hey tom
congrats on your cool boards
you and roy are doing cool stuff with big wooden boards
thanks guys. i’m glad most of you enjoy it (no worries honolulu, horses for courses eh). tom can do some pretty amazing surfing with those boards & i personally find it a very compelling facet of the surfboard riding experience.
you’re right carvenalu, it’s obvious how fast tom is travelling. on a few waves on the twelve footer, you can see him motoring through sections that would leave other surfboards behind. it’s pretty impressive to see in real life. he can really cover a lot of ground on a long lined-up pointbreak. his wood boards really work.
the alaias are another trip all together. i rode one on my belly in small clean beachbreak two days ago & the feeling of uncluttered trim was a revelation. it is a very unique feeling riding a sled of oiled timber along a wall of bending saltwater. it is a beautiful & timeless way to enjoy a wave.
a couple of weeks ago tom & i got together & filmed him riding his standup alaias with parabolic rails. some pretty awesome footage that isn’t in this edit but it’ll definitely be a centrepiece in the film i’m currently making. maybe i’ll post a few framegrabs if i get around to it.
anyways, thanks for the feedback. i appreciate it.
Thanks a lot for posting that movie!!!
Finally i got to see moving image of the alaia’s, and it’s amazing how FAST they’re going!
thanks thanks thanks!!
here’s a few frame grabs of tom & the standup alaias:
and sage joske:
…and some laydown stuff:
tom:
sage:
stills don’t do justice to the speed these finless boards achieve, but perhaps they’re worth a look anyway.
beautiful pics!
That hourglass / wasp shape on those alaias, well i’ve see pics of older fish models where the tail kind of flares out like that. what’s the purpose? i’m wondering if its aim is the same as those rail fins / wings that skip frye has on his Fish in the lastest Surfers Journal
I’m pretty sure those flares add bite to the rear of the board, but I was also thinking they would loosen it up between the wide point and the tail, then provide positive grip at the corner. There’s a fish with that same flare to the tail on page 2 of the non-thruster video thread actually being ridden, BTW. See waht you think. Really good clip all the way around.
(tangent: I was thinking the Frye winglet planes the rail up a little and lets the tail end come around. So then he puts one on that has a vertical element too? I dunno. Be great if someone [like Mr Frye] that had ridden those things was lurking and posted up maybe on the “fins article in TSJ” thread)
Hey Oldy, a technical question. What settings are you using for posting your vids? I’m using MPEG 4 320x240 and they look great until they get posted to youtube. Do you have a director’s account (or whatever the other account is)? Thanks
monkstar: i use the mpeg 4 movie 320 by 240 format too. like you say, they look great on my mac but i’m a little disappointed about how they look on youtube. no i don’t have a director’s account.
a question for you: is it possible to change the thumbnail for a video you post up? youtube randomly picks a shot & i’d prefer to select one from the sequence instead. thanks.
Great interview and great comments by Tom W – thanks Nathan (and Tom)
Nathan, I’m looking forward to your next installment–any chance of getting his fish on one? Or getting you in the frame?
Thanks again for your clips
janklow: i have a wegener fish (no glass, oiled only) on loan at the moment. yes, i’m collecting footage of it being ridden, & i’m riding it too when the conditions are right. for me, like most traditional twin keel fish, it loves lined up long pointbreak waves, which are kind of rare where i’m at. where i live, it’s mostly short & punchy beachbreak & reefs.
Oldy, thanks for putting your work up on here - you did a great job.
Tom, thanks for your stoke - truely inspiring.
-Cam
Wow, Nathan, can you post a picture of it? How are the joints sealed? That’s what I want to do some day!
Beautiful video promos oldy, and beautiful boards Tom. Both are inspirational, thanks for showing us that we can go forward by going back to the beginning of the path we’re all on with a new perspective.
Well Oldy, here’s what I think:
Video one: A really entertaining video, and Tom’s fun level when riding his wooden longboards is infectious, I have seen a lot of highly skilled riders doing the malibu longboard thing and usually it makes me ROFL or ROFLB (barfing) but Tom has a connection with that style that is neat to see . . . . it always looks silly to me when Mal riders are too serious, too intent on doing perfectly executed moves in rapid succession, but Tom is so relaxed, and kind of goofs around, allowing his skill in handling the board to flow naturally, so I can’t help but dig, the surfing, and to some extent, the boards . Nicely produced video of course.
