To: Jeff Chamberlain
From: Dave Parmenter
Dear Jeff,
Recently you have forwarded to me a number of documents via the Internet that contend with a subject that I am deeply involved in: the design and construction of surfboards. As a rule - after my disastrous attempt at SwelldotCom to write technical essays on surfboards - I have chosen not to become involved in arguments with laymen that concern this arcane craft with its often indefinable ‘science’.
However, in this instance I feel that troops have marched into Poland and that I must not be silent; I must respond so that certain facts can be set out once and for all.
This will be a long and somewhat complex letter, so you may want to print it out and sink into a nice, comfortable chair. Relax, have a cold beer and be assured that I harbor no rancor in this matter to you personally. I hold you as a dear friend whose surfing life and experiences I have always respected. I have learned much from you and have almost always considered your advice as well-given and carrying weight. This time however I should like to ask you to submit to my knowledge of this field as I counter some of the claims made in the above-mentioned letters. If you allow yourself an open mind, I promise you will learn a few things that will certainly deepen your understanding of surfboards.
For the past fourteen years, Jeff, I have been building for you custom surfboards that have allowed you the wider and wider surfing experience you sought. Many of these boards were truly unique creations, available nowhere else in the world, and you were able to collaborate in every aspect of their design, down to the exact placement of leash plugs. These boards ranged from 5’0” bellyboards to Tavarua guns to your “Force 10 From Leffingwell” model, and culminated in the 12’6” 3-stringer mega-board you now enjoy so much. Furthermore, I cannot recall any of those boards breaking or falling apart, and I think you will agree that you, based on the hardcore nature of surfing on the Central Coast (and your use of boats as the favored mode of transportation), place a greater demand on your boards than the average ‘South Of The Horn’ surfer. So I take it as a personal affront that you can so flippantly support a manufacturing ideology that is the polar opposite of the process that created those fourteen year’s worth of extraordinary surfboards.
If many of the contentions put forward about the SurfTech molded boards vs. the traditional hand-shaped/hand-lay-up surfboards were merely a matter of opinion, I would not be writing this. I have better things to do with 14,000 words. True, some of the allegedly ‘ethical’ or ‘aesthetic’ points can be argued solely as matters of opinion, but for the most part there is a wholesale ignorance -or evasion of - cold hard facts as far as the more tangible principles are concerned.
I will deal with these facts at various places in the following text. These pertain to design or engineering falsehoods set out in much of the letters you have forwarded to me. The ethical and aesthetic questions I will deal with as they arise.
Let us begin by looking at claims made by Mr. George, and seconded by you, that these molded SurfTech boards are “simply new” and this “scares most surfers” (since when do new things ‘scare’ surfers?), or represent “new” technology. This is in fact not true. This latest manifestation of molded or “composite” (every foam sandwich surfboard in history - beginning with the Simmons epoxy/polystyrene board in 1948 - has been a ‘composite’) surfboard is not at all new, but merely a refinement and improvement upon other boards of this type that have cycled in and out of the design forefront since the ‘60s. It seems that every decade or so the same construction ideas are recycled (albeit with various improved technologies), though the same problems are recycled as well.
All of these surfcraft have failed, or had some fatal flaw that eventually sank them (literally, in the case of the W.A.V.E. Hollow line which, by the way, was the source of the largest bankruptcy ever in the surfboard industry, and the biggest advertisement debt write-off in SURFER history, in spite of the fact that the publishers allegedly further ‘pushed’ these boards so that they might recover some of the money owed them).
You will notice, if you pardon the digression, that even the most rabid of today’s “collectors” singularly avoid any and all pop-out or molded boards. Why? No doubt because they hold little appeal, either as functional surfcraft or the foci of nostalgia. I find this fact very telling.
All of these surfboard technologies, whether honeycomb & hollow, injected foam core & plastic skin, foam core & veneer, etc. - whatever their individual merits - also have failed to acknowledge the overarching principle of surfboard design (we’ll get to the engineering later): it is not static; it changes constantly. And - this is most important to remember - these design changes traditionally have always emanated from the underground or backyard shaper, usually one that is known as a ‘surfer/shaper’. No valid, widely accepted and permanent design revolutions have ever come from a large-scale manufacturer. More on this principle later, as it links up with what I believe to be the most insidious danger to surfboard design in history.
No large-scale manufacturer, in this case SurfTech (or its poor relation, BIC), could ever keep up with the rapid design changes produced by a gifted or imaginative shaper working independently with polyurethane and polyester. A large-scale overseas manufacturer -such as SurfTech - would be even less able to keep up with design evolution in full stride.
In fact, it would be in the interests of any molded board manufacturer to restrain or control the flow of new ideas to a rate that suits their supply lines and their construction methods (not to mention their bloated advertising campaigns).
For an analogy I feel safe in asking you to consider the automobile industry. Every year, in January, new models are released with fanfare and hype. Any longer than a calendar year and the interest might droop; any shorter and the manufacturing process couldn’t keep up - and the market would be confused and distracted.
In any event, the automobile manufacturers as huge, lumbering, monolithic corporations must artificially create and control the flow of ‘innovation’ to suit their interests. Certainly their manufacturing process cannot react very fast to anything but cosmetic changes, at least not in the way that the backyard surfboard builder can react to new ideas and innovation literally overnight (design history is full of these overnight, reactive boards - some very important surfboards were hastily built to use on the next day of the same swell).
If you or Mr. George really believes that these SurfTech boards are “new”, then you had better read carefully the following story. As I stated above, this technology is not new. It stems from sailboard technology. It has already bubbled up to the fore in the surfing world a couple of times in the past 15 years without showing up on the public’s radar. The following is a brief description of what happened to the sailboard market fifteen or twenty years ago: With the advent of radically shorter wave sailing boards, the hot sailors and local custom designers that built their boards found themselves in the driver’s seat. They built their rapidly changing prototypes with pretty much the same materials and methods that the traditional surfboard uses. But the huge sailboard manufacturers, reeling from the blow of having their over-sized sailboard models suddenly deemed obsolete, scrambled to buy the rights to the new designs, as well as the endorsements of their shapers.
These designs were then factory-built in much the same way as the SurfTech boards are being built now, but with widely varying degrees of quality. The buzzword of “epoxy” was flung around and touted to be “superior” to the “substandard” (once again) polyurethane/polyester sailboards. Then, the sailboard magazines were wowed and quickly climbed in bed with these manufacturers, as they had now become their biggest advertisers. Gullible stooges at the magazines were soon hand-fed the party line: that shape and design were not as important as durability and weight. Isn’t this all starting to sound very familiar? Aren’t you curious to see how it all turned out?
Well, we already know that many of the hot shapers on Maui or the North Shore (or wherever) had been bought off by these huge sailboard manufacturers. The local custom sailboard market almost died out. (Lesson here for the shapers who have ‘sold out’ to such concerns: they are usually the ones who first get hurt.) A techno-philiac war ensued; advertisements screamed about the wonders of epoxy resins. Now that the big guys had bought back the market share they had lost in the wave-sailing revolution, they soon figured out that they didn’t need these ‘hot names’ any longer - they had the baseline models and figured that they could copy any new refinements for free.
No one really paid much attention to the bubbling, delamination or shrinking on these “super high-tech” sailboards - after all, the magazine and the ads said they were “better.” What did the really hot sailboarders do, the guys that progress too fast to wait around for a container-shipped factory board to catch up? Yes, you guessed it: in areas of high winds and large surf, pockets of these elite sailors continued to design and build their own sailboards with traditional materials. And guess what? They found out - after the circular trip - that in the end the higher-density polyurethane boards glassed with polyester resins actually held up better in high-performance conditions than the so-called “high technology” molded sailboards. Why? All of this will be explained in the following letter, but, in short, it was because the traditional boards had a stronger, denser core, and a better bond between this core and the skin, among other reasons. It just took time to see it all balance out.
All of this begs the question: do we, as progressive surfers deeply interested in the excitement of riding better, faster, more maneuverable surfboards, want to follow this same route? (Not interested in any of the preceding sentence? Then skip to the last two paragraphs for your score.) Do we want the flow of design innovation to be presided over by a corporation where a decidedly non-elite (not-so-hot surfers) group of manufacturers or a salesman chooses a shaper and/or design to put into mass production and thus comprise the “hot new board”?
Of course not.
This is why the current ‘popularity’ of molded surfboards will, I believe, be mostly restricted to static, traditional, non-contested designs like the longboard models SurfTech and others are producing. These particular designs are - in my appraisal - generic, neutral, safe-at-any-speed longboards that have seen little change in the past fifteen years and are unlikely to incur any further change during our lifetimes.
