I have been making quite a few longer boards recently, in particular eggs and performance longboards, as well as a couple of dedicated nose riders. I’ve built these mostly from mahogany veneers, but have also been using cherry and walnut on some of the longer boards. The nose and tail bocks are hard wood, such as iroko, walnut, or meranti, and the rails I’m using are chestnut, usually with a mahogany pin line.

I thought I’d share these with you in between logging some serious time in the workshop lately. Check back soon, there’s more to come.

For me 2010 was a year that 2009 didn’t see coming. As a shaper tucked away from everything, sometimes it’s difficult to know what is going on outside, away from the stop-start of my sanding, thinking, drilling and sweeping.

But it’s really nice to be standing here in 2011 saying 2010 was actually a great year for me, not so much in what I have done but also those who I have met along the way. Glass Tiger is an evolving project as much as a business and being able to collaborate with other shapers has been much of what made last year so good.

I met Tim Stafford in the spring and so far have made two boards together, with a third and fourth on their way very soon. Tim’s board building is based around the Bonzer, but isn’t really restricted to the usual formulas of a Bonzer. Tim uses the concept to develop ideas based around efficient channelling of water, making boards that flow in a way most of us want to surf.

The first board I built with Tim was a Clean Line. This is basically a surfboard stripped back to basics as far as the outline goes. A very simple round pin, the bottom contours direct the water smoothly towards the rear single fin, through a series of concaves, channels and finally a v-shape.

The Clean Line

What makes a Bonzer work is a combination of all these things. Putting a Bonzer bottom contour and five-fin set up on a clean line, is just a marrying of simple ideas that work.

The second board we built was one of Tim’s Freak Fish. It’s basically a bonzer pin tail on both sides of the surfboard the same principle as a bonzer except the water is guided towards each rear fin individually as you go from rail to rail.

The Freak Fish

It’s been such a good experience for me to shape boards like the Freak Fish and to open fresh design concepts and which don’t adhere to formulas simply for their own sake.

A while ago I shaped and surfed an alaia with Tom Wegener. Since that day, I have been in contact with Tom via email to discuss finless boards that have the volume to float. This summer with some guidance from Tom, I made an alaia, which has a foam core, with wood veneers top and bottom and solid oak rails.

Finished alaia

The board in template is identical to the 6’9” we made together, but the bottom contours have been accentuated and the deck is rolled so that the rails are very hard and thin – similar to the original alaia. Alaias are so much fun. Hard? Yes, but also super fun, fast and slidey. But at least with volume you have a better chance of getting on the wave in the first place!

alaia tail

My build process hasn’t really changed much this year. I’m still using mainly rotary cut mahogany, 1.5mm veneers for the top and bottom of the boards and some flat-cut walnut and cherry for some of the long boards.

Walnut longboard rail

The only small changes I have made are generally a slightly heavier internal bio resin, internal glass over the EPS blank and cork expansion joints in the nose and tail to alleviate any small expansion of the rails without effecting the nose and tail blocks.

For 2011 I also plan to produce some boards with an external epoxy lamination rather than my usual method which is bio resin and glass, internal lamination, wood veneer, and oil-based varnish finish. This is really just to offer another finish option; a finish that is as maintenance-free as possible and very hard wearing.

I also hope to get more creative with the stains this year, 2011 is going to be colourful. Stay tuned.

The soul of surfing is on its way back and it’s more expensive than ever: cooler, cleaner, more calculated lines so prettified by colour-coded design, fonts and post-modern pastiche that it wheezes its well-wrought little parodies and ultra-refined graphics into a package so full of nostalgic decay, even the maggots in the surrounds are dazzled by the atomic fervour of cool.

Substance unfortunately waits in the shadows, weak, bent and disfigured; truth the articulation to sell by. We are not worthy, master of beatitude. The shadow of legitimised fabrication is spawned to parallel, not granulate or incline the radius. The picture lacks dimension, the truth a play of servitude we colour by rote. Hope articulated in the affront of hypocrisy ringing the round and calling every single pretty figure out into the mist; the beautiful people wrapped up in their living boxes with inverted smiles.

