Greenough edge spoon part 1

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

Another day goes by

"Carl? Carrrrl??" Welzie making a call to the mothership at the Wet Art show. Surely one of those phones can connect him. 

 Insanity aside, here's a preview for Andy of his 7'1" Frankenspud copy...

 Close up shot of Robins new EPS/Epoxy Log... just a teaser. Those drips are from the hotcoat on the deck, they get ground off before the bottom is hotcoated. A thorough sanding comes next.

 David came by this evening and grabbed this green tinted log and was one of the first in Santa Cruz to get one of the new Black&White fins.

 And getting close to completion of Brian's second board, he's getting that all black asymmetrical that you've seen before. This one is a little 5'6" Quad with a Rocket Tail. Can't wait to see these all black boards finished up. -Carl

A Little more

A few more images from the show, here's two crows and a bro...

 Alot of women made suits into dresses.

 Gigi's piece

 Sanders

 sea shells... at least they didn't smell like resin

Also got some finished board pics, here's Johnny Smiths

 nice

 Annie's full freestyle

 Debbies

-C

Wet Art Show

Last night was the Wet Art show... It was so much fun that we didn't get a chance to blog about it last night, so here I am doing it late this morning. It was quite a successful show, many props to Gigi and her crew for doing such a good job putting it together. Tons of food and alcohol was flowing in every direction. Many interesting pieces but only a few as dramatic as Welzies fully fiberglassed freestyle piece. 

 He decided to do some last minute touches at the show

 Here's another submission by another artist that was pretty cool. Since everyone had to start with a wetsuit donated by a surfer, it was interesting to see what direction each particular artist went.

 Of course the night dissolved into mayhem at the end... Here's Paulie Steinberg having a great time! I'll put some more pictures of the show up later this afternoon. -Carl

Wet Art Show

At Carl's birthday back in September our friend Gigi was explaining an art show she was putting on with O'niell to benifit the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Cruz. 30 surfers were to donate their wetsuits for 30 artists to do their work on them. In a drunken state of G and T's we managed to get Gigi to get me Waylon's wetsuit. Originally I was going to paint it, then I soberd up and decided up and decided to cover it in resin. Oh, and put a couple llama heads on it. Turns out the art show should be a pretty fun party on Saturday night. If I make it that long, it's freezing.

-nick

Barreling

I came across this picture of myself and these two old friends tonight and got nostalgic. In the orange tie we have Kyle Buthman and in between is Noah best. I've been building these guys boards since they were just wee little groms. I'll never forget having to give Noah the boot from one of my parties because he was too young to be drinking and had the nerve to ask me if it was OK if he did. Of course not! It was too late that he realized that if he hadn't asked, I would have never "noticed" ... but now he holds his beer with ease. And the pretty girl is Kyle's girlfriend. Couple of big grown-ups now. Good stuff. 

 It inspired me to dig around and find some pictures of those guys... I've always got something stuck somewhere... Here's Kyle

And Kyle again. Look at that style! I swear it's straight out of the 80's... He's getting rad!! 

Here's a link to a surf flick that Kyle filmed and produced a couple years ago 

Get Rad 2010 trailer (You gotta buy the full length deal, but you get the idea :) There's a second one too...

Get Rad 2 trailer 

 Mr. Noah Best getting shacked. I've always signed his boards for Noah #1. The Best

 Mr. #1 still getting slotted....

And one more. Backside attack force..! -Carl

Glossy Eyed

Last min is always the way to go. We had known about this art show for months, working on the piece for the show the last time I went back to Santa Cruz. We knew the dates, been checking flights. The founds to be used were circulating in the floating world of board building. The greens got to our hands and it was time to book a flight. Carl text me last night "when you thinking of coming". I have all my work planned for leaving thursday, but the ticket on that day has doubled since the last time I checked. "Ah, you got to leave tomorrow if you want to come". Shit. looks like I am leaving in 15 hours with 30 hours of work. Luckily you can sleep on the plane. Sometimes its the only place where my mind can relax. With a computer battery that holds no charge, the plane is the only place I can really not worry about the work I should be doing.
-n


Just thought I would throw this picture in real quick. I have been a surf guide in the Maldives the last 5 summers, making a lot of good friends over there. I leave my quiver and just about everything I own to the surfing crew. They are just so stoked on surfing and everything about it. Here is a pic Arjey just sent me of one of my old boards heading to the beach. All the boys share the boards, keeping everyone stoked.

