LIT, you've go some projects, damn, I can relate. I've got so many right now I'm lost in all of it. I have a snowboard mold built that I haven't built a board out of, a new sailboat project, a SUP/sailboard and a foam/fiberglass aquaponics system. Now it's snowboard season so some things are on hold and I still have to work.
Surftech Australia didn't get the business they were hoping for in the epoxy market. Good guys but Australia didn't have the Clark debacle happen so polyester was never threatened. SUP has changed the biz but I'm not sure where things are at in Oz. When I was there 7-8 years ago it was so small. Having said that there's some decent stuff down there these days.
LIT, challenges today are many. I'm not having to prove my ideas nowadays though. Seems that up until 10 years ago minds were closed to everything. Looking at where surfing was in 2005 we were essentially riding the same boards that we were shaping in FL in 85. Nothing changed for so long. Now things have moved along and minds are open to different designs, materials, and building techniques. They called me the mad scientist for things like epoxy, some of the not so radical board designs and building techniques like sandwich construction and TFlex. Now all those and a million other ideas are common knowledge and commonly used.
So challenges today are more personal, building things I want to build. Started on my aquaponics system today. New concept in the design (of course) way better ways of controlling issues that ruin other systems. We'll see if it works. New snowboard build which will be a hybrid between an all mountain and an alpine board, looking forward to that one. New sailboat which will be a modified version of one I built about 20 years ago. Then at work we have a couple new formulations in process. I manage to stay out of trouble way better now days.
LIT, I used to change boards with bondo. The stuff kicks super fast and sands like butter. Doesn't look too good but ..... I was in Aruba, used to run the pro windsurfing event there. Ed Angulo and Rush Randle were checking out this Slalom board that had dimples. Two of the dimples were on each side of the fin (single fin board). Rush said, "I think i'd like to try this without the dimples by the fins." Ed said, "We'll have to shape one up when we get back." I said, "Just fill those in with Bondo and you can know what you want to know this afternoon." They looked at each other with that, "Oh damn, why didn't I think of that?" Funny moment.
GL Thanks for this! Always learning and reading your posts has always been interesting, but having you in the hot set has been awesome!
In Australia we only have about 2 choices on good quality epoxy - one I have had some not great experiences with it - gone to the lesser known one and dealt with the slower time frames and using xylene as an additive
A couple of quick questions:
fast setting epoxy and exotherm? What is the the temp goal that you aim for with your resins, have you found that perfect temp? Nothing worse that putting in a fin system and thinking "is this going to heat up and melt the EPS blank?"
Blue tint in resins - does that affect the strength? is it a trade-of to get the "whitest of white" That most customers want?
Can or will your products get to the same flip times that poly has - if you already have done that - ignore this question? (dont have access to your products so dont know how far you are along with this! or even working on it?)
Hi Grasshopper, long story on those boards and a lot of influences that came together. Back in 72, my first year on the North Shore, I had a board Owl shaped, 6'2" X 18.75 with a 12 nose and 14 tail. Very odd dimensions in those days when tails were generally narrower than the nose by at least an inch. It also featured a single concave tail which was something you rarely saw but was something Brewer, Owl and Sam Hawk were doing that year. The board ripped. I was able to ride up to about 10' on the thing too. It took my surfing to some pretty cutting edge places I thought and from that point on most of my boards were concaves. Most everyone else rode vees for the next 20 years and even when they broke into concaves it was double or triples. They just could get past that vee thing.
Around 1980 I had found some believers in the concave and one of the primary guys was Bill Hartley. Through the twin fin era Bill stayed on single fins with single concave and ended up developing a very powerful surfing style and stayed on singles even after the threes came out. About this time I was also trying to put more drive into the boards. I built boards with Micheal Peterson in Hawaii in 73-74 and he crowned the decks on all his boards in order to get more edge in the water. Ben Aipa was also doing crown decks and was able to ride twins in huge stuff because the thin rail allowed him to hold the edge. Seeing the advantages I started incorporating crowns for that drive as well. That really didn't go over well with dealers. Flat decks were still the rage so I couldn't do this except on team boards.
Bill was surfing quite a bit with Mike Notary at that time and Notary was a smaller guy, maybe 120 lbs back then, and always had me shape boards that were 1/4" thinner and 1/2" narrower than anyone else's. They were really hard to shape out of those old thick blanks. But Notary and Hartley would trade boards in the water and eventually Bill want to try out Mike's dimensions on one of his concave single fins. Sure enough Bill was sold. So one day Bill had me shape him a new one and the fin guy put three fins on it. Bill rode it anyway and was in love.
The last part was the rocker and it was a time, 84-85, when rockers were going up for everyone but then everyone was using Clark Foam and you could only change as fast as new plugs came out. New plugs took at least 2-3 months before they showed up and the new ones were only incrementally changed from the previous ones. But we were doing EPS blanks so we could make changes instantly. We were at 5.5 N and 2.5 T while they were two or three generations behind. This was also in the heyday of Sebatian Inlet and the new designs really worked there.
So there's all the pieces. Bill was the guy with the real vision to put all the final pieces into one board and I ran the planer. The last part of the story is that Bill and Mike went on the IPS world tour probably 86 - 87 when we had really finalized that design. Mike came back (Notary is VERY matter of fact and direct, not one to mince words) and said, "You know who was the best surfer I saw? Bill, by far." During the trip they surfed on day at Angorie and Greg Webber was out. Bill was having one of those super days at a wave that very much suited him. Webber was blown away to say the least. He still talks about what he saw and in fact has talked about it here. He's told me since that he looked at Bill's boards and didn't quite get it at that moment but later worked with the ideas until it really clicked. Greg's version was picked up by the Aussies and Greg really was able to get traction with the pro guys, something I was never able to accomplish. By 1992 that basic design was what everyone rode and pretty much is still the basis of the pro style boards of today.
Something that can be rare in the board industry is for one shaper sharing credit with another. GW has always been incredibly gracious with giving credit to Bill and me. I've alway held him in high regard not only for his incredibly creative shaping ability but for his honest character as well.
Just one other thing, when I watch videos from back then it is obvious now that the width, thickness and weight forced everyone to pretty much lug their boards from one turn to the next. The reduction in those aspects really allowed surfing to progress to a point where today board and rider move as one.
Nice Greg. Yep, that's where the basic idea came from. We made a little change by blending the concave back to flat at the tail but the inspiration is right there in that photo. Thanks.
Hi Sanded, The blue tint we use doesn't affect strength at all. What it does add is UV stability, in fact its very good at that. It also helps to mask yellowing as the resin ages and in fact many polyester resins have used it for the same purpose for decades.
As for "whitest of the white" this is a purely cosmetic thing that somehow got passed along to the blank and resin manufacturers. I posted above our new Ultra which contains chemistry which actually make the finished boards glow by giving off a violet light. For polyester boards the blanks are now made using similar chemistry but in the epoxy boards the brightness is built into the laminate which makes the floresence much brighter. This has been a technology race within the market and is finally reaching a head. We'll see if this is the future or just a momentary gimmick in time.