Contrarily, contemporary shortboard design changes far too quickly to be profitable in this process. A shortboard design can be rendered obsolete overnight, whereas longboard designs long ago achieved a certain stasis. Hype and ads will claim otherwise, of course, but the fact remains that all it would take is an incremental - but hugely important to a good surfer - change to a modern shortboard and a manufacturer such as SurfTech would be left sitting with shipments of pop-out surfboards that were outdated before they reached the docks in the United States.
If some people want to call these molded boards “kook boards,” well, that is a matter of opinion. I will remark that since it appears that surfing is currently bearing the brunt of the biggest influx of entry-level surfers since the “Gidget” phenomenon, and the bulk of these beginners (or ex-surfers re-entering the sport as recycled beginners) seem to be the main market for the SurfTech boards, then one can understand how these somewhat bland longboard designs have earned this reputation. (As far as the short board models go, it can safely be claimed that no hot surfer would ride one unless he was paid to or was given one free of charge. I have also heard rumors to the effect that some of the SurfTech shortboard teamriders rarely ride the pop-out models they endorse, and actually have regular polyurethane/polyester boards, made by their usual shapers, that are painted in such a way as to cosmetically resemble the SurfTech boards they are supposed to be endorsing. To really good surfers, board design and a relationship with a notable shaper always override materials where performance is concerned.)
Before we proceed any further I feel I should show my hand as to my personal bias in these concerns. First and foremost I should state that I personally feel no threat whatsoever from these or any other similar phylum of mass-produced, molded boards or computer shapes. In fact, for small-scale, efficient shapers like myself they create more business. The current trends that are shaking the limbs of the great tree of the traditional custom surfboard industry are dropping more and more apples into our laps. I am a very small backyard shaper with a stable, loyal clientele that I enjoy working with. None of these individuals are being serviced by the current trends towards impersonality in the surfboard industry.
Production shaping holds no appeal for me, and you know that you have never met an individual less concerned about wringing money from this quaint little cottage industry than I. I have no desire at all to be the next Rusty or Al Merrick; nor do I want to branch into some megalomaniac surfwear company.
That being said, I still care deeply about the historic traditions of the custom surfboard industry, and always will. The thing that fascinates me most in life is the anticipation and wonder I feel when imagining what new hybrid design I will be riding five years from now. As a shaper firmly in control of that destiny I can say with some assurance that any future innovations I enjoy will stem almost entirely from actual design refinements that I concoct or borrow from another shaper, and not from materials changes or surf media hype.
I am deeply worried that the current trends will profoundly affect the evolution of future surfboard design, and feel a certain responsibility -as one of the few remaining present-day surfer/shaper/designers - to face and counter these threats.
I feel little animosity towards the shapers who have “sold out” by shaping a mold plug for a SurfTech model for the simple reason that I am absolutely certain they will end up being ‘hoist by their own petard’, as it were. If you look closely at the history of the surf industry you will see that every business that sold out its “hardcore” roots eventually got its head lopped off in a “hardcore” intifada. I also feel some pity for all the poor saps that buy these boards - only to take their place in the line-up next to ten other guys with a surfboard that is identical to theirs. Surfers have always been very concerned with perceived individuality. How are people going to identify their own board on the beach? What if two or more identical boards wash up on the beach? Will board thieves prey upon this loophole? Will our surfboards now have to have V.I.N.s on them?
Regarding the SurfTech line of surfboards currently being hyped and marketed, I believe that if I were a novice-to-moderately-skilled surfer that wanted an over-sized water toy, say a paddleboard, sailboard or big generic tanker, I would definitely state that their type of composite construction (polystyrene bead foam core, vacuum-bag & epoxy resin) would certainly produce a reliable board (for much the same reasons as a weekend paddler would choose a Scupper kayak over a custom, carbon fiber Tsunami Ranger kayak). If I were a gullible consumer, I wouldn’t understand the difference between impact strength and shear strength.
However, if one is an expert or highly skilled surfer he would mostly ignore this type of surfboard - they’d be far more interested in pressing ahead towards designing or participating in the design of their own custom-made equipment.
That stated, it is time to move on to confronting various statements made in the letters that I was forwarded.
Jeff, you mentioned that Randy French (is he a shaper or a salesman? Why am I told that his last partnership in such a concern fizzled, concerning similar boards made in Slovakia?) had a difficult time “signing up” some of the big-name shapers for his plug building endeavor, and that Gordon Clark “was blackmailing all of them ‘cuz he could see the writing on the wall.” This is not at all true. Gordon hasn’t blackmailed anyone, not now, not ever. In fact, the inverse is true. Ever since the backyard revolution in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s Clark Foam has, during various ‘uprisings’, been under intense pressure from any number of big-time surfboard manufacturers to restrict or cut-off entirely his sales of blanks to the backyard or small-time builder. Gordon has always refused to cave in to this pressure, of which it can honestly be said at times bordered on “blackmail” (boycotts) from many of the major manufacturers. They screamed like stuck pigs that the backyard guys were going to ruin the industry and flood it with inferior, cheap boards that undermined their (self-professed) “standards of quality and integrity.”
Garage workmanship aside, quite the opposite was proven. All legitimate, internationally accepted design revolutions have come from the backyard tinkerer and/or the surfer/shaper. Moreover, it can be seen as somewhat symbolic that many of the prototypical design innovations that put us in the tube, up on the lip, or carving high-G turns came from shapes that were hewn out of stripped down longboards built by the large-scale manufacturers.
This will never, ever change, as long as hot surfers lead design, rather than big manufacturers.
My experiences with Clark Foam are typical of those shapers in the industry who approach their relationship with that company as that of a partnership, without bringing along a chip-on-the -shoulder, antagonistic, paranoid, conspiracy-sniffing, malcontent attitude that is exhibited by so many others in the industry.
I am far from being their best or biggest customer (I purchase a mere 300-400 blanks a year) and yet I have never been treated - by each and every employee of Clark Foam - as anything less than a trusted and valued partner. Questions are answered cheerfully, orders processed with speed and accuracy, and the blanks have always been of unbelievable quality. I have been led to believe, for no ulterior purpose that I can detect, that the company stands firmly behind the small efficient builder that gives the customer good value and a progressive surfboard. Over the past fourteen years of shaping surfboards for a living I have only had to return two blanks, and both of them had minor flaws that would have been irrelevant had I not been planning to shape admittedly off-label designs from the respective blanks.
Gordon Clark has also been “blackmailed” by various government agencies and pressure groups that have tried time and time again to shut down the plant in Laguna Niguel for no other reason than the NIMBY syndrome we see so often in California. Because of these environmental witch hunts the Clark Foam plant has continually implemented cutting-edge measures that far exceed even the most stringent EPA and OSHA safety regulations, and has become nothing less than a model of state-of-the-art industrial safety and hygiene. I seriously doubt that can be said for most of the others in the so-called “green” and barefoot-groovy surf industry. Is there any realistic chance that we’ll see the health program entitlements and cancer rates for all the Chinese women breathing neoprene glue all day to make your wetsuit, or the schematics of the forced-air ventilation hoods and lymphoma rates for the 9-year old kids gluing up your high-end athletic shoes (what do surfers need shoes for anyway?) in a stifling Malaysian workhouse? No, go ahead and slap the Surfrider Foundation decal on the bumper of your Yukon, and drive down to Trestle’s with a reap-the-rainforest double cheeseburger in one hand, and bitch about the Evil Foam Baron Overload Grubby Clark and his Toxic Den of Iniquity. (For more on the various environmental/pollution issues, please see the addenda at the end of this letter)
In reviewing the letters written by yourself and Mr. George, it strikes me that so much of what is perceived as being wrong with the traditional polyurethane/polyester surfboard industry is blamed on Clark Foam. So on we go…
You write, “Grubby saw it coming. The surfboard industry as a whole brought it (SurfTech) on with decades of inferior products…” And in another paragraph you go on to say, “If some $800 Stewart that has a tradition of breaking in less than a year can be replaced by a $550, more durable surfboard (again, SurfTech). …Then trust me the rush will be on.”
Define “durable,” please.
Talking about a Stewart longboard breaking in half ‘in the field’, and comparing it to a SurfTech board being theoretically ‘stronger’, or surviving a couple of blows from a two-by-four at a trade show are two completely different aspects of what comprise “durability.”
Now we can clamber atop firm ground. The engineering precepts that make a sound foam sandwich construction surfboard are very complicated. It would take tens of thousands of words to explain them in all the detail that it deserves. I will say that most of the people that I have spoken with in the surfboard industry and its customer base have no idea what makes a surfboard “strong.” - or even that there are many types of ‘strength’. I will venture even further and say that you yourself have only a vague idea, and Mr. George, based on his past advocacy of stringerless polystyrene bead-foam (Styrofoam) surfboards, has even less of an idea.
