There's enough pro shapers on here that it might be fun to share some of our experiences in ''exhibition shaping''.
I'll start with the first one I ever did, which was in the parking lot of some long-gone (this was over 20 years ago) South Florida surf shop. They were a dealer for me and the owner talked me into driving 120 miles down to do a demo as part of a weekend promotion event he was hosting. He assured me he have ''everything set up'' when I go there....
When I arrived, I found that ''everything'' consisted of a couple of sawhorses and an extension cord. Luckily, I had a roll of 233 and some smelly towels to at least pad the sawhorses. I had no place to rest my tools, so we found a cardboard box to serve as a table. Even though it was winter, it was about 85 degrees F, but there was a nice south breeze. Of course we were out in the full sun.
This was before the close-tolerance blanks, but after boards had started to go thin. So the first thing I had t do was take about 5 passes out of the bottom of a 6'7''A. The crowd gathered, I started to mow, and about 10 people on the downwind side got a faceful of Clark Foam. The crowd shifted to the upwind side. The cars downwind collected dust at an alarming rate. People shopping at other stores in the plaza began to notice.
With no shadows and bright sun, I couldn't see anything. I had to slide the board from side-to-side to keep the sawhorses out of my way, and I had no yoke to stand the board on a rail. By the time I got to the deckside I was so hot my mask was soaked with sweat, so I nearly suffocated. I got most of the rail bands done and decided to put down the planer because we were afraid some would call the cops because of the noise. Trying to screen the rails was a real adventure on the sawhorses, I had to hang one rail off the side and weight the blank. By this time I just wanted it to be over, but I didn't want the shape to be a POS, either. I was dripping sweat all over the blank, I was coated in a slurry of sweat and dust, and the crowd was losing interest in the detail work. So I called it done at about 95%, figuring no one else would know or care. It turned out to be the right call....
Surprisingly, most of the spectators told me they enjoyed the demo. I had been skeptical, figuring they would find it boring. It rained 30 minutes after I finished, rinsing the parking lot and the cars.
I’m far from having your experience, Mike, but here’s one from the 2002 “Glissexpo” in Paris. It all started with truck drivers going on strike a few days before the event and blocking all gas terminals in France so that gas stations were not supplied any more. We had to drive from Biarritz to Paris (800 KM) for the show and we had 3 or 4 vans loaded with boards (“we” being ten or so shapers from the Basque Coast and Landes). Jean-Marie Millan (Mac Millan Surfboards in Hossegor) showed up at my place with three 50-gallons empty acetone drums and we drove down to the spanish border where we filled them with diesel oil. Then we hit the road in convoy up to Paris, stopping along the way to re-fill tanks from the big ex-acetone drums…
There was a shaping cabin at the show and we all went in, one after the other, to shape a board in front of dozens of professional visitors (many of them probably being more experimented than some of us were… I remember having Phil Grace looking at me working through the window… Pretty intimidating…)
The trucks drivers’ strike ended the day before the end of the show, so the way back home was more relaxed…
The three boards I had on show and the blank I shaped there lying in front:
The girls from the nearby Rusty booth came in to do some ad photos with one of my boards:
Driving around with loads of fuel (outside your vehicle's tank) is an unnerving experience. I've done it, when we evacuated for one of the 2004 hurricanes I had 25 gallons of gasoline (five 5 gallon cans) in the back of my pickup for 400 miles. You definitely take some extra care in your driving.
I've got several more stories but gotta go surf right now. We have (almost) waves!
PHIL GRACE, can you give me a bit of background on this guy you mentioned. We have a long time shaper where I live named Phil Grace (quite a legend here). Im wondering if is the same guy you were mentioning a couple of posts back?
Yes, Phil Grace...there's only one, the same one who had the shop in Rye. He works in France, either permanently now or regular stints, not sure, but he has been doing so for some time, through the "Euroglass" factory in Hossegor along with Pt. Lonsdale's Mark Phipps. And yes, to be watched by him would make me nervous also...very classy shapes.
thanks guys, yep thats the Phil grace im talking about it!
Im peninsula based (rye) and was wondering if phil's expertise had stretched overseas. he used to shape with anothery guy MIck Pierce over here (piece and grace) I believe who also still knocks out great boards.
