Please welcome Bill Barnfield to the Swaylocks Shaper’s Hotseat.
Remember the rules: In this capacity, Bill is our guest. We all ask the questions and only Bill gets to answer them. Our ablitity to remain respectful and polite will have a lot to do with our ability to attract future guests.
OK, ask away
all the best
Hi Bill,
It’s great to have you participating in this forum. In your opinion, what has been the greatest design advancement in surfboard building on the North Shore? Who were your board building influences? What still motivates you to build boards today? What is your greatest board building accomplishment? We have a million more but we’ll stop at those four for now. Thanks!
Mr. Barnfield,
Thanks for volunteering your time. First off, I have been to your store a bunch, and find myself staring up at the ceiling looking at your collection of boards. Very inspiring. Your thread on rails, is one of the most recommended reads on this site.
If you could only surf two boards on the North Shore, what would they be?
What characteristics would they have that would separate them from boards for town?
Also forget about everyone else, these are boards that you would want to surf, at breaks you would want to surf, not for anyone else:)
Mr. Barnfield,
You have contributed several classic topics to this forum. Among them are rail bands, rocker measurement tangential to the midpoint, and fin placement…
I am interested in your approach to the design of rail profiles/shapes.
Hey Bill -
Have you seen the facebook thing about the book they are doing on early surfing at that place up north in Oregon here, that shall not be named?
They had a picture of you across the highway from the Crab Broiler, and you looked like you must’ve wrestled or something, yes/no? Ha!
I still miss that “Eight foot Lightening Bolt gun” I got at Cleanlines… One of my favorite boards of all time.
Aloha Greg.
Thank you for setting me on the “Hot Seat”. This is a pretty cool thing that you have created. Hopefully I will do it justice! Please be aware that I often work late and get up late and adding that to the time difference with the West Coast and greater yet with the East Coast, my replies won’t liely be during the mornings. I am still buried on some specialty projects but will do my best to participate consistently… Off we go!
Aloha fiberglasshi
If you don’t mind I will answer multiple questions in individual posts.
Off the top of my head, there was only one “design advancement in surfboard building” that was fairly specific to the North Shore. This would be the advancements in boards that could surf bigger waves, and by bigger I mean everything over 6’-8’. Simply because bigger waves were so easy to comeby here. Once we hit the short board revolution, the refinement of gunnier boards for bigger waves was rapid and significant. Spilling from the North Shore, all around the world. Additionally, in the early days it wasn’t near as easy as it is today to get to and stay on the North Shore. Those who did, tended to be the very best surfers and board builders from all around the world. This pool of talent was like the early days of Silicon Valley or Hollywood where the friendly comradary and competion drove advancements in boards and surfing at an unbridled pace, unmatched by anywhere else in the world.
Hi Bill. I hope all is well. Maybe you could add some insight to a couple of things that’s been in other threads.
What makes a board fast, bottom, rocker, rails, length, width? Be interesting to have some of your input.
By the way is Frank still working at the shop?
This isn’t as easy to answer as some might think. I never officially “studied” under or was “taught” by anyone.
I was always a quick learner that had good hand and eye coordination. I was curious about how things worked to the point that I dismantled most of my toys to figure them out. Then bicycles, motorcycles and cars. If there was anyone in the neighborhood that was working on something, I would hang around and watch or help. I was facinated by science and the adventure of life and creativity and was luckly gifted with good artistic sense.
This gave me a huge respect for people who created stuff and the tools, talents and techniques they used to create things. In my generation, it was common to work from an early age and this taught me proper diligence and the neccessity of being thorough in my craft. All this stuff trained my mind to easily connect diverse activities with various techniques and tools to figure out how to make stuff and not to be intimidated by any task. I became pretty good at teaching myself, embracing failure and moving quickly to what works!
I was around many industry people but wasn’t taught specifically by any of them. They all made contributions to the pool of knowledge that led me down the path to where I am today.
When I worked at Hobie’s the strong influences were, Micky Munoz (who got me the job there), Terry Martin, Jeff Logan, Ronald and Bobby Paterson. They never knew it but they taught me how to be a Pro at one’s craft and to do it under heavy load. I first met Bill Thailkill when I worked there. Phil Edwards was mostly involved in the Catamarans then and the R&D facility was next door. It was off limits to most but I got to hang around there when I had time.
During my time in Santa Barbara I got to hang around the Wilderness shop got to know Greenough and was impressed with the very different things they were doing there. This was an interesting contrast to the design philosphies of Yater and Bradbury of that same time. I also met Bob Haakenson and through him the Mirandon Brothers down in La Jolla who were extremely creative! These were very inspirational times! I am probably missing others and for that I appologize.
“I was always a quick learner that had good hand and eye coordination. I was curious about how things worked…”
With that in mind, if you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice about shaping surfboards, what would it be?
As I get older that question pops up in my own mind all the time! Why do I keep doing this?
