Sorry I am a newbie but was interested to know who shaped you an memorable board or a magic board.
Me personally, I had a slump for 6 years and i fully stopped surfing due to a knee injury. About 3 years ago I started surfing again and bought about 6 boards off the rack, all differnt shapers and had nothing that brought smile back to my face. Felt disappotinted really. Then i met SEL, I went to his factory and he grabed me a second hand team riders board, surfed it at D bar couldnt even do a cut back on it cause it was so unstable. Whent strait back to his factory and told him i couldnt ride it. He just smiled and said give it two weeks Its EPS . And holly shit he was right, that two week is all it took to get me back to where I was 8 years ago and even better than ever before. Thats when i realised theres a board that stops you form surfing your best and there`s a board that improves your surf dramatically and that board is what I believe to be a magic board.
Out of over a 100 custom boards spanning 48 years:
Wardy - 9’10 with first generation speed skeg, 1964
Dick Keating - 7’6 single fin pin semi 1972
Chuck Vinson - 6’8 single fin single wing pin, 1978
Michael Baron - 6’4 squash thruster, 1980
Doug Schroedal - 8’0 thruster semi, 1995
Ward Coffey, 7’6 thruster step-up, 2000
currently have 8 boards in the quiver, couple are damn good, none qualify for ‘magic’…yet
Yes yes I love coil boards, I couldn`t afford one but I held a couple under my arm. I am so jealous. Love the nose and tail thickness of his board and the way he construction his boards. Quiet similar to SEL, very progressive and they always work fantastic.
I am also very interested in Retro. Not quiet retro but My first board was Jack night for Glenwinton which he gave it to me when I was a little gromm.
MR CC Im definatley checking the list of your shapers if they are still kicking about. Would there be any photos of your retros. I would
love to see history and they are pretty much like an art work with fuction.
Thanks for the replies.
It`S awome!
KEEP SMILING
Yater Spoon (not sure who the actual shaper of that one was)
Rick Hamon (San Diego) 7’X21" egg
have blanked out on his name but (he was going to law school and shaping at same time!) he was shaping for Channin in mid 70’s, hull variation.
Dave Johnson (Progressive Design/Santa Barbara) mini 7’ “noserider” in name but really just a great small wave board that nose rode like a champ.
Dave johnson nose rider looks so good. I seen him shape from scratch on Youtube.
Thanks so much for sharing your FAv Quiver.
Jim Phillips has made me 4 boards and they are all magic to me. Jimmy Lewis just made me a step deck nose rider that is also special.
I had a swallowtail 6'1" shortboard that Hamish Grahm shaped for me around 1999. I lived in Big Sur at the time and had some epic sessions at some places that are epic. The board is buckled and repaired and buckled again in a different spot, all brown and currently resides under my porch at my home in North Carolina.
I worked for Dave in mid 80’s. Got watch a lot of his “all from scratch” shaping in those days. Pretty amazing shaper. I got several shapes from him and really every one I got from him was if not magic, just short of that. Great guy to work for as well.
In my 30 years of surfing I've had two magic boards that stand out above the rest.
The one on the left is a 1989 6'6" Natural Art shaped by Richard Price. I rode this board to death and still drag it out on occasion. This board works in just about anything up to double overhead. It goes where my mind wants it to on the wave. The copy I made of it works equally well.
I credit this Natural Art for getting me back into board building. Sometime around 1992 I retired this board. I pulled this beat up NA out of my crawl space a couple years back where it had been in purgatory for at least 10 years. I was frustrated with my equipment at the time and just wanted a change. We had a big hurricane swell and I took it to a reeling sand sucking beach break. I still remember the strange looks my friends were giving me when they saw the browned out old beater I had brought out for the best day of waves in months. I literally had the best session I'd had in several years. After that session I searched every shop within an hour's drive for something similar and I just couldn't find it. I ended up buying several blanks and built two copies. I made one copy identicle in every way and a second using a modern tripple concave bottom.
At 42 with shoulder problems I'm just starting to have trouble riding these two boards so see the magic board below.
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/mako224/100_1998.jpg[/IMG]
The second board has been magic for me over the past year. It is one of my own designs. This board is just super fun, catches waves easily and is the perfect board for the 40 something who still wants to always ride a shortboard even in weak conditions.
6’9" pintail single fin custom shaped by Dave Johnson RIP. THis board was the best in the barrel until she lost her life to a outside set at Salsa Brava where I got caught inside and tried to duck dive her past the impact zone. I ended up getting pinned on the reef but luckily I held on for my life and she hit the reef not me. Sorry baby but one of us had to go.
Aloha
10 ft round pin by Bill Stembridge
ankle to overhead plus, fricken magic
surfed it for about 10 years till it lost its memory and got all soggy and lifeless,
copied the outline and tried to make a copy, close and still good but not the same
2 in 33 years.Alot of good only 2 magic.
A 10’0 Skip Hutchinson longboard. 1992.Rode to death.
6’4 Coil M80.2007 Still going strong.
Might sound like a dick, but me!. The twin keel in my avatar was my second board, and i just fluked something. I surfed it for nearly 3 years, and in that time i bought, and then sold 3 other pro boards, coz i just kept going back to it. Got to know it very well, in fact, too well. I thought i'd strip it and make a slightly smaller lighter one, so i could get a little more "radical" on it. That decision was an EPIC FAIL. I still kick myself about cutting it up. I have been thinking about why it went so well for me ever since. I think the almost square rails, and super sharp edge through the tail made it fast n loose. Really need to make another. Sigh:(
I can still remember some of the turns on that board, clear as a bell. I still remember coming out of the water smiling like an idiot at how much fun i'd had, and how twin keel boards turn better than most people think!
I've also still got the scar from a wipeout where my mouth came into contact with the 6x66 pointy nose :)
Hi beefran I dont think your a dick at all. The current go to board for me is the self shaped as well! 6 others lying around is good but this one thing that I shaped just seems to be the one. It took me 5 different fin positiong to get it right thou! So for me Its all ways the fin positiong that get`s it moving!
It sounds cheesy, but out of ALL the boards i had, this one is the best i ever had, with best, i mean:
-
most fun board to surf
-
best looking board i had
-
most durable one i had - it fell off the roof of my car with 2 other boards on a french highway, but i was able to put the tears together again
-
surfs all waves - i used it in The Netherlands, France, Portugal. In Scheveningen where i live, i can stick 2 small flat sided trailers in and surf small waves, or put 2 double sided stabilizers in and surf the waves as big as they get here.
The board has flow, turns great, does insane off the lips, sort of a gliding feeling.
i cant but post this pic of the board, again
i nearly forget to mention it is a www.coilsurf.com board the Springfish, by Mike Daniel
[img_assist|nid=1054597|title=SIX Magazine feature - De Noord|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=427]
So craftsman at team Coil are the masters ." I have held there boards and I did feel the force…Couldn afford one thou.,.
I wonder what makes a magic board…So many aspect of a construction put into one through a lenghthy process and usually by several hands. Is it truely intended or is it some what coincidental?
I often hear that no board is ever the same and most likely two exact copy of boards could have completey different feel under your feet.