Exotherm is something that can be chemically reduced so that melt down issues become very rare. Using fin boxes completely eliminated this early on and when FCS came out with plugs nightmares happened. I had the FCS president calling me asking me to formulate epoxy that wouldn't cause meltdown with the plugs. I told him that the slow hardener was fine (which he didn't like because it slowed production) but that the real solution was a fin box. Finally years later they made one and all was well. Why do I have to be responsible for fixing someone elses dodgy product? The FCS box today makes their product line a real asset to board builders. Glad they saw the light.
Flip times, a favorite topic. About 8 years ago we came out with a resin, Kwik Kick. It is today our best seller. It is as fast as polyester resin at about 80F, 27C and above that is faster. At 80F flip time is one hour. At 90 it's 30 minutes. The idea was for pro builders to be able to laminate 6 sides and when done with the sixth the first was ready to sand the laps. Not only fast but KK is the strongest room temp cure resin I've ever seen. That's for compression strength and impact. Also has the best UV stability out there and doesn't slide off the rails on hot coats. Sorry for the spam but I'm kinda proud of my baby.
A few people have mentioned that heating epoxy will ultimately weaken it... I build boards in your old neck of the woods, Cape Hatteras, so I find myself microwaving my resin not only for hotcoats, but also for laminating. I see how adding pigment makes the epoxy more flexible and I've noticed a tad bit more pressure dents on tinted boards, but I don't see how heating the resin would change anything but the cure time... Any light you could shed on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
LIT, you've go some projects, damn, I can relate. I've got so many right now I'm lost in all of it...
:-) Oh boy, have you ever hit the nail on the head with that statement!
It's a problem.
On the other hand though, isn't it a wonderful problem to have?! :-) :-)
Even better, I know it's a problem I'm going to have for the rest of my life, so I know that when I eventually hit retirement I won't be one of those guys who keels over soon afterward because he just doesn't know what to do with himself.... my big problem will be trying to pick which one to do first :-)
LIT, I used to change boards with bondo. ..... I was in Aruba, used to run the pro windsurfing event there. Ed Angulo and Rush Randle were checking out this Slalom board that had dimples. Two of the dimples were on each side of the fin (single fin board). Rush said, "I think i'd like to try this without the dimples by the fins." Ed said, "We'll have to shape one up when we get back." I said, "Just fill those in with Bondo and you can know what you want to know this afternoon." They looked at each other with that, "Oh damn, why didn't I think of that?" Funny moment.
:-) :-) Actually, I already knew that (and it was you I've got to thank for it).
But thanks for saying so anyway - and please keep doing so; there's plenty I still don't know!
It was through you recounting that exact same tale (filling in the phazer's on that windsurf board in Aruba) in a Swaylocks thread several years ago that was how I first heard about using paraffin wax as a temporary/prototyping design technique.
About 6 months ago I'd been thinking about what needed to be different in my next kneeboard and how I could try and achieve that by modifying my current board to see if my ideas were right. And I remembered that George Greenough had endlessly modded his spoons with bondo/bog/auto-filler in trying to develop them, so much so that they ended up weighing an absolute ton. I didn't know much about bondo though and it seemed like there was a few different kinds available, so to find the right kind for surfboard modding, I did a bit of googling for Sways threads on it, and the thread with your tale and Bill Barnfield's tip about paraffin wax in it turned up (http://www.swaylocks.com/groups/bondo-discussion).
New snowboard build.... a hybrid between an all mountain and an alpine board,.....
:-) :-) :-) :-)
I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on snowboarding.
One of the local sports programs was showing clips of footage from the "Apocalypse Snow" ski movie, and Regis Rolland was being chased down the side of a mountain by a bunch of "bad guys" on monoski's.
He was doing a few good controlled turns at the start, nice but nothing spectacular, with the monoskiers doing their best to keep up.
But then as the pitch steepened he opened it up and started carving these big, beautiful, soaring arcs down the rest of the slope, and at warp speed too with the poor old monoskiers just being left for dead in his wake.
What's more he was doing it all on a split/swallow-tail Winterstick with just a few strips of nylon webbing and bungee cords for bindings. Amazing stuff.
That was the moment when my jaw (figuratively speaking) hit the deck, and all I could think was "I wanna do THAT".
So for me, snowboarding has always been about carving.
Now don't get me wrong, I like riding the pipe, jumps, flatland tricks, all that stuff.
But carving for me is #1.
Earlier in this thread you talked about how you'd got to the stage where you were as good as anyone in your range and the creativity and expression you could bring to your surfing because of that. I think I know what you mean there.
I got good at carving. Very good at it.
Any line. Any time. In any conditions. And with speed, power, control, but most of all, with style and soul to it.
Fully laid-out Euro-carves, but I was a bit unusual in that I was doing it all in soft-boots and on a freestyle/all mountain board.
Australian mountains are to carving what Florida waves are to surfing - a short ride with a fair bit of chop (i.e moguls) along the way.
So if you want to get a decent amount of turns in on a run, and deal with less-than-perfect piste, you need to be riding a short-radius board that can handle anything the mountain can throw at it. Hence the carving in softies on a freestyle board.
I may not have got as good as absolutely anyone, but there were very few who could keep up with me (particularly in Australia) in laying some seriously deep trenches. And especially on similiar equipment.
As time went on however, skiing's got more expensive, and my abilities have gone backward as a result of less T.O.S. (time on snow).
It's frustrating, not being able to ride as well as you used to.
But even so, I remember a day a year or two ago, where I arrived on a nice slope, and after putting in a couple of runs, as I was riding the lift back up again, I noticed that a lot of the kids and teenagers on the slope who'd been doing the usual things of hitting the small jumps, flatland tricks and a bit of jibbing had stopped what they were doing.... and had instead started trying to do what I'd just been doing.
:-) :-)
I may not be as good as I once was, but I was still good enough to be able to show them something that Regis showed me. And with luck, it'll stick with them. They'll keep doing it, and it'll bring them the same pleasure, that same feeling that it gives me...
... while drawing a beautiful line down the side of a mountain :-) :-) :-)
So when you say you're building a hybrid between an all-mountain and an alpine, you've got my attention. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing I like to ride. Is it different to say the freecarve and boardercross boards? If so, how? Is it for soft-boots? Hard-boots? -> I still use my hard-boot alpine rig early in the mornings on the mid-week (i.e. uncrowded) days with really good cover, when the slopes are untouched corduroy and wide-open, so you can let loose with at least a few fast big-radius turns.
Besides, for me, the whole point of snowboarding (and surfing too for that matter) is about one thing. Fun. Even if you may be having a bit less of it because you're a bit older and perhaps not as good as you once were, remember, you're still having fun. It's like saying, well I'm not going to eat chocolate eclairs anymore, because I used to be able to eat 2, and now my stomach can only handle one. Hey, chocolate eclairs are fantastic and one is way better than none! Yum!!
I may well be preaching to the Pope here on this, so apologies in advance if it seems that way to you.
LIT, challenges today are many. I'm not having to prove my ideas nowadays though. Seems that up until 10 years ago minds were closed to everything....
