Is it just my imagination or is Swaylock’s actually improving the surfboard?
It seems to me that the quality of boards are so freakin good.
I think that the collaboration of so many different skills, talents, ideas, backgrounds, personalities, interests, desires, etc. are actually raising the quality of product.
duh
since i started posting on this board i went from normal poly/poly boards…now im making EPS/XTR boards using alot of balsa, and trying out alot of custom fin stuff…the progress i made since discovering swaylocks is amazing. There is so much expertise here and people like Bert who are willing to share their hard earned discoveries make the amount of information available incredible. Long live swaylocks…
duh
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Ambrose I think that’s the closest you’ve ever been to being speechless!!
I’m not talkin about the obviuos, I mean I think that the envelope is being pushed exponentially. Are we about to see surfboards evolve/advance? I just get the feeling/sense that they are. In the near future will there will be an elite global community of board builders? And I don’t mean elite as in exclusive, but because of the collaboration which is a sort of think tank/hyper R&D, they will be advanced in thier skills, knowledge, and product.
i tend to agree , ive had a lot of phone calls since ive been posting here , the general consensus is that they had no idea about the variety of ways you could build a board , and that everything else other than a urethane blank with a polyester glass job is becoming more widely excepted as a valid option to surf …
just as an observation as well , moving into composite construction and especially the use of eps cores , forces you to do quality work …
the materials really highlight bad work …
hm maybe thats why so many crew dont want to use it???
also the die hard p/u p/e builders are slowly softening to other contruction techniques and the nay sayers have faded away …
we went through such a long period of of anti epoxy , anti progression, anti anything thats not urethane and polyester , with the nay sayers and there propaganda machine in full swing , it really did stiffle a lot of potential creativity …
was talking to a guy a few days back … hes been building boards for 45 years now ,
hes almost 70 and is still cranking out boards , doing everything himself and still loves it …
anyway he was saying to me , he clearly admits being on of my biggest critics in the early days , he quoted different conversations he had with other board builders , basically saying , they thought i was wasting my time going in this direction , "thats not a real board " , " why waste your time , just crank out normal boards like the rest of us ", just plain old questioning the effort to go in this direction …
but now hes quite happy to except , that , thats what you do and this is what i do , he sees the whole concept as valid now , coz hes also retailing surftechs , so he has to spruke the benifits of a sandwich board now , if he wants to sell them …(just object to him using my boards as an example to sell surftechs)
and on top of that , its plainly obvious with teamrider results and durablity , which backs it even more …
he was saying it was just like in his day , urethane foam was just coming out , and he was a pioneer of surfboards back then , designs changed , he had to learn to use different resins , pinlines , experiment with different methods …
he said your no different to me , just a new generation with new things to work out …
one out standing feature of this guys work is his quality , 45 years on and there flawless …
i do agree with the vibe that rapid progression is going to happen on a wider scale ,
swaylockians are more aware of the issues , plus the variety out there …
when it becomes obvious that you can take a different concept , and market it on a grand scale , or build top quality, durable , contest proven performance boards , then you really would have your head in the sand if you ignored what others were doing and kept writing it off …
now its either go with the flow , or except the flow exists …
regards
BERT
Innovation in surfboards these days seems skewed to materials with less innovation in design. But with new materials comes new design theories so one ara of innovation should eventually drive others.That’s cool with me.
So Bert, where is that footage of the kid pulling the airs and 360’s on the supalight longboard…really need to see that man
Drew