In short, the primary, baseline factors that provide for a strong (the many definitions of “strength” such as shear, tensile and compound (impact) strengths further complicates these principles) foam sandwich construction surfboard are founded on, first, its thickness (in relation to its length), the thickness and quality of the skin (fiberglass), the quality of the bond of this skin to the core, and, of course, the integrity and flexibility of the core itself. There are many other complementary factors, of course, but these are the main ones that more than any other define a board’s structural integrity (and breaking point). If you want to read more about this in greater detail, you may want to access the many essays I have written for the Shapers’ Bay section on Swelldot.Com.
The point is this: say what you will about various manufacturers and their “inferior” or shoddy surfboards, but the overriding reason that boards snap in half so often is that over the past 15 years they have simply gotten too thin. I will be the first to agree that there are many board builders out there who put out a weak, poorly built product. They may use over-skilled (yes, over-skilled) ‘speed artist’ contract glassers that permit a ‘dry’ lay-up to buy their shop a reputation for ultra-light boards. They may cut corners and use the least expensive glass and resin they can find. They may choose the wrong density foam or the wrong blank and make it weaker still by using the wrong stringer. Over-shaping of blanks is a huge and largely undiagnosed factor in weak boards; shaping machines are notorious over-shapers. Some are guilty of one or all of the above out of sheer ignorance; others because they are lazy or are bent on shaving more profit out of the endeavor. Some - and these are the worst of the lot - only see a surfboard as a foam billboard to put their ‘hot’ logo on and rake in some more dough.
What it all boils down to is this: If you understand all of the complex - and often contradictory - principles of surfboard engineering then, and only then, are you qualified to make statements as to which is the best way to build the modern surfboard.
The magazines are the furthest off the track, by the way. Mr. George has no right to helm a major surfing publication and be a Surftech rider: the combination of both his ignorance and association with that company is obviously producing propagandist editorializing on his part.
There is absolutely - in my opinion - no better way to build the boards that I as a veteran performance-minded surfer want to ride than by using the polyurethane blanks I am currently working with, and having them fiberglassed by a competent and conscientious craftsman under my personal control. I also firmly believe the heresy (in corporate America) that the best equilibrium for the surfboard industry is reached when it remains a network of small, efficient cottage industries that produce boards for regional surfers on a regional level. I am allowed to make this statement because I use these materials every single day. In fact, I’ll go even further and declare that once a surfboard builder becomes a “major manufacturer” he has effectively destroyed any chance of ever being ‘proactive’ in design rather than ‘reactive’.
Every day I go out into the shaping room, turn on the sidelights, put a blank on the racks, and draw out a planshape. I listen to and talk with surfers about design and construction every single day. I hear about every soft spot, every buckled board, and every sticky turn. At the end of each evening, I blow the dust off, turn off the lights, and leave behind in the darkened shaping bay another new surfboard. This is something that both you and Mr. George do not do, have ever done or will ever do. Jeff, you bemoan the “piecework nightmare,” and Mr. George rails against the drudgery of production work - but what in God’s name do either of you know about it, having never worked in the surfboard industry?
Akin to that thought, I would like to scold those who do not handle foam, put a planer to a blank or squeegee a bucket of resin across the bottom of a shaped blank, to put aside their amateur skullduggery and leave the discussion of the finer points of surfboard design and construction theory to the experts. This remark is especially pointed at those in the media.
If an $800 Stewart longboard - or a 6’1” Merrick for that matter - breaks in half it is not necessarily due to any insidious shortcomings of the polyurethane/polyester surfboard. It breaks not because Gordon Clark is trying to keep everyone mired in the ‘Stone Age’ because he desires to maintain some sinister hegemony over the world’s blank market.
Perhaps surfboards break because too many in the industry are not using the right combinations of blanks, cloths and resins. They break because the consumer (surfer) has gotten too stupid to differentiate between them. They break because their dimensions have far exceeded the limitations of the foam sandwich, I-beam-spined surfboard. A non-surfing engineer would say, “They have simply gotten too thin to support and displace the loads placed on them.”
Don’t forget the manner in which these modern boards are being ridden. Add to this the use of ultra-light foam (so that the board feels light and sexy in the showroom) and overly-thin stringers (saves about two bucks. Whoopee!), as well as a contract glass shop fiberglass job that typically uses only the cheapest and easiest-to-use materials, and you will have a board that is destined for failure. Modern ‘pro model’ longboards, at 2.375”- 2.65” thick, are the worst offenders. It amazes me that they hold together at all. If they were aircraft, I would never climb on board.
A 747 aircraft may seem safe and stable in normal flight, a tremendous feat of ingenuity and engineering, and it is - but there are performance envelopes written into the guidebooks that belie this stolidity. If a pilot abandons those engineering parameters by diving too steeply, and then pulling up too hard, the wings will pull off as if they were brittle twigs.
The same idea applies to surfboards. Many of the designs that surfers want to ride unfortunately have exceeded the engineering parameters that make this type of construction ideal for surfboards. This includes the SurfTech boards; they are still a foam sandwich construction - and if they are just as thin all you have is an expensive, brittle surfboard. That is why the pop-out market has not, historically, pursued the modern, thin high-performance surfboard as diligently as they have the oversize models. I have read where SurfTech claims to be coming out with a shortboard model that is 2” thick. In spite of the durability hype I have to say that a 2” thick board is fundamentally structurally unsound no matter what it is made of.
There is a reason for this. In a large, oversized board (like a sailboard) there is a much higher core-to-skin ratio than there would be with a shorter, thinner board. With a big thick board you can afford to use a superlight, weak core (such as polystyrene bead foam) because the weight you add in strengthening the board with more layers of glass will be offset by the sheer size of the thing. In addition, the thickness of such a board spreads the distance between the top and bottom skins apart, which, if you will remember, is the primary source of (tensile & shear) strength in the foam sandwich construction. In short, the oversized board can afford the lighter and weaker core due to its size and thickness. Scaled down, though, a much shorter and thinner board (whether a Slater model - 2.15” thick - or one of my hybrids) will have a greatly reduced core-to-skin ratio; the surface area of the skin is not reduced nearly as much as the volume of foam - and you’ve lost the main component of strength, once again, its thickness (the spacing apart of the two skins).
What this means is that in these shorter, thinner high performance boards the foam core must have enough integrity to help support the various loads placed on the board. There just simply is not enough foam in these types of surfboards to justify using a core as inherently weak as polystyrene bead-foam. You can reinforce it with more glass or exotic resins or even a sheath of high-density foam but, due to its limited thickness, all you will have is the above-mentioned expensive and brittle surfboard.
All surfboards must flex. From an engineering standpoint, this is how the board sheds some of the load placed on it. Again, look at the wing of a plane in flight - it flexes. However, as with a surfboard, if the wing flexes too much it will fail structurally, and if it is too stiff if will snap when subjected to a heavy load.
With surfboards it is even trickier.
There is always trouble when bonding a stiff skin to a more flexible core. If you could watch, in frame-by-frame slow motion, a surfboard being bent or twisted to the breaking point you would see the bond fail between the core and skin just before it snaps in two. On the compression side of the board the skin will buckle off the foam, the I-beam strength of the skins being cemented over the stringer is lost, and the board is dead whether or not it manages to remain in one piece.
That is foam sandwich engineering law # 2: Thickness of the core may be everything, but the bond of the skin to that core gives the sandwich much of its integrity.
And here is the bad news for the Polystyrene Protestants who want to nail their protests onto the cathedral doors of the Holy Roman Emperor Gordon Clark: Polystyrene (especially the standard bead-foam variety) is a terrible core for most surfboards.
Why?
It is fundamentally weak. Yet some shapers are so seduced by its lighter weight that they will go to their graves ignoring this fact.
Polystyrene foams have terrible bonding properties, especially the bead-foam varieties. Finish it off too smooth and it will offer little skin adhesion when glassed. Finish it off too rough and it will soak up too much resin. It’s not easy to find a good middle ground. Vacuum bagging lamination helps, but there will still be problems lurking beneath the surface that will eventually come back to haunt you.
Polystyrenes are no fun to shape. Believe me, I know. I’ve used most of the various types of these foams. I don’t care what anyone says, there is no way that you can hand shape as detailed, exacting and fine-lined a surfboard with polystyrene as you can with a polyurethane blank. No one cares about this fact because most of the major manufacturers we are discussing either use molds or shaping machines to produce their cores. Yet, any manufacturer that needs to shape a prototype plug for these molds or shaping machines almost always make it out of standard polyurethane blanks, because they ‘tool’ better and allow a more detailed, exacting shape.