‘From out of this feeling one gives to things, one compels them to take, one rapes them – one calls this procedure idealising.’  [Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols]

Let us impoverish things further, let us praise the mediocrity of fools and the shallow folds of each new venture. ‘Where there is struggle it is a struggle for power’. Things do not turn towards emboldened perceptions; they are rather Machiavellian transits for the commercial authority of what is, and more importantly what is not, cool. We are not more or less than, just humanity banging the cage, the fetish of error garlanding the walls we prettify.

So many false idols trapeze the industry – limp figures profiting out of a twisted global logic; a weird ecological slant that makes claims on behalf of the planet, but always preaching the ‘newness’ of things dazzling and bright with vacant eyes ‘a ring without a gem;[...] OMO in man’s countenance’. [Dante, The Divine Comedy; ii: Purgatory]

There is something of worth in the act, diminished by the fervour of commerce; there’s much beauty in the being of it, but little to propagate the peripheries. In the immersion of being the ego flows entirely at one with self, devotion being a scarcity of being in and for the world. We return solely or forfeit a right; fun and for its own sake – a truth, which embarks sheltering the world within a world. It is a sad cloud that perpetrates the marketing of the soul; yet we may wake, smell the salt sea air and slide into a cessation of boundaries, free from the servitude of cool.

We can also get so caught up in our own selfish and self-righteous pursuit of uber coolness that we forget why we started surfing in the first place. Like what board we’re riding, where we surf, and how we look doing it. It’s like keeping up with the Joneses gone to Malibu.

I remember going surfing with my friends at Lloyds State Park in Dania, Florida when I was just a grom. I had a total beater that was made by some kooky guy in the backyard of American suburbia. It was given to me if I promised to take it away and never bring it back, which of course I did. Anyway, we all had crappy boards with some missing fins, and had to beg for rides to the beach from our parents, friends, or neighbours. It didn’t matter what the surf was like, if there were waves, we were on it. No fins, no leash, no proper boardies, old wax – nothing mattered. We just had to get our fix. Most of the time, it meant staying out until someone’s parents were screaming at us to get back to the car. Sunburt, crispy, exhausted and probably grounded for a week, we were happier than ever.

Once we were old enough to drive, it was fully on, and 4am missions up the coast to Florida’s surf mecca at Sebastian Inlet were monthly if not weekly events. Driving for four hours to surf for about the same amount of time seemed insane to my parents, but we didn’t care. As long as our cars held out and we had gas money, we knew we’d get wet somewhere.

Something changed between those times and now. Maybe it’s age, experience, or the cold water, but I don’t seem to surf as much, and it isn’t always as satisfying. There are so many ways to surf these days, maybe as much as during the late-60s shortboard revolution, the options can seem overwhelming. Maybe it is the times we live in, or the way life is so much more complicated these days with faxes, emails, instant messaging and phones that know more about our habits than we do.

I guess unplugging is the only way to get that focus back. Forget about the ‘real’ world. Maybe our connected lives are actually making us less connected to what is really going on out there, and we are losing a little of our innocence with it. Surfing is such a simple act and can bring such a sense of freedom from daily chores it is shame to over-complicate it with fashions and rhetoric. Being away from all that for a while, around a group of people that don’t surf, and making a plywood alaia with my dad while waiting for my baggage to show up, was an odd way to find my stoke again. But whether or not the board works the way I hope, or if the waves aren’t perfect, I know I’m getting in somewhere.

So, what is really important? Don’t look at me, you’re the one paddling out, facing the challenge on your own, like always…

So many things chart the day to its plotted end: defamations, character assassinations, puns, Protean narratives. Perhaps it’s only through otherness that we fully realise the gamut of experience and what it truly means to place a value on things.

Even in pursuit of the image we rarely give anything over to the peripherals of the event; the event itself is always pre-possessed of an aesthetic of operations, a centring which usually marks out its composition around climax. As such, the details rarely sparkle. Perhaps culture is too hard for the softer edges; it desires the voyeuristic presence more than the ethereal. Much of these things are matters of perspective, but the common thread that binds us is the perception embodied in the experience of now. The writing becomes re-presentation, but the words – like the images – collect the shell of experience on our behalf; in so doing, these works themselves become a further experience of otherness.

