"The Burger" Bert Berger Tribute!

General Discussion
1

I posted a thankyou to Bert somewhere in an unrelated thread and i think it got lost. So I want to state outright:- Bert you’re a legend!

I had been intimidated by Vac bagging for years, thinking it too techy! Thanks to Berts threads and the help and encouragement of my Friend Stephen, there are two “Burgers” on the way. Check the pix. Some of you will have seen it all before…

Thanks also to Greg Loehr, the leader.

While on the topic of EPS:- Whilst interviewing Dick van Straalen, the details of his having used EPS/Ply sandwich for board construction as early as the Fifties emerged.

Australia has it’s own equivalent of California’s Bob Simmons.



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yep your on the program . it all looks good from this angle …

one word of caution tho …

i presume those inserts are for fcs , one obvious charracteristic of both balsa and eps is the ability to suck water …

the glass balsa glass sandwich insulates both sides of the wood , making it extremely hard to get a ding to the core , but if you do get a ding to the core , youll feel some pain if neglected …

but back to the fins , its essential that all inserts are glassed over , as youll be surprised at the amount of movement in the overall board which can cause hairline cracks …

make the fin systems solid and fully sealed …

fin systems have been my biggest heartache over the years …

regards

BERT

thanks for the thanks …

wait till you see whats coming next …

3

Good Luck on the Goldy Bert!!! Must be hard leaving WA though? All those uncrowded waves and dunes, but I guess surfboard wise you’ll be in the right spot.

I’m shore that you’ll be more recognized and every grom will know what sunova is but stay true to the roots and don’t send your templates to surftech…haha.

Good luck!

Josh.

4

id be in a pine box before my name appeared on a surftech …

its just not an option …

ive said it before , would rather build a few boards a week in my back yard before i sold out my own industry …

thats why i accepted the opportunity in QLD , coz even tho surftech have turned heads in regard to strength to lightness , custom is where it will always be …

and custom is where the waves are , and custom is not waiting 3 months for a container to arrive from china …

um yes , its dis heartening to leave a coast like this …

but on the other hand , ive run out of places to explore , its taken me 20 years to go down every bush track , fire break and fenceline to search out our entire coastline …

so im looking forward to exploring some different coastline more closely …

not just the sightseeing version of exploring the coast …

am really looking forward to bringing a few good surfers back to some of the magic spots that still remain unsurfed tho …

would love to see the response when some of them get media but still remain unplaced …have to admit , its a pretty savage coast …

gone to places where the only way home is if you have brought a 44 gallon drum of fuel with you , ive never doubted (maybe just a little) , but ive had trips where some of the crew with me thought we were gonna die in the wilderness …

so yea compare this to the goldy , there 2 different worlds …

this coast stretches from the southern ocean and antartic swells to the tropics ,hundreds of miles without a person let alone a surfer…

so definatly been spoilt …

enjoy the pics , i know i did …

so many of the best went unphotographed , for fear they might leak out , it was kind of a pact with the crew we found the waves with …

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Hey Bert,

I’m sure you have your own reasons, but I just don’t get it.

Why?

Anyway good luck, though I don’t think you need it.

Also there’s a certain honeymoon spot that’s not far from there where you might get a few uncrowded waves.

7

Hey Speedneedle -

Looking good - but could you tell us how you bent your perimeter stringers - they look like they’re not quite toughing everywhere in your “Bag pic” but out of the bag they llok as sweet as a nut. Oh yeah… did you just epoxy them on or use some other kinda system?

Tell us how she rides!

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looking good!

is that a fridge compressor you are using?

if so how is it rigged up?

thanks

9

Hi Bert,

yep, I’d figured on the need to glass over the plugs.

My Intention with those round- inserts was to be able to accomodate a number of Fin system options in later production.The circular inserts are the simplest jig I could come up with.While this one will probably have FCS its only because that is what the market wants, with most of my customers already owning multi sets of FCS fins.

I eventually want to make a carbon kevlar pressed box based on the FCS 2 pot system but with a bar between them and a seated flange similar to Futures/O’fish’l. I’m currently drawing up plans for handmade dies – The system will have to use the simplest shapes I can rout or drill:- Backyard engineering…

The boards are coming along nicely;- I’ve had to score lines in the underside of the bottom corecell so as to make it wrap into the rail enough. I will try heat forming the rail roll a little on the deck side, possibly using an existing board.

They will be “Nude”- I’ve repaired surftechs and that cover-up/paintwork is Shithouse to work with!!!



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The Balsa is glued - a ply of four layers which easily bent to the outline and rocker in the bag. It’s criminally simple. Epoxy, and not a lot of it!

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Yes a fridge motor, with a car cylinder compression gauge attached as well as a fishtank air valve for controlling the suck.

12

Hey Josh,

Maybe we should post together on this project – sooner or later someone is going to look at my posts and say hey Speedneedle a guy named Pinhead is doing exactly the same thing as you. In case any Swaylockers are interested, last year I asked Josh if he’d make me a board using the Bert recipe I’d seen on Swaylocks . I was real busy so it took me months to research and source the materials (fridge motor, core-cell and 2m lengths of balsa took a while) – Josh was probably a bit sceptical it was going to happen at all. But then he finally got all the stuff and now he’s into it with a vengance, although I might’ve goofed with the resin, cause it takes 9 hours to cure in a heated room – I got bote-cote because has high elongation with no blush. From the couple of hours I’ve spent with Josh in the workshop, I can tell you he’s a real craftsman/artist with such ingenuity you’d almost think he was a Kiwi.

