Ok so it’s the real Maurice. Welcome to Swaylock’s
Greg,
You forgot to mention Donald Takayama, and Gary Brummett. The T, and the B, in MTB.
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Kind of like the Lish Brothers getting all the credit for “fish” boards.Every garage builder in San Diego and Encinitas were messing with them back then.
Yes Bill your right but that was before the Florida days of MTB.
Hi Greg,
Thanks for coming on here and making sways more interesting and informative the last few days.
I couldn’t agree more with your take on the reverse vee controversy, there’s two different animals;
the V to flat behind the fin, and the ‘‘true’’ reverse popularized by MC (welcome to sways, Maurice).
We both used the reverse a lot on gunnier boards and I remember several of our long-winded talks
on the functions of the design. You’ve always liked flat or concave bottoms in the tail so it fit your program
well.
I still use a reverse (with a double concave through the fin cluster) for certain boards. Did a 7’0’’ last year
that was sent to the North Shore as a test board to be passed around and evaluated, but the first guy
that rode it got three days of good Sunset with it, and wouldn’t give it back.
Mike
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Biily,
Funny that Todd Procter’s name comes up in this thread as I am in his shop a lot (he uses a lot EPS) and I noticed that the bottoms on his guns looked really familiar. The kid really does nice work and is a very progressive thinker. Also keeps his work spaces super clean and organised. Kind of reminds me of someone else.
SS
Aloha Steve hows things?!?
I am sure I tortured far too many, who have worked for me, with my obsessions… like clean, organized works spaces! [:)] I am stoked to see guys like Proctor, who seems to be a class act, do well. Far too often in this business, the low life’s seem to get get all the attention.
I just got back from a short visit to Oregon. Took a bit, but I tracked down Art Spence and visited with him for a while. He is shaping and living in his small shop in Seaside. Also hiked out to about 4th Point. Man! The land slides out there really changed things. And judging by the surf, it was pretty good, I don’t think the point breaks as good as it used to be. Art concurred. Seems the bottom has filled in a bit and allows the waves to section when rarely used to.
Howz this for a “small world” moment. Wendy’s brother Greg has a very successful marine business out in Scapoose called Channel Marine Services. For those who don’t know… this is well outside of Portland along the Multnomah Channel. Not many surfers around there! So, Greg was installing an alternator on a boat while I was watching… making sure he did it right! Ha! While I am talking to Mike the the owner of the boat and the subject of Hawaii came up… He said he goes to Hawaii once in awhile. Why I say. He says, because his wife is Dane Kealoha’s, exwife! Amazing… small world sometimes.
Catch you around
Hi Bill taken me a while to reply to you as very busy plus needed to contact a few journalist friends who actually lived and breathed the EEV era,so,here goes…
when Tom curren won the world title from the Trials in1990 he predominantly rode my bds !point is he had a quiver of MAGIC bds that we both worked intensly on in France,- a 6'0" eps/epoxy(won biarritz).6'4",6'9"(santa cruz,bells),7'2",7'8",8'3"! the following year the reverse vee came about thru some preshapes in a container being supa-rockered and my attempt to make a flat bottomed bd , I put vee under the front foot and flat between the fins,it looked pretty different to the bds he was already happy with,I have a clear memory that evening of Tom calling to tell me the new bd was insane -faster and turned vertically,I thought he was kidding,as he has awicked sense of humour,I asked himto bring back all of last c'ship bds and trade them in,thinking he was kidding!He turned up next morning-with last years bds to trade back for new design BD.At this time Wayne Lynch,Pat Rawson,Gordon merchant were in my french shaping room and i asked the question"the bd has 1 1/2 "more nose rocker & 1" more tailrocker and its way faster than last years bds(I still have the 1st one)-none of us could understand why? So that year(91) I made 62 bds for pros the only guys who did not get a magic bd was Pottz and Nicky wood the rest is history-I finally worked out why these bds were a quantum leap in design-we reversed the bottom contours of the bds which still stands today---rail line has all the curve and the central rocker is much lower than the rai curve! As I had been shaping a lot of World Cup Slalom bds for numerous euro pros,I had learnt how to be objective and to graph the bds in 3D,science! so I was able to transfer the same principles into Toms guns & he won his 1st and only hawaiin comp at haleiwa on the nonstickered yellow railed 7'2".the amount of effort WE put into these couple of years and the technical results achieved,were aknowledged by most top shapers /surfers/media as a genuine design breakthru and I shared them with Rusty/Pat /Eric/wayne/Simon A etc.there are so many other great stories with Tom,and contrary to some peoples claims that Tom's French years were the lost years(perhaps a usa perspective) Toms years in France were his most creative from surfing,to designing bds,to music,creating abeautiful familly,creating Surfrider Europe and opening himself up more to the media! after Tom won the world title from the trials in 90,he was still very introverted and I was helping him a bit with media/contracts,sponsors and I could feel I was being used to get to Tom,so I refused all media interviews for 2 years as the last person I wanted to be seen that I had abig vested in Tom-so I shunned the media,until tom won haleiwa and I did a small design article in Surfer magazine with Derek Hynd when it came out the flood gates opened with media/shapers /sufers all trying to geta piece of the action .I am not some slick marketing shaper who runs round the world FIG JAMing-in fact the opposite-during this period I did not speak to Aust media for 5 years,!!