Malia's board getting glossed. Ill be working on this thing till I jump in the car to the airport.

Toot's new mini simmions. getting the deck glossed.

My new 6'9 egg. It was a stock board to sell but I have always wanted one, and well, sometimes you just got to treat yourself. Right?

Our old friend Sarah Stewert's new board ready to be polished. I had a little crush on her in high school I got to admit ;)

Jason's new yard stick getting the deck glossed. This board is coming out so clean. Simple sugar mill cream. Small simple logos. Nice.

 I love our egg fin template. Smooth.

Fin Foiling

Got caught in a pinch I had to foil out some fins from some marine ply I had laying around.  Came out nice enough that I figured I could post them up. It's alot of work, but it's always rewarding. Here's the templates drawn on the scrap ply. Old trusty fish template from 2003 that never lets me down...

Then a little quick work with the old jigsaw

 Looking good already, nothing like a 5500 rpm grinder to smooth out those curves

 Unfortunately the ply was 3/4" thick, I only needed 3/8" ...needless to say alot of wood had to turn to dust. In this picture I'm checking the taper of the fin from base to tip, the first step in setting the foil

 Here's another shot of the taper

 Now a quick line defining a rough 30% to keep the foil true...

 Setting the foil... an art in itself, I could go on for pages talking about this subject :) It's just like shaping a little mini surfboard though

 Looking pretty tasty. Now all I gotta do is cut the base off and do it all over again for the opposite side.

 Once the other side is done, they get a couple layers of fiberglass and then get glassed on the board. Simple right? Make a set! -Carl 

Weight classes

Someone asked me about the correlation between weight and surfboards the other day and it's been riding in my mind. I figured I'd post a bit of a graphical representation of how weight affects surfboard design.
Weight affects momentum, simply put more weight allows for a board to carry its forward motion better. This is desirable in boards where the rider seeks "glide" ...down the line trimming ease. Noseriders, 12' glide machines, trim seeking longboards and a lot of the more retro designs often have this characteristic. It is analogous to a freight train moving down the line, and it also dampens the affect of bump and chop in a wave.In the same way the weight of a train pushes the tracks down as it creaks along causing the ride to be pretty smooth, especially considering that trains have no rubber tires to absorb the little bumps and chatter you would normally experience along the roads. 

 Weight is all fine and dandy until you get into performance oriented designs. Modern shortboards, fish and longboards all rely on quick acceleration and maneuverability to achieve the high performance seen in modern surfing. Weight affects inertia, the more weight there is in a board, the slower it will accelerate. This is in turn analogous to the formula one cars of today. Breaking into and accelerating out of turns at high speeds is very similar to the way a shortboard performs. Linking together turns on a modern shortboard is just that, speed up , slow down, speed up, slow down... this is why lighter is often most favorable in these types of boards. Considering that they shave every possible ounce off of formula one cars... lighter is always better in the minds of these multi-million dollar racing teams.  

So the amount of weight in a board is always based on the application. A 20 pound shortboard is going to ride like a beast, heavy and unwilling, and a 6 pound noserider will flick around, even when you want it to sit still. Weight can be a good thing and a bad thing, but as usual it is always up to the rider and how he/she feels about it and what they are trying to achieve. It never hurts to experiment in any direction, and it always pleases me to see people trying new things. As my late friend Mike Croteau once said... Tape a brick to the nose of your board... and you will begin to understand weight. :) -Carl