Here’s what I gathered from that thread: Built in the Channin factory in Encinitas. Channin had the contract to build those for Sundek. Balsa Bill was running Sundek then. Atomized may have done the paint job. Generally great color and glass work out of Channin’s shop.
Photo by Balsa Bill from that era…
Any other insights into the rise and demise of Slater Surfboards? What years? Were many made? Have you seen others? What happened?
Was it too early in Kelly’s career for it to be a business success? Or was it that Kelly hooked up with Channel Islands?
Kelly and Sean came to Channin with one of Matt Keckele’s boards, Matt, Mike Daniel, Greg Loher and a bunch of the other Brevard shapers were building the sander enhanced flip tip boards ( Mike would go on to shape the plugs for the first production blanks with this feature ).
Rick Hammon was shaping short boards at Channin, they talked it over with him and he shaped his version, minus the added flip, Kelly wasn’t satisfied with it and he shaped another the same way, also disatisfied, he went on to Al, the rest is history.
Hey Jim! Thanks for remembering us guys in the trenches back here in the late 80s when the modern shortboard was taking shape. GL laid the groundwork with the boards he did for Mike Notary and Scott Miller in the early 80s - much thinner than what others were doing. Then Hartley and Greg started adding rocker and deepening concave, but we all thought they were crazy. Kelly was riding for Kech and watching all this go down as a grom. His surfing advanced from ''really good for his age'' to ''phenoma'' in that 85-89 period. Boards were getting radically thinner and the extremes of Hartley's boards didn't look so extreme any more...
I had dropped the beak nose around 86, I was doing a thinned tip but it was not flipped up yet. Kirk Brasington started flipping the last couple of inches when he was shaping all the Kechs, they had the little''quick-flip-release-tip'' decal they used to put right on the underside of tip. It sort of snowballed from there and by late 90 several of us were doing sander tricks on the nose. Some of the ''elf-shoe'' tips actually had reduced rocker at the 1' mark, what we were trying to do was concentrate the bend at end and leave a flatter enry for speed. But by 91-92 the fully bent rocker chip (with flip tip) was going gangbusters. I think everyone has heard the story about Gregg Webber seeing Hartley surf at Angourie and the influence that had on his designs. That fully ''internationalized'' it. Hell, by 93 we were doing ''rocket fish'' because the little skinny chips (Kelly rode 17 1/2'' and everybody wanted that width, haha) didn't go in average waves.
I started work on that first plug for Clark late in 89, but it didn't get released until early 92. The initial attempt didn't quite fly, they liked the concept but my execution need a little work, lol. When I sent them a better version it was almost ready to go to mold when the infamous ''gassing'' episode hit, all new molds were put on hold for about a year while that got sorted out. All the other shortboard blanks had beak noses and were ill-suited to the contemporary designs. I was very fortunate, that blank was successful beyond anything I could have imagined.
…hey MD, I remember to try my best to shape those flipped noses and tail kicks on the Clarks but without much success; the Bennett foam Brazil, now Rhyno foam, had far better plugs than Clark to shape that kind of boards, but was very difficult to put the hands on one, due to only sold containers not a few.
reverb, I didn’t have any familiarity with the Rhyno plugs at that time. But I do know they were (and still are) making excellent PU foam. Gordon Clark had so much respect for those guys that he highly recommended them for import here after he closed up shop.
I don’t think most people on here realize how big the industry is in South America. Brazil alone probably has more surfers than the US. The recent kook boom here may have shifted the balance back our way, but not by much.
This is getting off into a pretty serious hijack, though. We should let it get back on topic - waiting for balsabill to chime in…
