In 2006 I got really hooked for awhile on learning about George Greenough's edge spoons. Not to be confused with
Velo, the board that everyone knows so well. You know, that iconic red railed see-through spoon that the world copied the fin off of in the mid 60's? A lot of people still ride that fin to this day, it is known as the
stage 4a. It seems though that few bother to follow the genius of Greenough past Velo into the 70's and further. Very few realize that he turned away from the concept of flexible fins by the early 70's- a concept that his name is synonymous with. Because of over crowding at his local breaks, by the early 1970's George had drastically modified his boards to work better in less than idea surf. They were called edge spoons and George would continue to build the concept into pretty much everything he made, including sailboards.
You can see in the picture above the distinct edge that was added to later spoons. This was to help them plane better than the original Velo style spoons. Careful tuning of the edge allowed for a board that would work in in much worse conditions than the Velo spoons.
I stumbled on these boards in 2006 and couldn't stop reading about them for many reasons. One being the fact they are so forgotten by verbal history books of the surfing/shaping community. Another was the wonder if George had been onto something and never bothered to mention it to anyone after seeing what happened when the world got their eyes on Velo.
I've got a tendency to get obsessive over things that make my mind turn and it wasn't long before I was gluing random scraps of EPS block foam together to make a rough blank for a edge spoon.
The template was built to include the rocker and was designed after pouring over everything I could find on the internet.
Nothing like a nice rocker template to get you honed in just right. I've always felt that rocker is one, if not the most crucial part of a surfboard to get right. Who knows if it's just a residual feeling from my mentors, but it always plays a big part in my surfboard design.
Here's rough template cut out.
The first bands always set the tune for the rest of the shape. Because I had never seen an edgespoon in person, I decided to follow what I thought was the logical progress for George. Build a spoon such as Velo first, then add the edge later.
Here's the shape all smoothed out almost ready for glass. I only needed to shape the bottom of the board, because it is used to make a mould for the fiberglass shell that becomes the spoon.
And here it is with a single layer of glass on it. The seams are from the different pieces of foam that got glued together to make the rough blank. I took so many pictures of this project that consumed so much time, hundreds of hours, that this will have to be a multi-part project. Tune back later for the next part.
End part one ---> Carl