Polystyrene/Styrofoam soaks up water. Like a sponge. When you get a ding you have to leave the water immediately and hang the board up like a hooked billfish so that the water with drain out. This is something the SurfTech literature fails to address. Some of the Polystyrene Protestants will claim that they are using denser, altered polystyrenes that soak up less water. These “extruded” foams are indeed far more watertight. What they fail to mention is that in order for these foams to achieve this they have had to mimic properties of a regular polyurethane Clark Foam blank. So why not just use a polyurethane blank in the first place?
Every reasonable and sane board builder since Bob Simmons that has experimented with polystyrene foams has eventually rejected them. Myself included. I shaped quite a few of them, sampling most of the varieties available, and finally rejected them for all uses (except for paddleboards). No matter what you do, or how you tweak the manufacturing process, these foams have inherent, crippling problems when used as a core for most common surfboards. …And those problems will always be waiting for you in the end.
One ‘deathwatch beetle’ of any surfboard with a molded, polystyrene bead-foam core is a little-understood stress we can call “thermal fatigue.” This seems to most affect those boards with a bead-foam core - I don’t care if it’s skinned with the most state-of-the-art vacuum bagged/epoxy technology. These boards have a long history of unpredictable expansion and resultant delamination.
Thermal fatigue involves the eventual delamination of the skin to the core due to repeated heating and then cooling of the board. These types of surfboards are so vacuum-sealed that they do not tolerate thermal ranges well. The ‘oil canning’, or expansion and contraction, of this airtight core of foam and air will often promote weakening, bubbling and then eventual delamination of the skin from the core. (Remember that bead-foam boards have always had bond problems to begin with.) Often, a small bubble will appear, and after that delamination spreads like a run in a stocking. Most polystyrene-core and/or molded boards in the past have experienced these structural problems. This is just an opinion - an educated guess - but I’d say that many of these SurfTech boards will fall prey to this syndrome. It may take longer than past models, but it will most likely happen sooner or later - it just depends on how many ‘fatigue cycles’ of hot-cold-hot-cold each individual board has to endure and, of course, how well each surfer takes care of his or her board.
This is why I believe that the best material for hand shaping and designing most surfboards in the design catalog is the polyurethane blanks such as those I purchase from Clark Foam.
The problem is not that traditional materials are inferior; they are most definitely not so. Rather, it is that these materials are not used to their best advantage. Clark Foam cannot control the quality of their product once it leaves the factory (they offer volumes of literature on the technical aspects of surfboard construction, but it is largely ignored). Too many board builders take the low road, usually because the bigger you are the more incentive there is to cut corners. Garden-variety ignorance or indifference is also to blame.
Once again, I remind you that I have always felt that the highest quality boards are made by the small-to-medium sized manufacturers that take a lot of custom orders. There are many of these builders out there - they are just not hyped by the surf media.
Most strength/quality problems faced by the manufacturer of polyurethane/polyester boards could mostly be countered by choosing a different blank density and stringer, and combining them with higher quality (and more expensive) cloths and resins. Clark Foam offers eight foam densities, each with their own strength-to-weight ratios, yet most in the industry ignore their various applications. The salient feature is “ultralight,” and in the spiraling ‘lightweight arms race’ manufacturers keep dropping foam density and glass - as well as promoting faster ‘dry’ lay-ups that make for lighter laminations but far weaker boards. In addition, there are some common polyester resins that offer superb strength, yet these are also ignored because they aren’t crystal-clear, or are more difficult to work with.
Many people get confused when talking about cloths and resins. If you aren’t sure what they are, how they combine, and what each is designed for, then I suggest it is time to do some serious research.
One cannot just go around screaming “Epoxy! Epoxy!” as if they are some type of miracle potion. (Remember, all our surfboard materials, neoprene, wax, (etc.) come out of the same oil well.) These plastics are just another type of thermosetting resin - not a magical type of fiberglass or core, or even a brand name. For many, “epoxy” remains merely a buzzword, like “composite” or “rack and pinion steering” or “digital.” Two cores being identical, the one glassed with epoxy resin but with a standard low-end grade cloth will be weaker than one glassed with the cheapest polyester casting resin used with a superior cloth like a 4.5 oz. flat-weave S-cloth.
Epoxy has its optimum applications, as does any other resin, but unless you really know what you are doing and how to handle it you are asking for serious, and I mean serious, trouble. (Mr. George’s claim that Tom Blake would ride a SurfTech board, aside from being self-serving jingoistic tripe, is not borne out by fact; Blake discarded the use of epoxies early on due to health concerns. I cannot imagine this wonderful and humane individual allowing people in a developing country bear the brunt for him.).
Furthermore, once again, as a final over-riding caveat I must remind you that once a surfboard dips under a certain thickness, say 2.65” for a standard modern longboard and 2.5” for a typical shortboard, then all bets are off. At that point the board will last only as long as the rider manages to avoid doing stupid things (and boy, are there a lot of stupid things going on out there!). And this goes for any type of material: I don’t care if you can somehow bond 1/8” sheets of military-grade titanium to the strongest foam core in the world, all you will have is an expensive, brittle board that will inevitably fail under load, lose the bond between skin and core, and then buckle and snap.
As a sidebar to the above, I remember being told by one Polystyrene/epoxy Protestant that because of his work in trying to determine what the best materials for making surfboards were, he knew more about what breaks a board than anyone in the world. He arrived at this unsupportable conclusion because he had an assistant put dozens of two-foot by four-inch by two-inch beams of foam laid up with fiberglass under an industrial press. After examining the strain under which each beam broke, he proceeded to apply the data to support claims that such and such foam and glass were the strongest, even advertising the percentages that certain materials were supposed to be stronger than conventional boards.
Of course, this is ridiculous. Tests of that sort might be useful in pointing one in a vague direction, but they have no similarity to the real-world factors than come together in the impact zone to break a board - all you have done is show how those 2’ X 4” X 2” beams break in relation to one another. (In the field, you have to consider wildly irregular torsions and twisting, as well as those stresses put on the board from the leash, which anchors it to a submerged drogue, i.e., you the surfer) The dynamics are far too complex - in the field - to compare real surfboards at the end of a leash to an industrial press. That’s like examining cultured in vitro cancer cells in a petri dish as compared to a real in situ tumor. (Oh, and by the way, Clark Foam offered all their resources to this well-intentioned but misguided individual, even though any future success on his part would have created a direct competition between them.)
You state, Jeff, that “this generation seems less caught up with the ethical arguments that perhaps held up some of their fathers.” I am not quite sure what you are getting at here. I know of no such “ethical” barriers that have held back surfers from jumping the fence and riding any surfboard perceived as being superior. The only “ethics” that I can realistically name would not necessarily be flattering. Ethics? Such as that surfers are invariably skinflints when it comes to buying their equipment? (For thirty years I have been listening to the same shopworn whinging about how “surfboards are too expensive, man” - this from surfers who have no idea what goes into a surfboard) And they want to look ‘cool’? There’s the whole drive of the entire surf industry right there. All surfers care about being, or being perceived to be, ‘cool’. From single fins to twins to tri fins, nothing has been ‘cooler’ than getting a custom surfboard. Every surfer wants to brag that he can get into the shaping bay of an in-demand shaper. No surfer, then or now, wants to look like a kook when he walks down the beach. Nothing says ‘kook’ more than a ‘Kransco surfboard’.
You then proceed with the following: “We all know surfboard have been woefully archaic when compared with every other kind of plastics production (boats, planes, furniture, other consumer items), and it’s just taken the coming of a new generation of more open minded guys (or less caring) to allow Randy (SurfTech) to begin to get his percentage.” Jeff, nothing could be further from the truth. To begin with, all of our design advances have come from amazingly shoestring, trial-and-error tinkering by some very gifted surfer/shapers. There has never been anything like a real financial base for any sort of high-tech surfboard ‘skunkworks’, and yet we have always progressed as fast as surfers can imagine new ways to ride waves.
As far as materials are concerned, think again, my friend. Aircraft and surfboards are both greatly concerned with strength-to-weight ratios and flexural/fatigue properties, but no aircraft could ever get off the runway that has to bear the forces and stresses endured by the modern surfboard. (Look on the wing of a plane next time you are flying and you will see the “No Step” stencils on the wings where they meet the control surfaces.) Yet, I could fill a steamer trunk with old order sheets where the customer demanded their board be “Light, but Strong. Loose, but Fast, etc.” Yes, not only do we stomp all over our surfboards but they have to be light enough to perform well - and strong enough to be continually pitched into the churning force of breaking waves. If any aircraft had to meet the conflicting engineering and market demands that the surfboard must meet they would either never get off the ground, or would fall apart regularly.