On a personal note it looks like to me you saw A bd in 92 that resembled something you shaped somewhere and you judged myself on one bd and it feels like I upset you by hanging around your shop,stealing ideas etc when in fact I came to hawaii for 4 weeks,and when I would eat at Cafe Haleiwa,I would stop by,I ordered 2 guns off you after listening to how you were the best shaper on the N shore,the bds were ok,I sold them upon my return to France and realized that the big difference between you and I was that I actually surfed/shaped the bds in all conditions-if you were to define friendship,a couple of chats one winter does not constitute the friendship you talk about,and certainly not the bagging you gave me!I still dont talk to the media ,Istill tow very big waves with RCJ,I still am passionate creative and innovative,and test all bds in all conditions,people close to OUR surf world know that I am still living on the Edge in all aspects of my life,and I just don't need people like you bill,making up stories and drawing conclusions based on........1 s/bd!
to any body else reading this,it might seem a bit straight forward,but maybe its an Aussie thing we deal with our shit face toface,we only call the police when we need to fill out an insurance form!
Thanx
M
Not to worry Maurice, it’s not too emotive just the facts from you point of view. It’s Great to get an insight into that period.
Almost every thing i do in designing boards comes from something i have seen before and slightly to radically have altered them to be my version or combination.
In 1987 i was working at T&C and made boards with an upside down vee out the back.
Allen Wicklund was out at Lanis and George was really impressed with how fast this board went and had Allen show it to him.
Gavin Hasagawa T&C’s airbrusher named it the inverted Vee and it was put on the price list as such.
I gave Gavin the same word for word description as Georges.
This bottom was very popular on Kauai.
The 7’2" board Walter Knovak is ridding on the cover of his book had this bottom made in 1980.
I made these in the 70’s and a 1973 concave tail Brewer was the inspiration for them . My 5-fin was inspired by the Brewer tri fin from back then as well.
Just the other day i was driving down the road and saw a nice looking Ku longboard on top of a car with my 5-fin set up on it.
He also has done my version of nose channels.
And so it goes
Greg can you put a inverted vee on your 5 fin fishes or a 5 fin rocket? Have you tried it and would you recommend it?
I could make my inverted vee with the 5-fin set up but would have to make the center fin taller.
Here are some of Gavins twin fin longboards i made for him at T&C.
He won many contests on these.
Its been only a full year since i have not worked for T&C and Gavin has had 4 shapers make these for him.
None of them have ever made boards like this and all of them now have a new model.
This one he had made and tried to describe the inverted vee to the shaper.
He didn’t get it right but he said it worked really well.
This board was next door to my shop to be copied by the shaper there and so i took these pictures.
I doubt any of these shapers mention this design came from me.
And so it goes.
Maurice created his reverse vee fixing some over rockered pre shapes caused by heat in shipping from austailia.
Alan Byrne learned some things about fin angles back then through his hot coater just doing what he wanted.
Both were unplanned and had great results and were not stolen from some other shaper.
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I doubt any of these shapers mention this design came from me.And so it goes.
Good artists borrow… great artists steal… I made that up.
HAHA, so cool, so true, check out all the RnB songs who are originally Stevie Wonders… listen to The Belgium artists Soulwax !
So true.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Everything comes from somewhere.
Only megalomaniacal/narcissistic cretins are unable to accept this and feel compelled to seek credit for things they, like everyone else, have borrowed, adapted, pilfered, smeeged, or stumbled into by dumb luck. Beware of such types.
why these bds were a quantum leap in design—rail line has all the curve and the central rocker is much lower than the rail
curve!
Maurice, can you explain why this is important/a quantum leap in design?
thanks
greg
Hi Greg
relative to the bds that were surfed by the best pro surfers inthe world -which to that point -all had vees brtween the fins,under front foot was a flatter rocker( for speed?) with little or no vee! The pros that I shaped bds for that year,were all calling them magic bds and when I went to Rusty's, to shape my bds there, I was lucky enough to work with him on design and the general consensus at Rusty's was bds went a lot better than traditional vee between the fin bds! Also I shaped so many bds at this time for shop owner/ managers/pros etc was a magic time for me!!!
I thought it was a quantum leap because it got rid of vee in the tail and led to concaves. Getting rid of tail vee (at least in small to medium surf) was like putting a super charger on the board. We were hung up on tail vee for over 20 f#&kin years! Reverse vee started that new trend and then shortly after concaves took over which added even more juice and also allowed boards to drop significantly in volume adding to performance again. The performance you see in the water today wouldn’t be close to what it is without these changes. IMHO MC’s design started that ball rolling.
thanx Greg,for the tech back up! I am amazed that we are even still talking about it,but I guess you had to be in that era & a surfer/shaper to understand how hard & long it took us to get those elusive magic bds! I am still amazed that in this modern era,pro surfers are not too keen to try anything new and that as a shaper/surfer finding the R& D vehicle to take design to the next level is the biggest challenge facing OUR homogonised ( derek hynds naming) world of S/BDS-for me its Tow & RCJ-Derek has been down here at Bells this year surfing finless s/bds in surf up to 8’,amazing stuff some of the bds are 3’6",and even been soufing old style DUKE wooden 1/2" planks in long walled solid waves do not miss this as I actually sat in the water and watched in awe-Jack McCoy was filming,and theres a film coming ,where he invited people like tom carroll,and others to compete in a comp on an island with A frames,all bds had to be finless-an actual challenge to the ol’ grey matter!
janklow and some others (including me) will be interested to see the finless stuff.
Classic story from the early nineties regarding the industry’s reluctance to let go of the V between
the fins. Names left out to protect all parties.
Famous Hawaiian shaper comes to East Coast US for a ‘‘visiting shaper’’ stint. Immediately starts
knocking out 10 a day, causing paychecks that throw up flags all over. Retail personnel report back
to factory, ‘‘he’s ripping you off, he’s not even putting V in the tails!’’.
The boards were reverse V’s.
Mike