...Now things have moved along and minds are open to different designs, materials, and building techniques. They called me the mad scientist for things like epoxy, some of the not so radical board designs and building techniques like sandwich construction and TFlex. Now all those and a million other ideas are common knowledge and commonly used.
I kinda had the feeling that was the case, i.e. there's no real issues/ideas that you strongly believe in right now that go radically against commonly held opinions (at least in regards to surfcraft design and construction) - if there were I dare say we'd have been hearing about it from you here on Sways :-)
So challenges today are more personal, building things I want to build. Started on my aquaponics system today. New concept in the design (of course) way better ways of controlling issues that ruin other systems. We'll see if it works.
An aquaponics system.... in Tucson?!!!?
How on earth are you managing to keep the evaporation rates from the fish tank and the grow beds down low enough to handle the ambient temperatures there without having to constantly top it up with more water? I'm guessing maybe keeping the fish tank and much of the grow beds fully enclosed and insulated, or at least under some kind of cover (e.g. at least a shade sail).
A few years back I was driving down the West Coast and heard on the way through San Diego that some fairly gnarly stuff had happened to some tourists in Mexico a couple of weeks prior, and things still hadn't really settled down yet. So when I got to the Mexican border, I decided discretion was the better part of valour.
So I hung a left.
And started driving, thinking "I wonder what's out this way?"....
.... 'wound up in Tucson.
I really liked the place,..... but by God, it was HOT!!!!
As one of your fellow Arizona residents, Larry Winget puts it; "it is so hot, dogs explode and burst into flames just walking down the street"!
Perfect for super-fast curing of an epoxy though; no need for electric blankets or an autoclave to accelerate the curing in Tucson; just roll it outside of your air-conditioned workshop and into the sunlight, then go make yourself a cuppa tea, and by the time you get back she'll be ready to sand!
Okay, I've probably exaggerated a bit there, but I'm not kidding about how hot the place can get (although I have heard since, it's only like that for a couple of months of the year).
And yes, setting up an aquaponics system on a disused pool has been on my project list too for a couple of years now; 'researched how I was going to do it with grow-beds on a nearby angled slope, PV-driven pumps moving the water back into the pool, etc, etc, but ended up putting it on the back burner because of other competing stuff I wanted to do. Now I'm thinking I should just K.I.S.S. and moor a bunch of EPS veggie boxes from the local grocers in the middle of the pool with some soil in them and a few wicks through the bottom to get some capillary action watering going. Nice and simple. It'd provide some cover for the fish, reduce the evaporation rate during summer and would also make a nice moat around the lettuce's I'd have growing in the veggie boxes, which any marauding rabbits would have to brave in order to get to.
I'd be interested to hear about what you're doing differently to control it - but I've already strayed way outside the subject matter of "Shaper's Hot Seat" type content.
Incidentally, if anyone here finds themselves in the Tucson neighbourhood, I highly recommend going to check out "The Boneyard". I particularly liked the part of the tour where as we cruised past the F-117 that was on display, all you could see was a bunch of wheels in the dirt and their attached landing struts poking above them into thin air.... and nothing else. As we went past the tour guide introduced it as "and here we have the F-117 Nighthawk..... if you're wondering where the rest of it is; haven't you heard? They're invisible".
:-) :-) I found it quite reassuring to discover that underneath all that professionalism, there lurks in the U.S. Military, a good, healthy sense of humour.
Even better than the Boneyard though was the PIMA Air and Space Museum right across the road from it. Soooo many different kinds of fascinating aircraft in it. So much history.
But what blew my mind most of all, was taking the tour at the Titan Missile Museum just outside of Tucson.
A real-life, honest-to-god nuclear missile silo. And what's more, the Titan II ICBM's still in it.
Relax folks, it's disarmed; there's no warhead in the missile.
But holy cow, what an eye-opener.
I could not believe it.
They walk you through the whole place. Show you everything. Even fire up the launch console and execute the full launch sequence (double-key turn and everything).
Freak-ky.
I remember standing in the launch control room thinking to myself, "boy, how times sure have changed; a few decades ago, Leonid Brezhnev woud've given his left nut to be standing where I am right now..... or more likely have one of his boys from the KGB standing here. And yet none of them could get within coo-ee of it (as far as we know), no matter how hard they tried (thank heavens).
But fast forward to the present day, and for a few bucks they'll now roll out the red carpet and give the grand tour of the place to some random kid who's just rocked up from the other side of the planet.
Wow.
And then at the end, they remind you that for every single second you've been alive, there's been crews of people sitting in silo's a lot like this one, all over the planet, waiting for the signal to launch.
And they're still sitting there. Waiting for it. Right now.
Gulp.
So next time you're checking out the waves, and whilst being rideable, they're pretty messy and unappealing, and you're trying to decide whether it's worth going out or not, just remember the above. It makes it into a no-brainer decision. Get out there and hit it. Under such circumstances, every wave is a gift.
And on that bitter-sweet thought I think I'll logout.
Thanks again to G.L. for his responses, and sleep well everyone.
Lots of subjects LIT, we seem to live in similar worlds. I'm going to the mountain Wednesday and Thursday to ride the two mile long left point. Yes I like to carve too, pretty much all I care for these days. Love that corduroy and going fast.
Aquaponics is the great new thing in the desert. Water is lost but not even close to other systems. Went to a U of AZ ag seminar and someone had just discovered that foam can insulate the tanks against heat and cold. I made another suggestion about foam and fiberglass being used and was immediately told that I was mistaken. Not exactly the right thing to say to someone like me. Guess I have something to prove after all. So below are the beginnings of a system.
Fish tank and two grow beds ready for the glassing. Who says surfboard builders have nothing to offer. We know more about building things in the 21st century than people know. Foam and epoxy ... Cutting edge materials for more than just boards. Every system I've seen is homemade crap. Well just because it's made at home doesn't mean it needs to look home made. My plan is to produce something professional in both performance and esthetics. Take the whole idea to the next level. Agriculture for every man right in the backyard. Surfboard construction rules!
Um, yeah. Sorry about that; 'went a bit overboard there.
It was the wee small hours of the morning when I wrote it,... Got into a groove and just seemed to keep going and going and going.
All ended up just being a big brain dump without much self-editing happening along the way.
After I hit "submit" for the final post and looked at how much stuff had just gone up, I thought geez, I really should edit that down, but (to butcher a Mark Twain quote) I was too tired to write a shorter one(s).
So apologies for not doing so to yourself and any others who decided to wade through it.
gregloehr wrote:
we seem to live in similar worlds.
Yep - it's actually starting to scare me a bit; remember earlier in the thread where you mentioned you'd been involved with the solar car race (Epcot to Washington)? Well, for the last several years I've been helping a bunch of fellow misfits and other assorted eccentrics convert their internal-combustion cars over to full electric drive.
It gets worse.
