At 6’ 7" x 16" I don’t know what it is / was, maybe a kid’s board? Store display? Looks like a fairly recent glass job 4 oz cloth & epoxy resin, nice fin fillet too. Don’t know what all the (tack, staple?) holes in the bottom are all about either
Got this from the same guy. This one looks like it was glassed with old volan cloth.
They belonged to his deceased father & he knew nothing about them.
upholstery tacks from a former life as a seat???
Then restored
Upholstery tacks / staples was my guess too, but nobody else I’ve shown it to agrees with me. I was thinking store display with some kind of colorful fabric? Could have been a seat - has almost zero rocker. But who makes a seat from balsa?
The rails & the little bit of belly in the nose looks like it was made to surf despite having no rocker. And the pattern of the holes shows it wasn’t shaped from a seat plank, the upholstery was done after it was shaped to a surfboard shape. So I was just trying to imagine some scenario where that would be the case.
The board itself seems like it could have been shaped earlier, then maybe cleaned up a bit, glassed, and the fin added later. Its a mystery. The balsa planks are wide, like 6". There are only 4 planks, two wide ones in the middle and the rail planks which are narrower. So it was carved from some pretty big chunks of wood. The board shows marks of hand tooling, so it wasn’t just cut out and the rails shaped, it was worked down by hand from a thicker piece of wood.
The glassing and fin and fillet looks more professional than the shaping.
The paipo is a different story, the glassing on it looks older, with the heavier cloth and more age showing in the resin. The fin is notched into the board.
My guess is kids board.
Might have been an ironing board for a while…
My guess is kids board.
Might have been an ironing board for a while…
Haha, at 6’ 7" it mighta been an ironong board for the jolly green giant!
I kinda think it could have been a kid’s wood shop project.
Considering your signature, this is the best comment I’ve seen.
My guess and situation.
Balsa was the go to creative material back in the day, store owner goes to surfboard maker, asks for a small surf board for a display. Surfboard builder slaps it together with the timber and materials he uses and sells it.
I get used for a few years in the shop and then they decide to make it a seat. Hence the upholstery marks. Later its found in an atic then somone goes, lets make it a surfboard again, and its gets a restoration and new glass job.
The Huck buys it.
Scratches head…
Either way, it could tell some cool stories…
Huck, I’m going to go out on a bit of a speculative limb in a moment here.
Like others, I think the balsa is a (50’s vintage) kid’s board - the overall shape, period repairs, etc. all lead in that direction. The glassing looks to have been redone - just seems too clean for period.
As far as the holes go, two things got me thinking. Could it have been staples to hold the cloth in place during the first, very amateur glass job? Trying to get one’s head around wrapping fiberglass over complex curves could be a wild ride if you’ve never glassed before, in the days before reference materials… Or, could it have been covered in a protective fabric - much the way some wood canoes had waxed canvas or other shell materials? I once saw a period hollow toothpick that had been covered that way.
We tend to look at boards with all of our accumulated baggage about construction, which wasn’t always the case.
Anyway, congrats on your score(s). I love old wood boards.
Hope you didn’t pay much for those. What’s your plan?
Thnx Jeffrey I was / am definitely stoked to make the score, and it took a bit of doing to find them & make the purchase. They come from the estate of a vintage surfboard and car collector.
I agree on the age of the balsa, of both the board & the glassing.
Here are some pics including the rocker and rail. Your theory on the tack / staple holes makes sense, as it would explain why there are two rows, one for the bottom fabric and one for the top
The shaping, while a bit crude, is actually to my eye pretty sophisticated, and seems to indicate some knowledge / experience with surfboard design.
While there is little deck rocker, there is about 1 3/4" nose rocker & 1" in the tail.
The paipo also looks 50s or early 60s to me.
McDing - glad you broached the subject of valuation. Can’t really say if I paid too much without knowing their worth, so I have to ask, what would you value them at?
What would you consider a good price or maximum price to pay for them? (wholesale & retail) my research sez at auction wood paipos can go anywhere from 2,000 on up to maybe 15 or 16000, but I don’t know if mine is in the same league.
Huck, when all this madness ends and I make it back to California to visit my folks, I would love to drop by and check out that little balsa! That category of “womens and kids” boards from the forties and fifties is really a subject of interest for me. Would you mind?
A commenter on IG felt the balsa was a jim foley (of santa cruz) kid’s board from the late 50s early 60s.
The shape and details (aside from the tack stains) are very similar to a couple of the kids boards from that era in the SHACC collection.
Some have speculated in the past that the staples were for wrapping and securing a burlap type fabric to provide traction before the days of wax.
Really linteresting - I’ve never heard that. Any potential sources? I love tracking this stuff down.