I feel that even the worst-made surfboard fares amazingly well when you consider what are asked of them. Even a 737 can be undone by stress and fatigue on its materials. Ask those poor souls on the recent American Airlines flight how they liked that ‘space age’ composite/epoxy tail empennage that failed and sent them all to their doom. All materials, whether polyesters or the most advanced aluminum alloys, have to deal with stress and fatigue and simply cannot be pushed far beyond their tolerances or there will be failure.
Why do so many boards break today? As you have read, they have gotten too thin to have the structural integrity that a good foam sandwich construction should have - but don’t forget that they have also become lighter, too, commonly using materials that fifteen or so years ago were almost exclusively used on team or pro models. There is also the widely overlooked factor of how modern performance surfing affects breakage. The last decade has seen a new type of surfing emerge, where riders consistently land on their boards after attempting such modern maneuvers as floaters, aerials, ‘chop-hops’, etc. This is the first time that surfboards have had to perpetually endure such stresses, and this factor intersects with the aforementioned trends of lighter, thinner and weaker surfboards. This is also the first time in history that the hottest surfers put more day-to-day strain on their equipment than the average kook. Think about it. (This applies to the SurfTech boards, as well. Though their ads go the brink of claiming they are indestructible, I can’t help but want to mention that a well-respected lifeguard I know told me that he saw three SurfTech boards break in one day last summer at Yokohama’s.)
Your allusion to boats and furniture, on the other hand, I have to dismiss categorically; they cannot realistically be compared to surfboards and aircraft. For boats there are entirely different design issues and strength-to-weight considerations and, as far as I know, no Barca-Lounger has ever had to survive a trip over the falls at Pipeline.
Now, looking at some of the statements made by Mr. George in his letter to you, I must admit to some misgivings about continuing further. Obviously, Mr. George knows very little about surfboards. Where does one begin to unravel this mess? As editor of SURFER Magazine, one would think that he would have absorbed at least a working knowledge about the design and construction of surfboards. However, it appears that a knowledge of surfing trivia is no substitute for a solid technical background. I am compelled to go on record as saying that, as far as surfboard information is concerned, both Mr. George and his fellow SURFER editor, Chris Mauro, are the two most prominent Ministers Of Misinformation ever enthroned at a surfing publication. Both are all the more dangerous because they truly believe they know what they are talking about.
The uninformed are uninforming the uninformed.
Mr. George looks before he leaps when he states that Clark Foam’s molded, close-tolerance blanks are essentially molded boards. This is clearly a case of the old adage, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Yes, all the polyurethane blanks made by Clark Foam are indeed “factory molded.” Every polyurethane blank ever produced has been molded. You’ve got to pour the resin into something. What is the point? Are we to take this warping of semantics as a way to rationalize the undermining of the traditional custom surfboard industry with pop-outs produced offshore in the Third World?
If Mr. George had even the slightest practical knowledge of surfboard manufacturing he would know that the close-tolerance series of Clark Foam blanks were developed in order to make stronger - and lighter - surfboards. These close-to-shape blanks allow the conscientious shaper a chance to take less of the denser, stronger foam from a blank, thus improving the quality of surfboards even if the glassing is substandard. Furthermore, there is less wasted time and material (and allows for a less expensive blank). This series of plugs offers the best strength-to-weight ratio of any foam core in history - probably including balsa, as well. Once again, the product and the technology are there, but the average builder pretty much ignores it. If a shaper/glasser was paying attention, it was now possible to use a lighter, lower density blank AND glass it with lighter - or less - cloth. …Yet, the result would still be a lighter, stronger surfboard. Once again, Clark Foam has provided the solution and shored up the industry standards for all the shoddy glassers and chronic over-shapers. So much for “inferior Clark technology.”…
What Mr. George fails to note is that for each of the close-tolerance blanks (there are dozens of various plugs in the catalog) there may be twenty or thirty different rockers available, not to mention the fifty or so ‘secret’ customer rockers that are kept on file. Thus, each blank is bent and glued into an endless assortment of customized bottom curves, with a wide variety of stringer woods and thicknesses.
For example, the 6’7”R blank - a workhorse of the industry - has nearly 60 stock rockers available, and over 150 proprietary customer rockers. In addition to these, any customer can send in his own original rocker template. To properly utilize these blanks, the shaper has to design much of the board at the ordering stage, well before he ever takes a saw to the blank. This means that the modern shaper working with this system has to be more aware of design components and tolerances than ever before. Used properly, it can ensure that surfboards can be faithfully replicated from board to board, without the need for elaborate rocker templates or shaping jigs.
Many of these blanks can be altered in off-label ways that allow a progressive shaper - if he knows his stuff - the opportunity to build new designs without over-shaping and thus weakening the finished board. The end result is that there are more design opportunities than ever, and also that the efficient shaper can build stronger yet lighter boards - and with more board-to-board consistency and less wasted time and foam.
So, no, we don’t “all ride molded boards.” Some of us ride highly tuned custom boards built from the ground up, and working within tolerances as subtle as 1/32” in rocker, thickness, foil and outline.
Mr. George errs - once again - when he writes, “these blanks are then sent to manufacturers, an ever-growing number of whom (sic) use computer shaping machines to mill them. This includes every one of the major manufacturers.” Once again, this shows an utter lack of practical experience in these matters. Most shaping machines simply cannot use the close-tolerance line of blanks for the obvious reason that the computer controlled router and the bed that the blank is clamped into needs wider margins than these blanks allow. So they rely mostly on the thicker, more oversized blanks. This is why these machines have a reputation for over-shaping and putting out weaker boards (as the blanks have softer foam towards the center). Attempts have been made by one major computer shaping service to deal with this problem, and has instituted a more exacting system of deck rocker profiling that lets them use some of the moderately close-tolerance blanks - but they can never better the efforts of the conscientious hand shaper that skims just the crust off the deck by hand (The less foam planed off the deck the more resistant the finished, glassed board will be to compression dents and dings).
Then there is the following preposterous statement: Mr. George says that these factory molded blanks are “produced in a factory in Mission Viejo (sic: actually, Laguna Niguel) by non surfing, non English speaking (Third World, you might say) workers.” Am I to understand that people of Mexican heritage are only to be allowed to make tortillas or cut your lawn, Mr. George?
Let me tell you about this “Third World” workforce at Clark Foam. All of them are legal residents. Many of them are making a commitment to become naturalized American citizens. Many are bi-lingual. They are hard working, family-oriented and reliable employees. That is what America is all about, lest you forget. Immigrants in this country have always formed the backbone of what we like to call “American values” or “the American Dream”. Did your ancestors speak English when they came from Italy, Germany, Sweden or Africa? Those guys working in the Clark Foam factory are more American and have more “American values” than some Lilies of the Field “BoBo” (Bourgeois Bohemian) with pasty-white hands never once splotched with a blister from an honest day’s work.
Almost every hands-on position at the Clark Foam factory requires a highly trained worker, whether it’s in the wood shop milling rockers or on the floor batching and pouring resin into the molds. Some of these people - who have never surfed - have come up with technical advances that have improved the strength, quality and accurate repeatability of the surfboards we are all riding.
And let me add that those “non surfing, non English speaking workers” put their hands onto and produce the majority of America’s surfboard foam, therefore making them, in my estimation, far more valuable to the surfing community than a glorified ad copywriter that hacks up narcissistic hairballs for some surfing comic book.
The following is a statement so utterly absurd it is difficult to even unravel it for discussion: “I went through this same thing when I rode John Bradbury’s boards,” writes Mr. George, “and no more soulful shaper ever existed, John experimented with new materials because he loved surfboards and was tired of seeing them fall apart due to the limitations of Clark technology. Who are any of us to impune (sic) him?”
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to ‘impugn’ the late Mr. Bradbury, who was indeed a ‘soulful’ and lovely individual. Yet, I am certain that he would not make the same claims as would a magazine copywriter prone to hyperbole. Mr. Bradbury was a pretty good shaper, but his ‘experimentation’ with ‘new materials’ was most definitely nothing revolutionary - or even new, as we have discussed earlier.