A few weeks ago, I got a bit fired up and posted (in this thread here: http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/shapers-hot-seat-george-gall?page=2) about how people really shouldn't be using the term "cavitation" for the separation that can occur on surfboard fins at sub-cavitational speeds. Here's an extract of it:
L.I.T. wrote:
'Taught myself some high-speed hydrodynamics a fair while ago now and it's always bugged me whenever I walk into a surf-shop and ask the sales assistant to tell me about the new fins the shop's just got in, and they start banging on about how the fins will "cavitate" and release/slide out just when you want them to.
I've tried explaining to them that while a tow-in or big-wave surfer might get up to cavitation speeds (~50knots/93km per hour/57mph), the average surfer gets nowhere near that fast on a wave**, and if there was honest-to-god cavitation going on, you'd know about it because the imploding bubbles of steam would be eating the fins alive. The cavitation pitting would be plain for all to see.....
....But fair go, this is Swaylocks - a place for the propagation of the truth about surfboard theory (or at least I believe it's supposed to be) and a source of education for those who wish to learn it, so it's important that the concepts talked about here are correct.....
....I've seen quite a few users in the past posting on Swaylocks about "cavitation" when in fact they mean "separation". 'Time that was put right, so points to George for striking a blow against this "cavitation" at sub-cavitational speeds misunderstanding. Spread the word folks.
Then the other night when I was writing about how I knew of your "filling in the phazer" story, I couldn't remember the name of the thread it was in, and in the course of doing a bit of googling to find it again, I came across this thread (http://www.swaylocks.com/groups/fin-hum-cont) from about 12 years ago where you were saying almost exactly the same thing as I was (cue "Twilight Zone" theme song):
gregloehr wrote:
Cavitation? Cavitation doesn't exist in surfboards or surfboard fins. It only exists in props, high speed hydrofoils, turbines and pumps. And yet this "cavitation" has been repeated to me as the cause of spin out for over 35 years. Fins spin out because they either stall or ventilate.......
....Cavitation doesn't happen until pressure on the high pressure side, or on the low pressure side near the leading or trailing edge, raises to near vapor pressure of the liquid which vaporizes the liquid. The air pockets or cavities formed by this vaporization are cavitation. This can also happen around tip vortices on props. At the speeds we are capable of going it is doubtful that this could ever happen. So we need to amend our vocabulary...
.....Anyway.
gregloehr wrote:
I'm going to the mountain Wednesday and Thursday to ride the two mile long left point. Yes I like to carve too, pretty much all I care for these days. Love that corduroy and going fast.
Nice. I remember aaaaages ago, a day at ski resort with abominable snow-cover that year; only a few runs open. You'd get a short run in and then spend 2/3rds of your time doing about a 2km traverse out to the tow along a cat-track. Sloooow. Boring. Was wondering why I'd bothered to pay for a lift ticket that day. Then I noticed that although the ground above and below the cat-track was bare earth, the embankment on the left side of the cat-track where it had been cut into the slope DID have snow cover on it.
In other words it was a 2km quarterpipe all the way back to the lift, and being on my toeside it was like riding a 2km long left (i.e. a forehand wave for me) with all kinds of different sections in it!
Woohoo!
The rest of that day was an absolute BALL!
Airs, grabs, "bottom turns" off the cat-track and back up onto the wall/embankment again. You had to keep an eye out for people approaching from behind when you came down to do a "bottom turn", but man oh man, fun galore! What's more, because twin-tips hadn't really appeared on ski's at that time (the skiers were only just starting to venture into halfpipes), 99% of the skiers were totally ignoring the opportunities offered by the embankment,.... so I had it largely to myself.
Only problem was, with all that practice on my toeside, when I got to ride a half-pipe later in the trip my abilities were decidedly uneven; solid and confident riding the toeside wall, but sketchy-as on the heelside one. Ah well :-)
gregloehr wrote:
I made another suggestion about foam and fiberglass being used and was immediately told that I was mistaken. Not exactly the right thing to say to someone like me.
:-) Oh goody!
gregloehr wrote:
Guess I have something to prove after all. So below are the beginnings of a system.
Glad to hear someone said something that got you fired up - good things often seem to come out of it when that's happened with you in the past.
Looking forward to seeing what the final setup looks like and hearing how it performs.
I'm afraid there's another question I've been itching to ask, but am too tired to type it up right now; will tackle it tomorrow instead.
In the meantime, 'hope you have fun at that "left" on the mountain!
Born/raised in Hawaii and so I was hurled into the surfing culture whether I liked it or not. Thankfully I liked it. But to the shock of my family, I left Hawaii for Arizona to attend college in the 90’s. And so I can relate to some of the forum members concern for you of not having anything to do. In short, I ended up having too much fun.
First of, thought I share some of my Az experiences with you.
At lake Pleasant, there’s a guy I met (last name Stewart and forgive me since I forgot his first name) that was wake boarding behind a Chevy V8 powered ski boat in the early 90’s. Being a surfer, thought I would be a natural and asked to give it a try; but ended up being dragged underwater like a fishing lure on my initial attempts. He was already using epoxy and Styrofoam to build his boards and he allowed me to use his shop to glass a surfboard I shaped in my dorm room for my trips to SD/Mexico. What mattered was his designs were similar to what a lot of these tow-in surfers are currently using here in Hawaii but in an epoxy build. Might be a good guy to look out for if you wanna try carving up Lake Pleasant.
As a hot seat question, I’m in the process of building my first epoxy quiver. I’m refreshing my old tools and planning to start a few surfboard and SUP builds. But Resin Research products don’t seem to be readily available to backyard builders here in Hawaii. However, I do notice a lot of overseas boards are being made with RR epoxy. I’ve sourced from Wilson Fiberglass (now owner of Fiberglass Hawaii) in the past; but afraid to ask since he’s a competing entity. But would like to give RR a try. Could you advise what is the best way of obtaining from RR epoxy here in Hawaii.
currently renovating a 16' Clackacraft Magnum (wide sterned drift boat w/less rocker, so will plane to around 20 mph with 15 hp) for use as a flyfishing platform in tidewater (target King salmon).
As part of the renovation will de-wax/clean, sand, fill in minor scrapess and dings on the bottom with epoxy/HD filler mix. Then plan to finish the bottom with epoxy as both a barrier and gel coat refresh.
Currently looking at using low viscosity MAS for the final coats, could you reccomend one of you RR epoxies for this, and if so, which one?
LIT, had a great time on the mountain, the Volcano run was EPIC and the walls below were fine as well. 40 inches of fresh due this weekend so it looks like more epic days. Nice feeling 25 at 62.
Tuna, Arizona has plenty going on for sure. People don't know that half the state isn't a hot low desert. They don't know that AZ has the third longest shoreline in the US and that it's insanely dynamic. Most fail to realize that the #1 geologic feature on the planet (The Big Ditch) is wholly in AZ. We even have surf. I'm not board especially after the last two days at Snowbowl.
FH does sell our stuff from time to time, I think you should ask. I also think that some new technology may push them to stock us more frequently, we'll see.
