged. Aloha,Kokua
H! Ha! That's what I thought! You know so much about the fins of that era, so whats wrong with it? Yeah man that's where I hang out Waikiki. San-O and Tourmaline.
Those pics, with the light at a different angle, reveal a lot more. I have to retract what I said earlier. It does look like a foam/balsa glue-up w/ balsa center and rails. Could not see the grain in the first pics.
Thanks again for the input! The authenticity of this board is not an issue. It's been in the same family for over 45 years. We just wondered if anyone could elaborate on the particulars. We are proud to have it! Again, we are appreciative of all constructive comments! Best Regards!
By the fin placement alone it looks like the board was made around 1960-2, I am saying '61. The blank looks as if it was made by Walker Foam, which made all the blanks for Weber.
Not to try to one up Mcding, I was in PV Estates about a month ago, to see my brother-in-law, at his friends dads house, and his dad took me to the garage to show me his old board, he bought in 1959 from Jacobs. Now this house overlooks seemingly the entire Pacific, and is filled with gaudy, expensive, but kitch art, yet in the garage, I could not believe my eyes, because it was in almost perfect condition. He wanted me to put a leash plug in it! I told him no, and the board would be worth more than his new, still un-plated Mercedes in a few years. I probably could have talked him out of it, but that’s not my style. Interestingly, Harold Walker’s house is less than a mile away. I was tripping, when I went back inside I told the Old-guys wife, to find a place for it in the house like right when you enter the house; she gave me the look as if over her “dead body” that would ever happen. I bet the board is still there.
In the seventies you could pick up stuff like that for 5-10 bucks, all the time. We had countless old boards taking up space. Now someone sees one and its like"O sh-t", its a fake. Would have been nice to still have all those…
I was living in SF around 1969 and decided to buy my first short board. Took a road trip to San Diego and back checking all the shops. I particularly remember large numbers of pristine longboards lining the walls at Rick’s and Hansen’s, but almost all the shops were glutted with longboards. As ghettorat said, you could get them for a song. I think a lot of guys had either ordered longboards and then decided to go short by the time the boards were done or else had ordered and then been drafted while they were waiting. For what ever reason or combination of reasons, there were just loads of nearly-new longboards in the shops for cheap. I particularly recall almost “pulling the trigger” on a pristine, 9’8" BK Sig. model ($15) in HB and again on a flawless, 9’4" Hansen ($20) in Cardiff. Instead i wound up buying a hideous, 7’10" Soul pintail with a Wave Set fin (just HAD to have me a short board). Guess which 2-out-of-3 I’d rather own today…