Anyone that thinks that stringerless, lightweight bead-foam Styrofoam (as used by Mr. Bradbury) is a good core for a modern, thin surfboard is digging in the wrong place. Having ridden a few of those same boards - as well as many of the very same boards that Mr. George owned - I can say with out a doubt that they were structurally unsound. As anecdotal evidence, I need only remind Mr. George to recall how many of those Bradbury boards he broke on various surf trips. For example, there were a few surfaris to Isla Natividad and Jeffrey’s Bay where he broke his entire Bradbury quiver in a very short time, while I rode my ‘inferior Clark technology’ boards (Superblue or Ultralight density, 3-step 4oz. deck, single 4 oz. bottom, sanded hotcoat, often glassed overnight by Greg Mungall) to my supreme satisfaction. I might add that many of those boards are still in good shape, ten or fifteen years later, and stored away under my house. Where are Mr. George’s ‘cutting edge’ boards from those trips? He could only reply that they are moldering alongside the lobster shells and fish heads on Natividad, or buried deep in some antipodean rubbish tip near Humansdorp, South Africa.
Earlier I mentioned that one must possess a good understanding of epoxy resins or you risk serious trouble. Mr. George’s lack of understanding in this area cost him only a number of broken boards. Although it is mere speculation, I had always wondered whether John Bradbury’s failure to acknowledge these concerns might have contributed to the illness that brought about his untimely passing. Epoxy resins are not to be trifled with - many of them are very, very toxic - and based on personal appraisal of Mr. Bradbury’s workplace hygiene I can say without reservation that he was ‘working without a net’. (Again, see the addenda at the end of this letter)
Mr. George might also want to explain why, if Mr. Bradbury was so disgusted with ‘inferior Clark Foam technology’, he was a steady customer of Clark Foam (as is Clyde Beatty, presently) in his final years. Perhaps he was one of those ‘blackmailed’ into using such regressive materials?….
In answering the following statement it is again necessary to tread on some toes. Mr. George raises the issue of certain master shapers and their inalienable right to profit from their years of ‘dedication’ to the craft of surfboard construction. Who are we, he asks, to tell them they can’t ‘reproduce their best work’ and receive steady royalty checks. He mentions such shaping legends as Rennie Yater and Mickey Munoz, and asks “are we to tell them that their lifetime of commitment means nothing, and that they are only good for production piecework, as shaping drones, endlessly cutting rocker into foam?” He then goes on to write, “I don’t support efforts like SurfTech’s unequivocably (sic), but as a step in the right direction: the search for better materials and better manufacturing for those surfers who cherish the form. And to honor the master shapers - their vision, their dedication, their commitment. You don’t think they deserve it?”
These gentlemen named - and others who shape plugs for the SurfTech molds - may well be master shapers and worthy of our respect. By all means, let’s have banquets for them, erect bronze busts of them in their hometowns, read lengthy biographies about them in the surf magazines - but I am not so sure I want them designing my surfboards.
Why not?
For the simple reason that many of these guys may well be superb craftsmen and venerable foamsmiths, but are not exactly what forward-looking surfers would call ‘contemporary surfboard designers’. Past contributions made by these gentlemen to the surfboard family tree have certainly been noteworthy and valuable. …Yet, I feel compelled to mention that ‘past contributions’ normally do little to advance surfboard design in the ‘future’, which is where most of us will be doing a lot of our surfing.
Many of these shapers have added little or nothing to the design kingdom in decades. I guess what I am prodding at here is a truth that must be faced: while the garden-variety longboard is certainly a popular type of surfboard and is here to stay whether we like it or not, it hardly represents the cutting edge of the progressive design spearhead.
I am sorry. Racecars are built around the accelerator pedal, not the brakes. I like to go fast, and fast surfboards have flat bottoms and hard edges. In my opinion, the modern longboard had a chance to lead surfing back into a progressive mode, but we stumbled at the fork in the road and headed down the regressive path into Nostalgia World. Thus, these modern replicas of stodgy old tubs have lost the right to be included in the Great Leap Forward of modern surfboard/hybrid design.
Mr. George writes: “You gonna tell Yater to get the hell back to work and lock himself in the shaping room for another 50 years? You know what he got for shaping the Clark plug that virtually all modern longboards over 9’2” are shaped from? Five free blanks on account.” This rhetorical query shows Mr. George to have little actual knowledge of how things work in the surfboard industry. The main error here is the idea that Yater, or any other shaper who builds a new plug for Clark Foam, does it for free and then gets short shrift. First, being invited to build a plug is tantamount to being included in a shaper’s Hall of Fame - it is liked being granted admission into an exclusive society like aviation’s “Quiet Birdmen.” Do you have any idea how difficult and exacting the plug-building process is, and how many plugs are rejected by Clark Foam? Would you like to know how many so-called ‘master shapers’ are unable to produce a usable plug?
Then there is the not inconsiderable convenience of having an infinite supply of blanks available to that selfsame plug designer that are built precisely along the lines of his shaping process and specifications. This is an enormous advantage and benefit to the commercial or production shaper. Being a plug shaper also gives one peer recognition and free exposure in the most widely read catalog in the surf industry. It is not about the ‘five free blanks on account’. Again, this is a subject best not meddled in by people who don’t get their hands dirty.
Furthermore, speaking of getting hands dirty, I feel that it is possible for one craftsman to tell a another that, yes, he should get the hell back to work. My view on this is severe, I admit, but I say that if a craftsman gets tired of getting up everyday and building something with his hands - be it lapstrake dories or surfboards - then he should do some soul searching as to whether or not he might want to look for another line of work. Don’t let your ennui scotch it for the rest of us.
To say that one sees “no real soul in the manufacturing” (as written by you, Jeff) shows that you are missing the point entirely. You of all people should know better! Can you honestly say that those neat little Hawkins 10.5’ boats you laid up in Rick Kluver’s barn had no more soul than a Boston Whaler bought at a boatyard in Bakersfield?
Working with your hands in the quiet of a little workshop is the very definition of soul - the craftsman’s/artisan’s soul at least - and I care little if that “soul” cannot be flaked, formed and molded for vicarious import to the masses. (And, by the way, inarguably the most prolific, profitable and, thus, ‘successful’ shaper working today is Phil Becker, - and he’s shaped each and every board by himself, by hand.)
When Mr. George speaks of these ‘master shapers’ having ‘vision’, ‘commitment’ or ‘dedication’ I assume he is referring to this alleged “search for better materials and better manufacturing.” That’s all very good, yet one must consider another vantage point. Again, let’s not confuse materials with design. As a surfboard designer and surfer interested in fast, high-performance boards (especially guns for large-framework waves) I must go on record as declaring that I care about a surfboard’s performance far more than I am concerned with its materials. (Note: I haven’t broken a surfboard since 1990) As I said earlier, traditional materials used conscientiously are good enough, and ‘good enough’ is fine by me, as my surfboard program is more or less focused on the day-to-day refining of performance components.
Ultimately, this continual refinement of surfboard design is what it is all about. As we discussed earlier, it is not necessarily in the interests of a large manufacturing concern such as SurfTech to make small shape/design refinements that improve performance. It is a matter of economics, really. For example, it is in my best interests to improve a surfboard design so that it rides better. In doing so I will draw more customers and make more money. I can react and make these changes literally overnight. But for a large-scale builder like SurfTech, making sudden design changes will - initially - cost them money; it is in their best interests to have less volatile, generic board designs that are unlikely to overnight sprout new control features like concaves, fluted wings or beveled rails.
So here, in short, is the problem: All large surfboard manufacturers, be they mold-o-maniacal or shaping machine-aholics, will end up in a parasitical relationship with the backyard surfer/shapers who dream up the original designs or fresh hybrids we will be riding tomorrow. Remember the unassailable truth that no large manufacturer has ever come up with a Quantum Leap, i.e. the mini-gun, the down rail, the Thruster, etc.
It is my contention that none of these big-time manufacturers could ever lead surfboard design. They can only follow. …And follow rather slowly at that. This is especially true where the modern high-performance shortboard or hybrid is concerned. Every time SurfTech has to have a new plug shaped and a new mold built, it will cost them time and money. Whereas for a shaper like myself, the more often that I can produce valid, demonstrable improvements in design, the larger my clientele and income will be almost immediately. Furthermore, it costs me nothing - better yet I can do it all in my backyard with little more machinery than a piece of Masonite and a Skil 100.
What will happen in the future if the traditional body of working shapers is reduced? By wiping out jobs for production shapers we are robbing our sport of future contributions that might have come from the next Rawson or Rusty, both of whom honed their skills by shaping thousands of production boards, and then perfected those same skills by working with large stables of world class surfers. With those jobs gone, the best that we can hope for is a generation of shapers that have spent the bulk of their careers whittling the router ruffles off of computer shapes, subbing for a ‘master shaper’ that has fallen out of love with shaping to such an extent that he will stoop to sign someone else’s work.