Hi ICC, We have a line of low viscosity resins called the composite pro system. They're in the website, resinresearch.net. I would lean towards the 2070 resin and whichever hardener gives you the desired work time. Fast 18 minute pot life, slow 40 minute and extra slow 90 minute. Email me if you need any other info [email protected]
Greg I want to ask you about a couple of Boards You shaped one was a Sting style longboard with a I think 5 channels running out the back. It was on Craigslist I liked what I saw But it was gone by the time I could afford it. What can you tell us about that board? Also The fish in your photo looks like a fish semi gun. I have been reading an article in Surfers Journal
The article by Andrew Kidman Talked about surfing fish in well overhead conditions. What are your thoughts on Fish and where they work best?
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According to Mikki Dora Malibu went to the Dogs in 1964. The Chumash Indians will tell you it was 1664.
The longboard was a design to improve drive. Pretty much throughout my board building I always was looking to increase drive. Always felt that if you could create speed the rest was details. The sting was to shorten turning radius but the real awesome feature to me was the new way to approach channels. Instead of being hard edges the channels in those were more like concaves, almost a hybrid of concaves and channels. One of the last designs I did they were done using a sander. I'd tape off the edge of the channels with masking tape, two layers, and then lean the soft pad into the tape. I don't have pictures but here's one using the same technique to shape in oar.
LIT, had a great time on the mountain, the Volcano run was EPIC and the walls below were fine as well. 40 inches of fresh due this weekend so it looks like more epic days. Nice feeling 25 at 62.
:-) Nice! And glad to hear it.
A few years back a went to a hard-boot event; there was a guy there in his late 80's, maybe even early 90's making some sweet lines on his alpine rig -> just keep the Robo-knees properly oiled up and take 'em back in for regular checkups along the way and you ought to have decades of carving ahead of you yet.
LIT, you've go some projects, damn, I can relate. I've got so many right now I'm lost in all of it. I have a snowboard mold built that I haven't built a board out of, a new sailboat project, a SUP/sailboard and a foam/fiberglass aquaponics system. Now it's snowboard season so some things are on hold and I still have to work.
Surftech Australia didn't get the business they were hoping for in the epoxy market. Good guys but Australia didn't have the Clark debacle happen so polyester was never threatened. SUP has changed the biz but I'm not sure where things are at in Oz. When I was there 7-8 years ago it was so small. Having said that there's some decent stuff down there these days.
LIT, challenges today are many. I'm not having to prove my ideas nowadays though. Seems that up until 10 years ago minds were closed to everything. Looking at where surfing was in 2005 we were essentially riding the same boards that we were shaping in FL in 85. Nothing changed for so long. Now things have moved along and minds are open to different designs, materials, and building techniques. They called me the mad scientist for things like epoxy, some of the not so radical board designs and building techniques like sandwich construction and TFlex. Now all those and a million other ideas are common knowledge and commonly used.
So challenges today are more personal, building things I want to build. Started on my aquaponics system today. New concept in the design (of course) way better ways of controlling issues that ruin other systems. We'll see if it works. New snowboard build which will be a hybrid between an all mountain and an alpine board, looking forward to that one. New sailboat which will be a modified version of one I built about 20 years ago. Then at work we have a couple new formulations in process. I manage to stay out of trouble way better now days.
LIT, I used to change boards with bondo. The stuff kicks super fast and sands like butter. Doesn't look too good but ..... I was in Aruba, used to run the pro windsurfing event there. Ed Angulo and Rush Randle were checking out this Slalom board that had dimples. Two of the dimples were on each side of the fin (single fin board). Rush said, "I think i'd like to try this without the dimples by the fins." Ed said, "We'll have to shape one up when we get back." I said, "Just fill those in with Bondo and you can know what you want to know this afternoon." They looked at each other with that, "Oh damn, why didn't I think of that?" Funny moment.
GL Thanks for this! Always learning and reading your posts has always been interesting, but having you in the hot set has been awesome!
In Australia we only have about 2 choices on good quality epoxy - one I have had some not great experiences with it - gone to the lesser known one and dealt with the slower time frames and using xylene as an additive
A couple of quick questions:
fast setting epoxy and exotherm? What is the the temp goal that you aim for with your resins, have you found that perfect temp? Nothing worse that putting in a fin system and thinking "is this going to heat up and melt the EPS blank?"
Blue tint in resins - does that affect the strength? is it a trade-of to get the "whitest of white" That most customers want?
Can or will your products get to the same flip times that poly has - if you already have done that - ignore this question? (dont have access to your products so dont know how far you are along with this! or even working on it?)
www.sanded.com.au
Hi Grasshopper, long story on those boards and a lot of influences that came together. Back in 72, my first year on the North Shore, I had a board Owl shaped, 6'2" X 18.75 with a 12 nose and 14 tail. Very odd dimensions in those days when tails were generally narrower than the nose by at least an inch. It also featured a single concave tail which was something you rarely saw but was something Brewer, Owl and Sam Hawk were doing that year. The board ripped. I was able to ride up to about 10' on the thing too. It took my surfing to some pretty cutting edge places I thought and from that point on most of my boards were concaves. Most everyone else rode vees for the next 20 years and even when they broke into concaves it was double or triples. They just could get past that vee thing.
Around 1980 I had found some believers in the concave and one of the primary guys was Bill Hartley. Through the twin fin era Bill stayed on single fins with single concave and ended up developing a very powerful surfing style and stayed on singles even after the threes came out. About this time I was also trying to put more drive into the boards. I built boards with Micheal Peterson in Hawaii in 73-74 and he crowned the decks on all his boards in order to get more edge in the water. Ben Aipa was also doing crown decks and was able to ride twins in huge stuff because the thin rail allowed him to hold the edge. Seeing the advantages I started incorporating crowns for that drive as well. That really didn't go over well with dealers. Flat decks were still the rage so I couldn't do this except on team boards.
Bill was surfing quite a bit with Mike Notary at that time and Notary was a smaller guy, maybe 120 lbs back then, and always had me shape boards that were 1/4" thinner and 1/2" narrower than anyone else's. They were really hard to shape out of those old thick blanks. But Notary and Hartley would trade boards in the water and eventually Bill want to try out Mike's dimensions on one of his concave single fins. Sure enough Bill was sold. So one day Bill had me shape him a new one and the fin guy put three fins on it. Bill rode it anyway and was in love.
The last part was the rocker and it was a time, 84-85, when rockers were going up for everyone but then everyone was using Clark Foam and you could only change as fast as new plugs came out. New plugs took at least 2-3 months before they showed up and the new ones were only incrementally changed from the previous ones. But we were doing EPS blanks so we could make changes instantly. We were at 5.5 N and 2.5 T while they were two or three generations behind. This was also in the heyday of Sebatian Inlet and the new designs really worked there.
So there's all the pieces. Bill was the guy with the real vision to put all the final pieces into one board and I ran the planer. The last part of the story is that Bill and Mike went on the IPS world tour probably 86 - 87 when we had really finalized that design. Mike came back (Notary is VERY matter of fact and direct, not one to mince words) and said, "You know who was the best surfer I saw? Bill, by far." During the trip they surfed on day at Angorie and Greg Webber was out. Bill was having one of those super days at a wave that very much suited him. Webber was blown away to say the least. He still talks about what he saw and in fact has talked about it here. He's told me since that he looked at Bill's boards and didn't quite get it at that moment but later worked with the ideas until it really clicked. Greg's version was picked up by the Aussies and Greg really was able to get traction with the pro guys, something I was never able to accomplish. By 1992 that basic design was what everyone rode and pretty much is still the basis of the pro style boards of today.