In the spring of 2009, Ollie Banks, Steve Croft and I headed for the western isles. In the following autumn, Ollie Banks, Steve Crawford, Joss Wescombe, Rich Mathers and I returned. Two seasons apart, here’s a selection of perspectives that bridge generations.

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[Joss slide/Ollie Banks] A new generation of twin-fin expression. It's great to see younger surfers like Joss Wescombe exploring things on their own terms, while giving a respective nod to other people and times.

Surfboards courtesy: Empire Surfboards, Planck Surfboards, Royal Surfboards

Wetsuits courtesy HOTLINE wetsuits

Clothing courtesy Finisterre

Over the years the Campbell brothers have been indirectly approached by some of the world’s largest board manufacturers, but they have always stuck to their principles of hand-built surfboards – high production values, low turnover of goods. When asked for his views on the current trend to mass-produce surfboards in the Far East, Malcolm replied, “We believe in the decentralisation of production. Instead of having all the boards made in one place and then distributed around the world, we believe in coming out to places like England and working with local people. You can have the boards produced locally, so you’re giving something back to the community which is supporting you.”

With the market overflowing with imported epoxy composite surfboards and some of the surfing world’s big-name shapers backing them, has Campbell ever been tempted to go down that route? “I do not think those boards perform as well. Polyester – or even a custom EPS – perform better than the equivalent composite board. Some of it’s to do with performance, but it’s more really to do with our theories of business and community. I would rather give work to guys in the area where people are buying the boards.”

This people-centric philosophy is fundamental to Campbell’s approach to surfing and is shown in their logo – two figures representing people and the community.  “We are really into design and really into surfing but the thing that has kept the Bonzer going is that it works for average surfers; if it didn’t then it would have died out. We really stuck with it because we want to give something back to surfing because it has given so much to us. We believe in the design but we also want to contribute to the surfing community.”

(words Mark Dickinson photos Ollie Banks)

And realistically, in the language play of legitimisation and specialisation it becomes increasingly difficult to say anything that has a value beyond the limits of a horizon that has those limits placed upon it by professionals, media or other accepted transmits of received information. So I’m aware of the receptive limits of this piece, and aware of its precarious seat to transport alternative thoughts, given the current thematic of contemporary engagements. But there is I think, still a potential within certain branches of culture to propagate or nurture an alternative economic and cultural model, which could, in practice, offer a decidedly different way for mainstream consumer habits to operate.

Bob McTavish, in a recent interview with Drift exemplifies the way in which legitimisation is received, and mass production is cited as major mechanism in innovation and design. Speaking about Merrick he says,

“There’s probably 20,000 Al Merricks out there a year now, whereas previously there were only 4,000. I think that Al being able to design a board on his computer and send it all the way around the world to be manufactured has elevated surfboard design.”

So the information that we receive is that surfboard design is “elevated” when one single manufacturer increases his turnover by more than 400%, and then sends it around the world. The impact of this can be seen without dissecting each part of the communication; but where the figureheads of industry under the supply of capitalism consume such a large part of the market, shipping boards around the world, they become part of a greater dialogue which has repercussions not only in the local market place, but also on the sustainability of such a practice in terms of the environment, and ethical implications of outsourced labour exploiting past imperialistic exploits. As far as elevated design goes, I’ll cite another Australian voice, Geoff McCoy, who gives a different slant:

“The modern shortboard is a hoax. It is the biggest distraction to surfing that we’ve experienced in 20 years,” [...] “It’s a dysfunctional object … It doesn’t want to bottom turn, it doesn’t want to turn in general. What they’ve done to compensate is make smaller fins so it can skid and slide. They don’t know that the hard edges are making it release and skid as well. The balance is all wrong. Everyone is on their front foot because the only support is in the middle of the board, and you’ve got to be such an elite talent to get them going… There’s a small percentage of people who can do it.”

McCoy is certainly a bit extreme in his views, but he makes a very serious point. Citing McTavish again we are told that,

“With machines and the production in Thailand and China, a good designer can get their shapes out to a wider audience and, as a result, surfboard shapes have improved.”