Since the classic surfer/shaper along the lines of a Brewer, a McTavish or a Fitzgerald are, apparently, a dying race we will have to rely on a future base of technically adept production shapers who have come up through the ranks after building their ten or fifteen thousand custom and stock boards. If those production jobs are not there for them, we risk the unthinkable: that our surfboards will be designed by proxy; by a company like SurfTech and a bunch of longboard-era ‘master shapers’ who might be hell on wheels with a Rockwell, but whose ideas on surfboards are twenty or thirty years out of date.
For example, can you imagine if, back in the ‘70s, Dick Brewer had built a shaping machine rather than share his knowledge with a stable of white-hot protégés? How limp and wilted our surfing lives would be today without the contributions made by Brewer-trained shapers such as Reno Abellira, Sam Hawk, Mark Richards, Tom Parrish, Gerry Lopez, et al. And yet this is exactly what is happening today, as shaping machines and offshore manufacturers take apprentice or production jobs away from surfers who might well have someday been the next Parrish or Richards.
So who will support the backyard builder, the surfer/shaper that stimulates new design excitement, the small outfit that services the local surfing community with high-quality custom boards? I’ll tell you who: Clark Foam. Yes, the Evil Monopoly of Foam Baron Gordon Clark; they offer unfailing support to any builder with the above-mentioned qualities.
The backyard revolution was arguably the most important tectonic shift ever to occur in modern surfing history. The very idea that an enthusiastic surfer could build, in a backyard shed or garage, a better riding board than any put out by the major manufacturers, is earth-shaking when you really consider it. Think about how fast things progressed from ’68 to ’74 - this advancement sure as hell didn’t come from the stick-in-the-mud majors.
The backyard shaper will never be quashed - in the past the bulk of all design innovation came from a garage or underneath a pier, and presently it is coming from places like Laird Hamilton’s Maui compound. Look at the difference in what you see coming out of Hamilton’s workshop compared to what you see in the racks at the “Longboard Grotto” or “Huntington Surf & Sport.”
Anything other than this sort of cutting-edge, surfer-elite-led progression is just mindless, lumbering overhead and a smokescreen of unsubstantiated claims made by cigar chomping ‘innovators’ who nurse the fads and fancies from high-rent industrial condos, sweaty-assed with fear that a backyard ‘skunkworks’ will lead the buying public away from their stockpiled inventory of aquatic Pintos and Pacers - and they won’t be able to make the payments on their bass boats, Range Rovers and golf course memberships.
As we near the conclusion of this lengthy discussion, it is time to look more closely at the very foundation of the SurfTech program. As you correctly deduced, Jeff, it is indeed a Third World/ Wal-Mart issue. But you are wrong when you say, “The Third World has kicked America’s ass with their manufacturing superiority in almost every other market…Hey, why should surfboards be any different?” Without delving into a long explanation about what the noun “economy” really means, I think I should point out that you might not understand the entirety of this Pandora’s Box issue posed by these Wal-Mart/Third World trends.
To briefly put it, the reason America has farmed out almost all of its manufacturing to the Third World lies not in any overseas “manufacturing superiority” - but rather for the simple reason that it is cheaper. And why is it cheaper? Because this country has developed such a high standard of living that all of the intricate web of laws and protections put in place to ensure that quality of life has, in the end, erected such an obstructionist breastwork against business and manufacturing that many corporations feel they have no choice but to move their factories out of the country. Again, this is because it is so cheap to make things in places where the workers have no unions and make perhaps $2.00 a day. It is cheap to make things when you have no pollution regulations. It is cheap to make things when people in a Third World country would rather be a ‘developing country’ than worry about their environment or its stewardship. They are grasping to own the things they see in the Western media, right? Why not lure them into screwing up their ecosystems like we have - it’s the ‘American Dream’ after all. Clear cutting the forests and indenturing workers into gluing up sneakers in place of their traditional rural lives is all worth it if there is the Promise they will someday drive the cars and eat the processed, packaged foods and wear the clothes they see on TV. That’s “progress”, right?
The surfboards made by SurfTech are built overseas for exactly these reasons. There is no “manufacturing superiority”. These SurfTech boards are fabricated in Thailand, at the (approximately) 2000-employee Cobra sailboard factory. (Most of the remaining molded/ epoxy surf, sail and wake boards on the market are manufactured in Slovakia) The skilled workers that get their hands dirty make approximately $3.50 a day, plus a free lunch. The factory compound is situated on 16-18 acres, of which about 300,000 square feet are under a roof. The bulk of the money most likely came from a World Bank loan through the Thai government. Can you honestly claim that you believe that this Nike-style Thailand sailboard factory has some technological skill that is superior to our capabilities in the U.S.? Of course not, the reason these boards are manufactured there is for the plain and simple reason that it is cheaper to do so there than it is here in America. Period.
Sure, you could build these labor-intensive molded boards in the U.S., but you’d have to eliminate all the laws and regulations that prevail here. You’d have to get rid of OSHA, the EPA, the labor unions, and all the various controls on emissions. You’d have to axe Workman’s Comp and health insurance, and all of the regulations that have made labor so expensive that it has become impractical for a competitive manufacturer to make anything other than hamburgers in this country. (For some reason, our country has settled on some sort of half-assed socialism where one’s employer is obligated to give its workers cradle-to-the-grave security, i.e. health insurance.)
Some might scoff at this and say, “what about all the glass shops in the U.S. that don’t control their emissions or obey the regulations?” Yes, there are many examples of such fly-by-night operations - but we are concerned at the moment with the comparably large manufacturers here. The Cobra plant in Thailand is a two-thousand-employee operation. In the U.S., it has become virtually impossible for any surfboard factory of even a tenth that size to fly beneath the radar; once the Fire Marshal knows about them they have to ‘toe the line’ and get up to code just as Clark Foam does. As far as California has been concerned, we all know what a witch hunt this has been.
Cobra is an enormous company that makes many plastics products, including many of the world’s lightweight sailboard brands. Once they receive the shaped plugs for their molds, Cobra builds 100% of the SurfTech board in Thailand. SurfTech itself actually manufactures nothing; they merely coordinate designs, promotions, and take the sales. Outside of the prototype plugs, nothing is manufactured in the United States. Cobra is reported to have sales that tally in at just under $100,000,000 a year. This would make them bigger than the entire American surfboard industry!
And don’t forget the Chinese-made surfboards popping up at Costco - they’re made in China with cheaper labor and materials for the same reasons. Sure, we too could formulate resins and yarns that are 50% cheaper if we paid our workers a Third World wage and ash-canned our environmental laws. Maybe our nation’s sense of environmental responsibility has been under whelming, but at least a sizeable chunk of the population pretend to care. The worst environmental degradations in history were committed by, first, the Soviet Union and, second, China in the past century under communist governments. If I ever see a surfer that has one of these Chinese Costco boards with a Surfrider Foundation decal on his car I’m gonna let the air out if his tires.
Now for the final salvo in this barrage.
Molded boards such as those being promoted by SurfTech have always had a reputation as ‘kook boards”. There is no need to resort to this kind of reactionary name-calling - yet, there is an argument that can be made that agrees with this idea, and it follows a ruthlessly logical path.
Let’s say that you have swallowed the ad campaigns and hype of the (so-called) ‘design’ columns in one of the magazines, and have purchased a new Cobra-built SurfTech board. It matters not whether it is a longboard or shortboard model. You ride it for a few months and enjoy the board. It works well for you, and does pretty much everything you ask for. … But, after a while, your skill increases or you begin to see things in the board that you could change for the better. If surfing occupies a central part of your life and you are committed to progressing - as good, experienced surfers do - then you will want to make design changes that will allow you to reach the next level. For the longboard, one may realize that he wants to, for example, thin out the tail and change the wide-point. The shortboard is more sensitive to refinements: the surfer may want to flatten the rocker slightly and change the apex of the vee panel to suit the fin setting he uses.
Now, not every good surfer can work with a shaper and contribute such clarity and exactness in his desires. But all experienced surfers do so to some extent. This I have found to be an irreducible truth. Some will merely ask for a thicker board, or softer rails. Other surfers that are more in tune may be able to request far subtler changes in tail rocker, hip placement and a myriad other dimensions. What they have in common is that they are all interested in progressing, are excited about their next custom board, and recognize that being involved in the design and construction of their surfboards is a vital part of their desire to progress. This is the heart and soul of the custom surfboard industry - and is one of the last truly neat things about surfing.
If this design process scares or intimidates a surfer, or he doesn’t develop the surfing skills that are necessary to forge ahead, he may just decide to wave at the passing parade from the sidewalk and say, “I can’t be bothered, my board is good enough. I really only surf on weekends, anyway.” Any surfer that is not interested in or serious about progressing is a “kook” in my estimation. It is that simple. Let the chips fall where they may, but it’s the truth. Good surfers always want to trade up to a better riding board - the better a surfer is, the faster and more eagerly he attacks the refinement process.