Something that can be rare in the board industry is for one shaper sharing credit with another. GW has always been incredibly gracious with giving credit to Bill and me. I've alway held him in high regard not only for his incredibly creative shaping ability but for his honest character as well.
Just one other thing, when I watch videos from back then it is obvious now that the width, thickness and weight forced everyone to pretty much lug their boards from one turn to the next. The reduction in those aspects really allowed surfing to progress to a point where today board and rider move as one.
Both of the boards on the right had concave tails like you spoke of .
There was another bottom pic in the mags showing the concave in the sting and tail .
I'm sure you remember these being part of this time :-)
There are some great pics of you on Facebook too :-)
Nice Greg. Yep, that's where the basic idea came from. We made a little change by blending the concave back to flat at the tail but the inspiration is right there in that photo. Thanks.
Hi Sanded, The blue tint we use doesn't affect strength at all. What it does add is UV stability, in fact its very good at that. It also helps to mask yellowing as the resin ages and in fact many polyester resins have used it for the same purpose for decades.
As for "whitest of the white" this is a purely cosmetic thing that somehow got passed along to the blank and resin manufacturers. I posted above our new Ultra which contains chemistry which actually make the finished boards glow by giving off a violet light. For polyester boards the blanks are now made using similar chemistry but in the epoxy boards the brightness is built into the laminate which makes the floresence much brighter. This has been a technology race within the market and is finally reaching a head. We'll see if this is the future or just a momentary gimmick in time.
Exotherm is something that can be chemically reduced so that melt down issues become very rare. Using fin boxes completely eliminated this early on and when FCS came out with plugs nightmares happened. I had the FCS president calling me asking me to formulate epoxy that wouldn't cause meltdown with the plugs. I told him that the slow hardener was fine (which he didn't like because it slowed production) but that the real solution was a fin box. Finally years later they made one and all was well. Why do I have to be responsible for fixing someone elses dodgy product? The FCS box today makes their product line a real asset to board builders. Glad they saw the light.
Flip times, a favorite topic. About 8 years ago we came out with a resin, Kwik Kick. It is today our best seller. It is as fast as polyester resin at about 80F, 27C and above that is faster. At 80F flip time is one hour. At 90 it's 30 minutes. The idea was for pro builders to be able to laminate 6 sides and when done with the sixth the first was ready to sand the laps. Not only fast but KK is the strongest room temp cure resin I've ever seen. That's for compression strength and impact. Also has the best UV stability out there and doesn't slide off the rails on hot coats. Sorry for the spam but I'm kinda proud of my baby.
Greg,
A few people have mentioned that heating epoxy will ultimately weaken it... I build boards in your old neck of the woods, Cape Hatteras, so I find myself microwaving my resin not only for hotcoats, but also for laminating. I see how adding pigment makes the epoxy more flexible and I've noticed a tad bit more pressure dents on tinted boards, but I don't see how heating the resin would change anything but the cure time... Any light you could shed on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
g
:-) Oh boy, have you ever hit the nail on the head with that statement!
It's a problem.
On the other hand though, isn't it a wonderful problem to have?! :-) :-)
Even better, I know it's a problem I'm going to have for the rest of my life, so I know that when I eventually hit retirement I won't be one of those guys who keels over soon afterward because he just doesn't know what to do with himself.... my big problem will be trying to pick which one to do first :-)
:-) :-) Actually, I already knew that (and it was you I've got to thank for it).
But thanks for saying so anyway - and please keep doing so; there's plenty I still don't know!
It was through you recounting that exact same tale (filling in the phazer's on that windsurf board in Aruba) in a Swaylocks thread several years ago that was how I first heard about using paraffin wax as a temporary/prototyping design technique.
About 6 months ago I'd been thinking about what needed to be different in my next kneeboard and how I could try and achieve that by modifying my current board to see if my ideas were right. And I remembered that George Greenough had endlessly modded his spoons with bondo/bog/auto-filler in trying to develop them, so much so that they ended up weighing an absolute ton. I didn't know much about bondo though and it seemed like there was a few different kinds available, so to find the right kind for surfboard modding, I did a bit of googling for Sways threads on it, and the thread with your tale and Bill Barnfield's tip about paraffin wax in it turned up (http://www.swaylocks.com/groups/bondo-discussion).
And there you have it :-)
:-) :-) :-) :-)
I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on snowboarding.
One of the local sports programs was showing clips of footage from the "Apocalypse Snow" ski movie, and Regis Rolland was being chased down the side of a mountain by a bunch of "bad guys" on monoski's.
He was doing a few good controlled turns at the start, nice but nothing spectacular, with the monoskiers doing their best to keep up.
But then as the pitch steepened he opened it up and started carving these big, beautiful, soaring arcs down the rest of the slope, and at warp speed too with the poor old monoskiers just being left for dead in his wake.
What's more he was doing it all on a split/swallow-tail Winterstick with just a few strips of nylon webbing and bungee cords for bindings. Amazing stuff.
That was the moment when my jaw (figuratively speaking) hit the deck, and all I could think was "I wanna do THAT".
So for me, snowboarding has always been about carving.
Now don't get me wrong, I like riding the pipe, jumps, flatland tricks, all that stuff.
But carving for me is #1.
Earlier in this thread you talked about how you'd got to the stage where you were as good as anyone in your range and the creativity and expression you could bring to your surfing because of that. I think I know what you mean there.
I got good at carving. Very good at it.
Any line. Any time. In any conditions. And with speed, power, control, but most of all, with style and soul to it.
Fully laid-out Euro-carves, but I was a bit unusual in that I was doing it all in soft-boots and on a freestyle/all mountain board.
Australian mountains are to carving what Florida waves are to surfing - a short ride with a fair bit of chop (i.e moguls) along the way.
So if you want to get a decent amount of turns in on a run, and deal with less-than-perfect piste, you need to be riding a short-radius board that can handle anything the mountain can throw at it. Hence the carving in softies on a freestyle board.
I may not have got as good as absolutely anyone, but there were very few who could keep up with me (particularly in Australia) in laying some seriously deep trenches. And especially on similiar equipment.
As time went on however, skiing's got more expensive, and my abilities have gone backward as a result of less T.O.S. (time on snow).
It's frustrating, not being able to ride as well as you used to.
But even so, I remember a day a year or two ago, where I arrived on a nice slope, and after putting in a couple of runs, as I was riding the lift back up again, I noticed that a lot of the kids and teenagers on the slope who'd been doing the usual things of hitting the small jumps, flatland tricks and a bit of jibbing had stopped what they were doing.... and had instead started trying to do what I'd just been doing.
:-) :-)
I may not be as good as I once was, but I was still good enough to be able to show them something that Regis showed me. And with luck, it'll stick with them. They'll keep doing it, and it'll bring them the same pleasure, that same feeling that it gives me...
