My first board....well in the summer of 1968 i cut down my 9'8" gordan & smith. first i cut it down to about 8'0", then i took all the glass off and reshape the whole board , reglass it using a filp flop to spead the resin out ...glass the fin on without fin rope, and didn't know i had to sand it..so i when surfing ..well the fin came off on the first wave..and sitting on the beach now all sad , the local hot guys came by and let me know how much of a kook i was.( only 13 years old ) i was about in tears by now..the ride home was the longest and sadest, plus my friends giving me a hard time didn't help.. had to face my dad and tell him..he already thought i was a screw up.....Well the next day i'm at home and my mom told me to call my dad,,i'm thinking what else can go wrong, so i call the old man and he ask me if i new were Harris surf shop was and told me to go and pick out any surfboard i wanted..called my friend george and off we went..walk in the shop and the owner was my dads lawyer..anyway i got a brand new Rick speed machine..i don't even remember want size it was , all i new was now i had the best board in the water, and everyone who gave me a hard time was now asking if they could ride it...i have now built over 30,000 boards, i'm 54 years old and every morning i wake up , thank GOD and go to work just as stoke about making surfboards as the day i started..
My first board… boy that was fun, I made it from my ideas but with a lot of help from people on this website. There are some pics on the thread in the below link but also lots of photos on my website that you’ll find the link to in the thread.
http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1013594
Thanks for starting this thread, that bought back some memories 
my first board melted, using a savon styrofoam board and tried to glass it with polyester resin, age 12 , first lesson
second board was a pine belly board I made in highschool , trying to get out in HB a wave slaped it in my face and about knocked me out, I flung that board as hard as I could, never saw it again.
third was made while in SD from a broken hobie LB, classed a pot leaf on it and a blue resin tint on the sand coat, I have no clue where it went
I have no pics of these boards, but would love to see them again
this board is my first real atempt at surfboard building, actually useing my brain
dang no pic on this computer
will post later
here it is
1971. I'm 15 years old, ready to make myself the most ''radical'' board possible. Well, not really ready, but I think I am. A 5'2'' twin fin with a big square tail and fins on the corners. Today it would be a ''mini-Simmons'' and I'd be very cool. Have to shape a huge rear footwell in it for all the ripping I'm going to do. I discover that skinning a blank with a sureform requires more patience than is normal for 15 yr olds. I learn that cardboard sucks as a template material. The ''shaping'' (note quotes) is fun, the beginning of a dangerous obsession....
Of course I've chosen to do an acid splash for my first glass job. Only problem is I don't have a clue how to do one. The resulting splotchy brown bottom and rails contrasts nicely with my handpainted acrylic American flag covering the deck. Nobody has told me you're supposed to squeegee out the excess resin, or sand off any appreciable amount of the hotcoat, so I have the heaviest 5'2'' in history.
Even though I've already ''made'' a few plywood paipos and reshaped the rails on some EPS bellyboards, it's different taking a ''real surfboard'', that I made, into the water. I think to myself, "this would be a cool job...''.
I wish I still had the first 2 boards I made, but I let a friend use them and they were never returned. Kind of a normal thing that happens here, we call it Hawaiian Kine borrow.
The first complete board I did was a 5' fish that was a reshape of a board we had that snapped in half. The first fix wasn't set right so I cut it and reset the 2 halves. I cut keel fins out of my brothers old skateboard. That skateboard would probably be worth a lot if we still had it. My brother has posted shots of that board here on sways, as it was before I reshaped it.
The second board was another reshape of an old lightning bolt my brother had. I let a drunk friend use it and it ended up in the rocks. I stripped it and made what is now called a "Morning of the Earth" shape. At the time in the late 70's there was a hull design that incorporated 2 channels running down the middle of the board that was the "new" thing. I put those channels on this board. At least I have a couple of photos of that board. These are from 1979 when I was glassing the board.
I can’t believe that Im about to admit this. It was the fall of 1969, I was 17 years old. I went down to the local shop in town and they were practicly giving away all of the left over longboards. I went to the back of the shop and there she was, a brand new left over Gordie Lizard. I paid $20 and had visions od stripping the glass and shaping me one hell of a shortboard. The stripping went pertty clean…8" grinder, no respriator but a lot of itch. I went to the local lumber yard and bought a new surform and put it through the paces. The templet came out like crap, the shaping not so clean, the glassing even worse.
Looking back as the saying goes… Gordie Lizard is probably worth thousands… the experience …priceless! I still have the surform.