I am not sure what motivated me in the fist place… maybe saving some money by doing it myself. I never had a big dream or burning desire to be a famous surfboard maker or shaper. It never seemed all that marvelous to me. I liked being crafty and making things work better and since I was surfing it just made sense to play around with making surfboards and making them better.
Maybe that is still the reason. Or maybe it is just a lingering habit that I can’t break. I like the craft. I like making things that work. I like making customers happy. Surfboards that are done well are beautiful pieces of Engineered Art. They warm my heart when I see them, regardless of who makes them. It is a seductive craft.
I don’t know if there was a single “greatest” but here are 3 that come to mind.
1. Introducing my Measurement Controlled Shaping System to others and watching their success with it. It quantified the art of shaping allowing greater precision and the repeatability neccessary to advance pro surfing.
2. Developing the Rescue Sled for the City & County of Honolulu when nothing like it existed. Nothing better then saving lives.
3. Training hundreds of friends and employees over the years, providing increased incomes and better lifestyles for them and their families.
Mr. Barnfield,
Thanks for volunteering your time. First off, I have been to your store a bunch, and find myself staring up at the ceiling looking at your collection of boards. Very inspiring. Your thread on rails, is one of the most recommended reads on this site.
If you could only surf two boards on the North Shore, what would they be?
What characteristics would they have that would separate them from boards for town?
Also forget about everyone else, these are boards that you would want to surf, at breaks you would want to surf, not for anyone else:)
[/quote]Aloha melikefish, thanks for the nice compliments. It has been my pleasure.
2 boards can’t properly span the size of surf the North Shore offers. But for the sake of discussion 2 boards it is. I like to think of the North Shore reefs and waves as 3 types.
Inner Reefs, like Chuns, Rocky Point, Velzland, etc.
2nd Reefs, like Sunset, Pipeline, bigger Laniakea and Haleiwa, etc.
Outer Reefs, Like Waimea Bay, Himilayas, Avalance, and the way Outer Reefs. These reefs are not on my personal radar sceen these days.
Generally it takes 2 boards to cover each type, so a 6 board quiver. But allass I can only have 2 boards so…
For the inner reefs on good days, around a 7’0" fuller template, Tri Fin, thicker, fun board, wave catcher that will allow an old guy to compete with the crowds and still have fun.
For the 2nd Reefs something around 8’6", Tri Fin, good paddler, security blanket.
For Town the 2 would be an 8’0" Mini Tanker and a 9’6" Tanker.
That is a huge subject. Not sure if I can condense it enough. But here goes.
There are 2 primary aspects to rail shape. 1. The actual overall shape. 2. The Volume contained within. Shaping proper rails for the rider and wave is, as usual, a delicate balancing of the two. Of the two, the Volume may be the more important or at least, for the rider to sense. If you know the wave and customer well, it is fairly easy to create a volume that will feel right to the customer. If you don’t know them and the kind of boards they ride, it may be very difficult to determine the right Volume. Best thing you can possibly do is to understand your customers needs. Look at all his boards, measure them, log them. Discuss in detail with him how each board ride and how he thinks it feels. Get to know him and yourself well enough so that you know when he is speaking from real experience and when he is repeating things he has heard or thinks you want to here.
The shape of the rail effects its grip on the water, the way it bites and how deep it penetrates. Like most things in surfboad design, there are no absolute formulas and rails are among the most ambigious and hard to quantify with measurements. It is alot about feel and knowing it when you feel it.
You can create the same shape of the rail in various volumes to suit the customer and waves. Knowing what shape is the hard part. It requires surfing thousands of different waves and ridng zillions of different boards in them. Very few people ever really get this kind of experience and therefore just copy or guess. But since people judge (their) reality by their own standards, the guy guessing or copying never thinks he is, because he thinks (his reality) that everyone else is doing the same thing and it is normal and the way to do it.
Duplicate Post
Aloha TaylorO
Yes I am aware of the book project and the FaceBook page. I am in the process of providing them with pictures from my personal archive as we speak.
Are you referring to the photo of me with the broken yellow Tillamook Head Surfboard… No I was never a wrestler. My father was a boxxer and a wrestler though! That upper body strength was just from surfing and good genes. I never worked out.
Happy to hear you liked your board, thanks for the compliment!
Ha! Ha! SharkCountry… How did you know I have been suppressing a deep desire to enter into those discussions and somehow had managed to beat myself into submission and ignore them! And now you temp me to go down that path in this protected environment and risk it all…! :-)
To move to Hollywood and become a Plastic Surgeon! 
That’s definitely an alternative way of shaping.
Not sure that Hollywood curves beat Hawaïan waves though…
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, with my 1 board experience I don’t have any interesting question but reading your answers is already plenty to process.
Z.
“if you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice about shaping surfboards, what would it be?”
“To move to Hollywood and become a Plastic Surgeon! :-)”
LOL…nice one, Bill. Seems the older shapers who have retained their sense of stoke and humour over the years have fared much better then those who haven’t, and have to think those are two important reasons why.
my shaping question - What’s bottom/rocker would you install on that 7’0 fun board for fun size north shore, and same question on the 8’6.