A “good” designer then, legitimises overseas production methods and distribution to a wider audience despite the fact that this designer may know little of the rider’s style or, just as importantly, his/her locality and breaks. So it appears that we can with reason conclude that these “improvements” may lead to a homogenisation of styles and waves that leaves little space for idiosyncrasy or flair, or for that matter how these improvements relate to the average surfer? And what or whom are these waves and riders that can all be fitted conveniently into models and types? A convenience that rather fittingly benefits mass production and services the modern cultural consumer phenomenon of “I want it now” and disposable products. McCoy, speaking more specifically about his involvement with surftech remarks it’s “the second worst thing I’ve ever done”; the first being getting involved with the surf industry, which, in his own words, “forgot about surfing in the quest to make a lot of money”.

The same cannot be said of McTavish, and there is a discrepancy in the earnestness with which he supports mass production and, in turn, even contradicts his own practice. The machine that allows the designer to “improve design” and “elevate[...]design” is, for “some reason” unable to offer as good a product as his hand-shaped alternative. As McTavish says,

“Sometimes I’m frustrated with the machine and I wanna get the board in the water so I’ll jump in the room and burn one out. For some reason they always come out better.”

Indeed. This statement speaks for itself, and I would argue that the mystical address in “for some reason” could relate to his experience as a craftsman and his intimate knowledge of the handcrafted process as well as his abilities as a surfer; it could also be on behalf of the implicated soul of a thing. Or within an object’s making, a making that is worked upon by all the body’s sensory functions: touch, sight, even the sound of internal dialogue as the object is worked upon in the real dimensions of a lived and occupied space, like surfing itself, rather than those of a virtual one. I don’t want to drag objective reasoning into a continental or metaphysical discourse so I’ll steer away. But in short, he says, if he makes it by hand it’s somehow better. As Dave Parmenter puts it:

“I pay little attention to any nebulous ‘soul’ quotient that may or may not inhabit the surfboards I build. I build because I love to work with my hands – it keeps me sane in a society that values nihilism over creativity.”

In the act of the legitimisation, McTavish attempts through communication to establish his being in this world. As Martin Heidegger points out in ‘Time and Being’, “the being of man [...] is essentially determined by its being able to speak.” The language of McTavish is disconcerting to say the least. It shows surfing as a global corporate force, that through the use of imperatives is, in Lyotard’s terms “valorising the individual enjoyment of goods”, whilst also negating its environmental impact and global distributions impact on local production. He also attempts to de-legitimise, through calculated statements, the work and practice of others: “There’s so much wank in shaping! It’s smoke and mirrors…”. There’s a polarity here that runs deep, and seems to be growing wider, and there are certainly no straightforward answers. Echoing Dave Parmenter’s concerns, “I worry that false worship of glittery new technology could strip away from the surfboard manufacture the importance of shape and design”.

Economically speaking, corporate models don’t appear to be able to offer sustainable practices, nor in such vast a field can they be monitored; yet they also appear to grow exponentially. Even though some surfers may profit out of mass-production, the funds seem more likely to be distributed into the hands of faceless shareholders, who don’t build surfboards, or even worse, don’t surf.

Nurturing micro-communities, including the production and a divestment of interest in sustainable micro-energies, offers a potential step toward. It’s not just about supporting your local shaper, but consolidating and investing in your local community, not for the sake of any nationalist values, far from it; it’s to support innovative efforts, in both production and design, arts and crafts, jobs, and a monitered sustainable economy within community, which has the legitimising power of language to communicate ideas through the global community. For current and future generations, legitimising the local community through the work of that community strengthens the ties and consolidates; surely this can only be a good thing. It’s no longer a concern that such things are insular, as through a continual dialogue, creativity and ideas develop simultaneously in flow, keeping with the “now”; and so in turn, the future.

Sources

Bob McTavish in conversation with Chris Preston on www.driftsurfing.eu

‘Which Way is Earth? The Alternative Universe of Geoff McCoy’ by Tim Baker on www.coastalwatch.com

Martin Heidegger, ‘Being & Time’; translated by Joan Stambaugh in collaboration with J Glenn Gray

Jean-Francois Lyotard, ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’; translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi

Dave Parmenter, ‘A Shaper’s Fugue’; The Surfer’s Journal, vol 13 no 4