Video two: The OLO stuff made me cringe, Tom’s olo looks to me like a board which will only work in a very very gently sloping wave. . . and the board was obviously unable to handle the slightly ragged peaks available. I wonder why Tom didn’t ride it somewhere where it works because the session shown didn’t look good. I also feel that being incredibly hard to ride is not a good surfboard feature. . . . so I will go back to riding my 17 footer with its lovely sweeping rocker and am not tempted by extreme flat, narrow, and parallel olo boards. The rest of the video was nice, Tom’s 12 footers seem to do a good job it seems that as a board of that flat parallel style gets bigger it gets harder to turn because the turn depends upon being able to lift the nose right out and rotate the board from the tail. . . and sooner or later with a wooden board the nose gets too heavy to lift. . . . unlike boards with more planshape curve (mine !), which will rail turn in trim at speed and don’t have to have the nose lifted way out to do it. At 12 feet Tom’s style of board works well. . … . . at 16 ( a similar kind of board actually) it doesn’t work so well. I think that 12 feet is probably the upper limit for a very flat and parallel wooden board. . . at least for all round surfing. Nicely produced video.
Really informative stuff !
Cheers,
Roy
PS Tom and I have talked board design (on the net ) before and I think that he is a great guy to talk design with, and a just great guy . . we just have slightly different goals. . … I wrote this post in the spirit of a critical movie reviewer, but bottom line is that it is good to watch and a piece of history
.
janklow,
Thank you for your interest in the parabolic rails. I was finding with the regular tomb stone shaped rails it was easy to loose your grip into the wave and slide sideways. Once sliding sideways it was very difficult to regain control and get going across the wave again. With the parabolic rails you can lean on the outside rail and side slip on command and then lean on the inside rail and regain your momentum across the wave. The ancient Hawaiians appear to call this type riding the “La La,” the controled slide in the pocket. The boards with the parablic rails are far more user friendly than the tomb stone and easier to catch waves with as well.
As far as the fish, I would suspect that the board would be very fast, but very hard to turn. But I have never tried one.
Thanks,
Tom
roy: thanks for the feedback.
the olo is a replica of chief paki’s olo. it is a board that surfers rode in the deep past. tom’s not suggesting it’s a board for the future. he just enjoys the challenge of attempting to ride ancient equipment. it takes a very skilled surfer to ride a board like the olo. it’s beyond most of us. tom makes that point clear: the ancients must have been amazing surfers.
personally, i’m intrigued by experiencing the feelings that are unique to surfboards first designed in the past, whether near or distant. i think a lot of us here at swaylocks are. it’s why we enjoy making & riding singlefins, logs, twins, fish, bonzers, mats, alaias. maybe tom’s olo experiment was undertaken in that spirit, to explore the feelings that are specific to riding a 16’ long, 150 pound, rockerless slab of wood upon a wave. for me at least, it’s hardly a cringeworthy activity, rather it demonstrates dedication, perseverance & a profound respect for surfing’s deep, rich history.
in regards to tom’s other boards, roy, you are mistaken. they are not flat & the templates are not parallel. i have ridden his boards in various lengths up to & including sixteen feet & they have beautiful curves in terms of both rocker & outline. believe me, they trim & they turn.
as for your boards, i won’t comment, as this thread isn’t about your boards.
Hi Oldy,
Does Tom have any plans to get more footage riding the olo ?
I saw some pictures in Pacific Longboard magazine of Tom riding the 16 footer and it looked like it was working nicely. . . with an extreme board like that there will be lots of conditions it won’t like but when it gets into its range ( long gently sloping swells) it should be unbeatable. . . it would be neat to see it on a long slide that’s for sure.
The only reason why I said I was cringing at the olo footage was the ever present feeling of imminent wipeout. . . I know what it’s like to control a 70 pound log, and that narrow 150 pounder looked like a major handful in those waves, it was freaking me out !
Anyway looking forward to seeing the big board in action again if possible. . . (and btw I should have said relatively flat and parallel. … obviously the boards have sweet curves. . . it’s a bit like people saying I go straight. . . not true right?. . . just relatively straight 
)
Oh and the alaia footage is fun, I bet the guys at Rodntube’s Paipo forum will like it
Cheers
Roy