... while drawing a beautiful line down the side of a mountain :-) :-) :-)
So when you say you're building a hybrid between an all-mountain and an alpine, you've got my attention. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing I like to ride. Is it different to say the freecarve and boardercross boards? If so, how? Is it for soft-boots? Hard-boots? -> I still use my hard-boot alpine rig early in the mornings on the mid-week (i.e. uncrowded) days with really good cover, when the slopes are untouched corduroy and wide-open, so you can let loose with at least a few fast big-radius turns.
Besides, for me, the whole point of snowboarding (and surfing too for that matter) is about one thing. Fun. Even if you may be having a bit less of it because you're a bit older and perhaps not as good as you once were, remember, you're still having fun. It's like saying, well I'm not going to eat chocolate eclairs anymore, because I used to be able to eat 2, and now my stomach can only handle one. Hey, chocolate eclairs are fantastic and one is way better than none! Yum!!
I may well be preaching to the Pope here on this, so apologies in advance if it seems that way to you.
Cheers all!
I kinda had the feeling that was the case, i.e. there's no real issues/ideas that you strongly believe in right now that go radically against commonly held opinions (at least in regards to surfcraft design and construction) - if there were I dare say we'd have been hearing about it from you here on Sways :-)
An aquaponics system.... in Tucson?!!!?
How on earth are you managing to keep the evaporation rates from the fish tank and the grow beds down low enough to handle the ambient temperatures there without having to constantly top it up with more water? I'm guessing maybe keeping the fish tank and much of the grow beds fully enclosed and insulated, or at least under some kind of cover (e.g. at least a shade sail).
A few years back I was driving down the West Coast and heard on the way through San Diego that some fairly gnarly stuff had happened to some tourists in Mexico a couple of weeks prior, and things still hadn't really settled down yet. So when I got to the Mexican border, I decided discretion was the better part of valour.
So I hung a left.
And started driving, thinking "I wonder what's out this way?"....
.... 'wound up in Tucson.
I really liked the place,..... but by God, it was HOT!!!!
As one of your fellow Arizona residents, Larry Winget puts it; "it is so hot, dogs explode and burst into flames just walking down the street"!
Perfect for super-fast curing of an epoxy though; no need for electric blankets or an autoclave to accelerate the curing in Tucson; just roll it outside of your air-conditioned workshop and into the sunlight, then go make yourself a cuppa tea, and by the time you get back she'll be ready to sand!
Okay, I've probably exaggerated a bit there, but I'm not kidding about how hot the place can get (although I have heard since, it's only like that for a couple of months of the year).
And yes, setting up an aquaponics system on a disused pool has been on my project list too for a couple of years now; 'researched how I was going to do it with grow-beds on a nearby angled slope, PV-driven pumps moving the water back into the pool, etc, etc, but ended up putting it on the back burner because of other competing stuff I wanted to do. Now I'm thinking I should just K.I.S.S. and moor a bunch of EPS veggie boxes from the local grocers in the middle of the pool with some soil in them and a few wicks through the bottom to get some capillary action watering going. Nice and simple. It'd provide some cover for the fish, reduce the evaporation rate during summer and would also make a nice moat around the lettuce's I'd have growing in the veggie boxes, which any marauding rabbits would have to brave in order to get to.
I'd be interested to hear about what you're doing differently to control it - but I've already strayed way outside the subject matter of "Shaper's Hot Seat" type content.
Incidentally, if anyone here finds themselves in the Tucson neighbourhood, I highly recommend going to check out "The Boneyard". I particularly liked the part of the tour where as we cruised past the F-117 that was on display, all you could see was a bunch of wheels in the dirt and their attached landing struts poking above them into thin air.... and nothing else. As we went past the tour guide introduced it as "and here we have the F-117 Nighthawk..... if you're wondering where the rest of it is; haven't you heard? They're invisible".
:-) :-) I found it quite reassuring to discover that underneath all that professionalism, there lurks in the U.S. Military, a good, healthy sense of humour.
Even better than the Boneyard though was the PIMA Air and Space Museum right across the road from it. Soooo many different kinds of fascinating aircraft in it. So much history.
But what blew my mind most of all, was taking the tour at the Titan Missile Museum just outside of Tucson.
A real-life, honest-to-god nuclear missile silo. And what's more, the Titan II ICBM's still in it.
Relax folks, it's disarmed; there's no warhead in the missile.
But holy cow, what an eye-opener.
I could not believe it.
They walk you through the whole place. Show you everything. Even fire up the launch console and execute the full launch sequence (double-key turn and everything).
Freak-ky.
I remember standing in the launch control room thinking to myself, "boy, how times sure have changed; a few decades ago, Leonid Brezhnev woud've given his left nut to be standing where I am right now..... or more likely have one of his boys from the KGB standing here. And yet none of them could get within coo-ee of it (as far as we know), no matter how hard they tried (thank heavens).
But fast forward to the present day, and for a few bucks they'll now roll out the red carpet and give the grand tour of the place to some random kid who's just rocked up from the other side of the planet.
Wow.
And then at the end, they remind you that for every single second you've been alive, there's been crews of people sitting in silo's a lot like this one, all over the planet, waiting for the signal to launch.
And they're still sitting there. Waiting for it. Right now.
Gulp.
So next time you're checking out the waves, and whilst being rideable, they're pretty messy and unappealing, and you're trying to decide whether it's worth going out or not, just remember the above. It makes it into a no-brainer decision. Get out there and hit it. Under such circumstances, every wave is a gift.
And on that bitter-sweet thought I think I'll logout.
Thanks again to G.L. for his responses, and sleep well everyone.
Hi Hofnar, heating epoxy weakens it? No it doesn't.
Lots of subjects LIT, we seem to live in similar worlds. I'm going to the mountain Wednesday and Thursday to ride the two mile long left point. Yes I like to carve too, pretty much all I care for these days. Love that corduroy and going fast.
Aquaponics is the great new thing in the desert. Water is lost but not even close to other systems. Went to a U of AZ ag seminar and someone had just discovered that foam can insulate the tanks against heat and cold. I made another suggestion about foam and fiberglass being used and was immediately told that I was mistaken. Not exactly the right thing to say to someone like me. Guess I have something to prove after all. So below are the beginnings of a system.
image.jpg
Fish tank and two grow beds ready for the glassing. Who says surfboard builders have nothing to offer. We know more about building things in the 21st century than people know. Foam and epoxy ... Cutting edge materials for more than just boards. Every system I've seen is homemade crap. Well just because it's made at home doesn't mean it needs to look home made. My plan is to produce something professional in both performance and esthetics. Take the whole idea to the next level. Agriculture for every man right in the backyard. Surfboard construction rules!
Um, yeah. Sorry about that; 'went a bit overboard there.
It was the wee small hours of the morning when I wrote it,... Got into a groove and just seemed to keep going and going and going.
All ended up just being a big brain dump without much self-editing happening along the way.
After I hit "submit" for the final post and looked at how much stuff had just gone up, I thought geez, I really should edit that down, but (to butcher a Mark Twain quote) I was too tired to write a shorter one(s).
