I have just acquired this board and would like to know more about it. Could anyone inform me about the age of this board ? What about the little picto at the right bottom of the Jacobs logo on the deck, does that mean anything special about the shaper ? Would it be Hap Jacobs ?
I have juste repaired it and added a leash plug to try it soon here in Biarritz - France.
Thanks for any information or details about this board.
That little symbol means the board was glassed with Colorflo cloth. The glass had the color impregnated into it and thus no need for pigment or airbrushing. It also made it possible to do exact color matches on dings.
That board would be about 74 vintage, give or take a bit. Search the forum archives for Colorflo, as I recall someone posting about which years it was in use. Memory says roughly 73 to 75.
Hap would not have shaped it, as he sold the label in '71.
I just did a quick look in the home files. Colorflo was in use in early 72, and probably gone by 75. So, that should narrow down the vintage. Also, I’m pretty certain that Grant Reynolds, the inventor of Colorflo, owned the Jacobs label at the time.
Scan from a Jacobs ad, Spring of '72. Note Colorflo logo…
I’d say the deck was done with clear Colorflo, and the bottom with yellow cloth. Notice how the stringer is more visible on the deck side. Not so on the bottom.
Thanks Samy for this quality of information. Then I assume that Grant Reynolds is the shaper of it.
By the way, I would like to ship a board from California to France (7"), would you have any idea about a cheap and safe way for that ? Is UPS or Fedex the best way ?
SammyA, looking closely at the third photo that you posted, it seems to me that the cloth was extremely wide (look at the leftover in the glasser’s left hand)… Chipfins would have been happy with all those colored fin pannels to be…
Don’t assume anything. Reynolds didn’t do any shaping, to my knowledge. I believe Bruce Jones and Steve Pezman shaped for his “California Company” label back then. Might have done some Jacobs, too.
Yes. That is a lot of waste at the rails. But, they might have chosen an over-sized roll for the sake of visibility in the ad. The guy in that pic is Tim Baker. Though that is actually a Bing/Colorflo ad, he also glassed for Grant Reynolds during his career. Reynolds spoke very highly of Baker’s work, way back when.
You could certainly make some cool looking fin panels with multi-colored layers of cloth.
BTW, Sammy, what were the reasons why Colorflo fell into oblivion? The concept looked interesting at the time and I never quite understood why it didn’t meet a larger/longer use. Cost? Color difference between different batches? Oh, and, do you know whether it was mass-tinted or just dyed?
If I remember right, the process used was very similar to that mentioned in http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3967015.html - essentially the cloth was coated with a resin/wax/other stuff mix which would accept dyes. I kinda doubt that you'd get really good matches between different production runs of cloth. Plus, if you're more or less coating the fibers of the cloth with this stuff, it'd likely compromise the way the resin stuck to it.
I'd also guess the cloth itself was intended more for things like fireproof fiberglass curtains and the like rather than laminating, so the wax-resin-etc. coatings and such wouldn't be so much of an issue. This would maybe explain why it came in such widths: it was meant to be sewn together rather than saturated with resin.
I seem to remember that some of this was mentioned in the magazine articles of the day . I'd also guess that the colored cloth manufacturer got complaints and decided they didn't really need the aggravation from such a small market.
Colorflo was specifically developed for surfboards by Grant Reynolds, in conjunction with a glass manufacturer. It is all spelled out in an article I have on hand. Don’t have time right now to look it up. But, it certainly wasn’t a product intended for curtains.
These are scans from an inerview with grant reynolds in the Spring of 1972. It gives the background on Colorflo, including the fact that it was not something used for curtains.
It seems the order can get jumbled up with attached images, so I’ve number each section to make it easier to follow.
(chuckling ) yep, I remember reading that article ( knew curtains were in there someplace) , and handling some of the colorflo cloth that came through back then as repair kits... it was a satin/sateen like cloth, almost a silky feel to it.
In a number of ways it was pretty neat stuff. Fixing it was easy, color matching wasn't an issue at all. I kinda wonder why it didn't catch on more. I'd guess that while surfers in general go with the rest of the herd on shapes, thay all want the colors and graphics to be 'custom'.