I say this to all those surfers who - for whatever reason - applaud the ideology of the molded pop-out board a’la SurfTech/ Cobra: If you have somehow lost the thread of progressive surfboard design in your middle years, fine, go ahead and ride one of those Hasbro surfcraft - it’ll look nifty in your garage next to your other emblems of faltering commitment gathering dust there, such as your Tupperware kayak and Chinese-made mountain bike. However, for God’s sake, do not in your pathetic malaise be a Chicken Little screeching about the “falling sky.” Don’t whisper sotto voce falsehoods while screeching out cheers from the armchair for “progress” when you do not know what you are talking about.
All you good and experienced surfers out there who are trapped on a stamped-out, look-alike surfboard that is someone else’s idea of what a good board is, I offer you this: Once you have decided that you would surf better with some design changes you will want to take your spiffy pop-out board to a custom shaper and ask for, say, less rocker or a wider tail.
However, if the doors are chained up and the shaper is now cleaning pools for a living or there is a Starbuck’s where the shop used to be - well, you’ll know who to blame. …And you can go down to the docks and sit there to wait for the container ship to bring you - on the slow boat from China - a business man’s idea of the “hot new” model you will soon be riding.
Jeff, it is your duty as a surfing statesman to take this information and endeavor to educate all those who look to you for guidance.
Sincerely, Your Friend,
Dave Parmenter
(see Addenda below)
ADDENDA
We’re not quite through yet. Although the “PC-Green” aspects of today’s surfboards weren’t discussed in depth in your forwarded letters, I felt that I should include some of the facts, since this area fosters some of the most pervasive of all the myths surrounding the construction of surfboards.
·All modern surfboards are petrochemical based. This includes epoxy resins and “bamboo” surfboards. Epoxies are not some kind of groovy, non-toxic and ‘hemp-like’ alternative to other materials. Nobody uses a veggie-based epoxy - there is no such thing. All surfboard materials come out of the same oil well. “Bamboo surfboards” are no different; the bamboo veneers used on these boards are just a skin - they still comprise a foam sandwich surfboard fiberglassed with petrochemical plastics. Sorry, Woody Harrelson could not ride one with a clear conscience….
·Some epoxy facts: when talking about epoxy resins we have to break them down into two separate components, the hardener and the epoxy molecules themselves. Some hardeners are extremely toxic, while others are not. The main problem is that the epoxy molecule is very toxic to the human body. People working with it can become “sensitized” to these resins. Irritations and rashes can form both inside and outside the body when a worker gets near the resin, and they often grow worse with repeated exposure. Toluene diisocyanates (TDIs) do much the same thing (see SurfTech spray item below). At the SurfTech factory in Thailand, it is reported that when workers become “sensitized” they are moved to another department. As with polyesters, these problems can largely be avoided with proper protection and rigorous industrial hygiene. Historically, epoxies have caused more health problems than polyesters except in cases where styrene levels were extraordinarily high. In my personal experience - and I stress that this is anecdotal evidence only - the only people that I have ever seen become ill from working around surfboards were those that handled a lot of epoxy resins.
·The thin layer of rigid skin foam bonded to the bead-foam core in the SurfTech epoxy boards is a PVC foam. Greenpeace wants PVC to be totally outlawed.
·Styrene is used in polyesters and evaporates as a fume. Styrene is regulated by OSHA, and is permissible if levels stay under the legal limit. Clark Foam has been tested repeatedly and has been okayed repeatedly. The rest of the surfboard industry probably operates outside these OSHA-set limits. Most of the really professional workers use respirators that are probably not OSHA-legal, but offer enough protection to be safe.
·Another chemical widely used in surfboard manufacture is acetone. There has been a lot of finger pointing regarding this toxic solvent over the past couple of decades, especially directed at glassers that don’t keep their acetone bins covered. Yet, OSHA has recently taken acetone off its “toxic” list, and has become a fire hazard issue only.
·Sanding of fiberglass poses a severe health risk if done without the proper respirator and ventilation. Some reports indicate that the Asian factories do not have these controls. “It can only go in - it can’t come out.” Your lungs talking about micro-fibers here….
·Let’s examine some of the blowing agents used in expanded foams. Some use fluorocarbons or freons. Others claiming to use “ozone-friendly” use alternatives to CFC agents, yet these are just as nasty and are now coming under suspicion of being bad actors in ozone depletion. In China, Thailand and Slovakia there are no controls. Clark Foam uses relatively harmless carbon dioxide as a blowing agent.
·The Cobra factory in Thailand probably recycles their bead-foam scrap. Other polystyrene board builders most likely send their cuttings to the landfill, as do polyurethane builders. “Green”-slanted ad campaigns touting certain polystyrene manufacturers that recycle their scrap foam fail to mention that the oil consumption and pollution engendered by the pick-up and transportation of said waste would be far worse than just throwing the cuttings away. The supply/pick-up lines are too long and few builders generate enough scrap by themselves to allow their “Green” claims to hold water. Many of the boards I shape from Clark Foam’s close-tolerance line of blanks would generate barely enough waste to fill a two-gallon bucket, after the side cuttings are broken up. I also use 75% of my rail cuttings as a primary packing material when shipping finished surfboards.
·Over the years, I have read many breathless articles written by surf mag editors trying to mimic “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair. Clark Foam is always depicted as being a toxic Mordor. However, has anyone examined their record? I have. It is a matter of public record. They are highly regulated. They produce no hazardous waste. The factory releases approximately 50 pounds of TDIs (toluene diisocyanates) into the air per year. (The upper-middle class townhouse owners that have moved into the area over the past 30 years comprise a formidable lobby in local politics. They would have had the plant shut down a long time ago if it were at all possible. Think about it.) Isocyanate fumes quickly convert into an inert urea. Much of the foam-bucket waste (after pouring the resin into the molds) is given to florists who then use the foam in floral arrangements. The mold release paper that is not re-used as packaging is recycled. Clark Foam uses no toxic solvents, and instead uses water-based cleaners to clean their brushes, which are of the same type as you use in your home. The biggest source of waste is their wood scrap: it could potentially be recycled, but they haven’t as of yet found a method that works with the size of their factory.
The two biggest issues at the highly regulated Clark Foam factory are the emission of styrene and isocyanate fumes. The levels of styrene fumes have been tested and are lower than the limits set by the federal government. For isocyanates the factory uses live-air breathers, which are OSHA-approved. In the United States there are about 1 billion pounds of isocynates (TDIs) released into the atmosphere each year. Clark Foam, if you recall, emits perhaps 50 pounds of this. This means that your car has far more TDIs associated with it than your surfboard.
*There have been allegations that surfboard foam releases toxic gases when shaped. This is bunk. Polyurethane foams are fully reacted polymers that emit no fumes after curing. The dust and shavings are considered by OSHA to be inert and a “nuisance dust.” The main concerns are ventilation and eye protection. As with any fine dust, a proper respirator should be worn whenever handling the foam. The one that I use, which is overkill according to OSHA standards, is manufactured by 3M and costs less than $40. The foam dust waste is not federally regulated, but most local ordinances demand that it is double-bagged in durable plastic trash bags before being discarded.
·More on isocyanates: The finish on the Cobra/SurfTech boards consists of a two-part urethane spray. This finish is a concentrated, atomized isocyanate. This means that just the finish coat on one of these boards is nastier and more fume producing than all of the entire polyester/polyurethane manufacturing processes put together. It is possible that Cobra uses state-of-the-art scrubbers and filters to manage these fumes, but everyone that I have spoken with who has visited the factory had said that they had zero controls. What is the truth? Or should we not care because they are Third World workers?
·The bottom line is that you are trading away a tradition of small, local business for big, offshore business. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my surfboard to be made like an athletic shoe or a Hula Hoop. In the last decade or so surfing has been under siege from some pretty scary, intersecting trends. With all the commercialism and heritage-plundering now prevalent throughout our beloved lifestyle, I want to embrace all the more one of the last really neat and unique things about surfing: the custom surfboard industry. Don’t believe what the ads and the magazine hype tell you. The truth is there - you just have to dig for it.
eh?). Sometimes it works wonders for me to leave them all alone for a while. The fact of the matter is the internet forum is the current communal meeting place with any meaning at all in the surfing world - the magazines are most (but not all) reduced by commercial needs and print publication leads times into soft core surf porn. The run of the mill magazines are about “Them” as opposed to us; celebrity culture is no culture at all.