So apologies for not doing so to yourself and any others who decided to wade through it.
Yep - it's actually starting to scare me a bit; remember earlier in the thread where you mentioned you'd been involved with the solar car race (Epcot to Washington)? Well, for the last several years I've been helping a bunch of fellow misfits and other assorted eccentrics convert their internal-combustion cars over to full electric drive.
It gets worse.
A few weeks ago, I got a bit fired up and posted (in this thread here: http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/shapers-hot-seat-george-gall?page=2) about how people really shouldn't be using the term "cavitation" for the separation that can occur on surfboard fins at sub-cavitational speeds. Here's an extract of it:
Then the other night when I was writing about how I knew of your "filling in the phazer" story, I couldn't remember the name of the thread it was in, and in the course of doing a bit of googling to find it again, I came across this thread (http://www.swaylocks.com/groups/fin-hum-cont) from about 12 years ago where you were saying almost exactly the same thing as I was (cue "Twilight Zone" theme song):
.....Anyway.
Nice. I remember aaaaages ago, a day at ski resort with abominable snow-cover that year; only a few runs open. You'd get a short run in and then spend 2/3rds of your time doing about a 2km traverse out to the tow along a cat-track. Sloooow. Boring. Was wondering why I'd bothered to pay for a lift ticket that day. Then I noticed that although the ground above and below the cat-track was bare earth, the embankment on the left side of the cat-track where it had been cut into the slope DID have snow cover on it.
In other words it was a 2km quarterpipe all the way back to the lift, and being on my toeside it was like riding a 2km long left (i.e. a forehand wave for me) with all kinds of different sections in it!
Woohoo!
The rest of that day was an absolute BALL!
Airs, grabs, "bottom turns" off the cat-track and back up onto the wall/embankment again. You had to keep an eye out for people approaching from behind when you came down to do a "bottom turn", but man oh man, fun galore! What's more, because twin-tips hadn't really appeared on ski's at that time (the skiers were only just starting to venture into halfpipes), 99% of the skiers were totally ignoring the opportunities offered by the embankment,.... so I had it largely to myself.
Only problem was, with all that practice on my toeside, when I got to ride a half-pipe later in the trip my abilities were decidedly uneven; solid and confident riding the toeside wall, but sketchy-as on the heelside one. Ah well :-)
:-) Oh goody!
Glad to hear someone said something that got you fired up - good things often seem to come out of it when that's happened with you in the past.
Looking forward to seeing what the final setup looks like and hearing how it performs.
I'm afraid there's another question I've been itching to ask, but am too tired to type it up right now; will tackle it tomorrow instead.
In the meantime, 'hope you have fun at that "left" on the mountain!
Cheers all.
Aloha Greg,
Born/raised in Hawaii and so I was hurled into the surfing culture whether I liked it or not. Thankfully I liked it. But to the shock of my family, I left Hawaii for Arizona to attend college in the 90’s. And so I can relate to some of the forum members concern for you of not having anything to do. In short, I ended up having too much fun.
First of, thought I share some of my Az experiences with you.
At lake Pleasant, there’s a guy I met (last name Stewart and forgive me since I forgot his first name) that was wake boarding behind a Chevy V8 powered ski boat in the early 90’s. Being a surfer, thought I would be a natural and asked to give it a try; but ended up being dragged underwater like a fishing lure on my initial attempts. He was already using epoxy and Styrofoam to build his boards and he allowed me to use his shop to glass a surfboard I shaped in my dorm room for my trips to SD/Mexico. What mattered was his designs were similar to what a lot of these tow-in surfers are currently using here in Hawaii but in an epoxy build. Might be a good guy to look out for if you wanna try carving up Lake Pleasant.
As a hot seat question, I’m in the process of building my first epoxy quiver. I’m refreshing my old tools and planning to start a few surfboard and SUP builds. But Resin Research products don’t seem to be readily available to backyard builders here in Hawaii. However, I do notice a lot of overseas boards are being made with RR epoxy. I’ve sourced from Wilson Fiberglass (now owner of Fiberglass Hawaii) in the past; but afraid to ask since he’s a competing entity. But would like to give RR a try. Could you advise what is the best way of obtaining from RR epoxy here in Hawaii.
Mahalo,
Tuna
Hey Greg,
currently renovating a 16' Clackacraft Magnum (wide sterned drift boat w/less rocker, so will plane to around 20 mph with 15 hp) for use as a flyfishing platform in tidewater (target King salmon).
As part of the renovation will de-wax/clean, sand, fill in minor scrapess and dings on the bottom with epoxy/HD filler mix. Then plan to finish the bottom with epoxy as both a barrier and gel coat refresh.
Currently looking at using low viscosity MAS for the final coats, could you reccomend one of you RR epoxies for this, and if so, which one?
cheers,
Lance Conragan
LIT, had a great time on the mountain, the Volcano run was EPIC and the walls below were fine as well. 40 inches of fresh due this weekend so it looks like more epic days. Nice feeling 25 at 62.
Tuna, Arizona has plenty going on for sure. People don't know that half the state isn't a hot low desert. They don't know that AZ has the third longest shoreline in the US and that it's insanely dynamic. Most fail to realize that the #1 geologic feature on the planet (The Big Ditch) is wholly in AZ. We even have surf. I'm not board especially after the last two days at Snowbowl.
FH does sell our stuff from time to time, I think you should ask. I also think that some new technology may push them to stock us more frequently, we'll see.
Hi ICC, We have a line of low viscosity resins called the composite pro system. They're in the website, resinresearch.net. I would lean towards the 2070 resin and whichever hardener gives you the desired work time. Fast 18 minute pot life, slow 40 minute and extra slow 90 minute. Email me if you need any other info [email protected]
Greg I want to ask you about a couple of Boards You shaped one was a Sting style longboard with a I think 5 channels running out the back. It was on Craigslist I liked what I saw But it was gone by the time I could afford it. What can you tell us about that board? Also The fish in your photo looks like a fish semi gun. I have been reading an article in Surfers Journal
The article by Andrew Kidman Talked about surfing fish in well overhead conditions. What are your thoughts on Fish and where they work best?According to Mikki Dora Malibu went to the Dogs in 1964. The Chumash Indians will tell you it was 1664.
The longboard was a design to improve drive. Pretty much throughout my board building I always was looking to increase drive. Always felt that if you could create speed the rest was details. The sting was to shorten turning radius but the real awesome feature to me was the new way to approach channels. Instead of being hard edges the channels in those were more like concaves, almost a hybrid of concaves and channels. One of the last designs I did they were done using a sander. I'd tape off the edge of the channels with masking tape, two layers, and then lean the soft pad into the tape. I don't have pictures but here's one using the same technique to shape in oar.
:-) Nice! And glad to hear it.
A few years back a went to a hard-boot event; there was a guy there in his late 80's, maybe even early 90's making some sweet lines on his alpine rig -> just keep the Robo-knees properly oiled up and take 'em back in for regular checkups along the way and you ought to have decades of carving ahead of you yet.
:-) Cheers!
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