i have been restoring a 1964 dewey weber custom shape and need some help with the tail block. from what i can tell it had a clear tail block. any one have any photos of weber tail blocks?
That's a NICE board. Could have been glassed by the one and only Donnie Mulhern if it's 64 or previous, I'd ask him but he'd probably just grunt and cuss. One of the best laminators EVER, period, end of story. If the tailblock was/is transparent solid glass you can either replace it or salvage the original. A more close-up photo would help us see what you've got to deal with. Salvaging the original is always better in a resto.
the bad news is i have restored the board but did not know what was going on so i just ground off the bad glass on the tail and did white resin over it but now i am going to re-do the tail block. but i do know it had a 1/8" thin strip of black foam then a clear peace of glass past that, i thought someone busted the tail block off and just glassed it but now looking into it i see that was stock. this is my first restoration so bare with me
Hell, that looks great. I'd say leave it alone, but since this is sways, somebody will correct me :)
Looks good as is.
Walker foam used to supply wood tailblocks to their customers. When Bill Feinberg (Oceanside) sold his Cocoa Beach house and was cleaning out his garage he gave me some strips of glued up Walker tailblocks. They were laminated with redwood/balsa/redwood like the one in the photo. These tailblocks were common on the Dewey Webers of the era.
Are you sure that was black foam and not redwood that’s rotted? It was common for glass tailblocks to have a redwood ‘divider’ between the foam and tailblock.
To tell the truth, I never ever saw Dewey with glass tail or nose blocks, most likely rotted redwood.
Dewey used the 1/4-1/4-1/4 t-band so he could easily route the glass on fin into the center of the stringer, Clark in one of his manifesto’s, said that Dewey had the largest amount of fin failures during that era, anything to do the rub on Walker customers
Routed in fins. Yeah. The good old days. I remember from a G&S ad: “Routed in fins are stronger and neater in appearance”.
the board has two 1" stringers side by side. the story of the board is that it was a custom shaped board for a guy who lived on the north shore of oahu and spent most of its life in the rafters by velzy land. the guy i got it from got it on a trade in. but i love the board and surf it once week!!! but i just want to make it rite
The double side by side redwoods were commonplace during that era, Brewer had them on his guns as did most of the big labels, the selling point was the grain direction was reversed in the pair of sticks making them stronger.