My board is the semi-fish 5’10”x19”x2” – the centre lines you can see under the core-cell aren’t stringers – they are just drawn on the eps so we could line up templates. The fin set up for the semi-fish is interesting, cause I wanted to use 4wfs. 4wfs have an oval flange that a rotating fin box is seated in, the flange spreads the load when fitted to standard PU boards. The flange is 3mm deep –what Josh has done is make ovals out of 3mm core cell and seat them in the eps so they are flush with the bottom, The bottom skin goes straight on over the top of them. The core-cell ovals are bigger than the 4wfs flanges – about 10 mm all around. After the board is glassed the 4wfs are installed by routing an oval hole 3mm deep for the flange and a smaller deeper round hole in the middle of the oval hole for the deeper rotating box part of the system. Because the flange and the core-cell skin are 3mm thick the flange should end up sitting on the core- cell ovals which are bonded to the inside of the skin. In effect we end up with the 4wfs boxes bonded to the inside of the core-cell skin.

Check back for a report in a couple of months to see how the system is holding up.

Cheers,

Pinhead (AKA Stephen)

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Hi Stephen, I like the one about Kiwis! You know it’s true!

I’m a shade embarassed to have given the impression I’m alone on this and I should have given Stephen credit sooner. We’ve been a team. He’s clever in a different way to me:- He sussed the pump and the program required to get CNC cut profiles in EPS…amongst other things. Anyway, humbly it goes on :- The damn things are’nt in the water yet so I’ll pull my head in!!!

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yea , thats it …

keep the system well insulated from the core …

as a precaution , i run glass around the inlayed high density insert as well …then more glass under the box , then glass over …

it totally sux , when your board is flawless and a fin system has failed …

so far no system is adequate for this construction yet …

thats why i was forced to develop my own …

as you can see , theres obvious benifits to running flexible boxes in this construction …

would love to see a fin company step up with an adequate system , but so far there all still in urethane land …

it would be nice to just grab a system off the shelf and install , instead of having to make everything …

what you said josh about making an easily installable box that holds the fcs , was only just crossing my mind today …

like you say , so many crew already have heaps of fcs fins …

my next short term dilema , is finding a suitable temporary system till i can get mine done on a larger scale or talking an existing system into doing decent foils in the long run …

i think you guys will freak when you see how bullet proof those boards come out …

regards

BERT


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have you got a diagram of your pump setup?

thanks

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Hey Bert,

What material are you using to cast you fin boxes?

The eliptical shape of the insert and the overall box configuration looks excellent to me. There’s a grand combination of strenght and simplicity here!

Sure wish I was a little closer to ya mate.

Good-on-ya, Rich

17

Hi Bert

I am allready doing a very simple box that suits Fcs fins

I will take some pixs when I make the next one

I dont use fcs fins myself I prefer to make my own shapes

But I have put fcs plugs in some of my boards just because they where easier than making a new system myself

Then I found that one of the suppliers here would only sell -plugs if they were with fins So I spent two hours one Saturday and now I have a simple system that I can make any time very quickly

Ive got another two boards just started with some new inards

Light and springy thats the go

Mike

Ps the Gold coast You GOTA BE KIDDING may be we should run a bet on how long you last on that coast after the wilderness of the whole west coast

anyway all the best with the venture

Its funny I grew up in Perth and still think of it as home but I cant imagine living there now too big and crowded up north is not much good for the kids and down south Margs Yellingup to crowded south of there too cold

So here we sit in Auckland where its very wet allways green and the waves are all ways there (not allways perfect thu) only 4 mins drive from the house so I guess this is home for now

18

Bert

I have missed something here, are you really moving to the Goldy, if so, which loud mouth wannabe has lured you with false hope to come and make money in this already surfboard soaked part of Australia. Unless it is one of the so called “big three board builders” (quick,rip,bong) and they want you to stock all of their shops with your style of board, you are blowing it. Leaving such a beautiful existance and comming to a place where there is no secret spots.

Doublecheck your sources and be sure, the Goldy is like a mini Hollywood (for the surfing industry), full of false people and a meca for the next wannabe.

If you do make it here, great, always good to see someone trying something different.

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hey dusty …

yep your not wrong in so many ways …

my first impressions were the vegas and the hollywood of the surf industry …

the capital of plastic …

the land of forked tongue dwellers …

but in amongst that lot , theres a few crew with there act together …

the reality is , in this part of the world the same opportunities dont present themselves …

the worst that can happen is i can end up back where i am now …

the best , well who knows ??

im not motivated by greed or glory , but rather a thirst to learn and to make things better …

so now ive been given the opportunity to be creative with a lot of really kool toys …

and build boards for some very talented surfers , who visit the goldy every year in the coarse of there competition schedule …

ive done enough time over there this year to realise the good and bad …

i also know how to protect the bottom line …

so while the money isnt the drawcard im not frivilous enough to just roll up all wide eyed like a dumbass country boy , we have dirty streets on this side of the world to , ive been burnt enough times to see a burning coming …

there is no industry on this side of the coast , on the goldy every second kid can glass and sand a board …

the place might be surfboard soaked , but its dam dry when it comes to something different …

theres some crew , who just the mention of there name and you know you said the wrong thing …

and others who are well respected by those across the industry …

ive spelt it out loud and clear that i would rather stay a small producer than work with idiots …

so far ive seen and dealt with some very talented people …

i couldnt do any better than that …

if it doesnt work …

thats life …

if it does work …

thats life …

“better to have lived and loved than to never have loved at all”

i dono who said that ?

but it seems to fit …

so your on the goldy dusty ??( If you do make it here,)

no doubt i will see you around some time …

thanks for the insight …

regards

BERT

hey rich , will pm you …

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hey Bert, what woods are you alternating in those rails. That looks cool with the wood rails and the bright yellow bottom. How far forward is that center fin. Must be the camera angle but it looks really forward and off-center (to the right). That is an optical allusion, right?

good luck with the move.