Redwood Rumor..........................

I have been told of a very interesting two pieces of wood. They are single pieces, slab cut, minimum 10 feet long and 24 inches wide ! They appear (I am told) to be about four or five inches thick. The fellow that told me about them, is going to try to obtain them. He said that if he gets them, he’d give me one, if I would make a big wave gun out of one for him. I can’t imagine a single slab of old growth Redwood that large. I also can’t imagine how daunting it will be to carve a surfboard out of something like that. I almost hope it doesn’t happen. The damn thing might kill me !

PWOAR!!!

Might as well go down in a blaze of glory!

Crazy!

Gonna have to build a crane to move it with!

Boy, you got that right ! I’m sure in the rough, it will weigh at least 100 pounds.

Whoever surfs that thing will need to register it as a deadly weapon first.

Can you imagine seeing a board like that floating loose and being carried inside?

With foam inserts

Sounds exciting…

and terrifying.

Be a great blank for a Duke Kahanamoku tribute board.

Given that these slabs are single pieces, really lends them to reproducing a period correct surfboard. If this project comes about, I think the most appropriate board design would be a Hot Curl board. We’ll see how this project develops.

That would be awesome!

Have you shaped a hot curl before? Ridden one? Just asking cuz I’ve never seen one in person, they always seem shrouded in mystery to me :slight_smile:

Aloha Huck,
No, I’ve not shaped a Hot Curl board before. But, I’ve examined a number of them, and surfed with quite a few men who were there, when the Hot Curls came about. I’ve had detailed discussions with Jim Fisher, Buzzy Trent, and Woody Brown, about how Hot Curl boards functioned… The first of them were created by cutting down the tails of existing planks. Some of the later Hot Curl boards had outlines that rival the best big wave outlines today. Buzzy told me that he and George Downing would take measurements of fast swimming fish, and use those proportions to create outlines for surfboards, intended for big waves.

When compared to the foam boards the balsa boards are monsters.

But Bill’s right, the design has to fit the medium. It wouldn’t make any sense to do a mid-60s noserider out of these planks.

I’m not sure you’d ever see Bill shaping a “nose rider”…

All slow… No go.

Haha

Kelly, Froiseth & Downing

Hot Curl

Quite an interesting board, in the above photo. Looks like slab cut Koa, or possibly Redwood. Care to share some info?

Plenty info still around
If you look hard enought…
Slidin’ Ass
You know the story…
[John Kelly] “In 1934 Fran Heath and I were surfing at Brown’s surf on a glassy day. We couldn’t turn our redwood planks fast enough to get out of the peak onto the shoulder and be able to catch the tube. The waves were about 15 feet and they’d just pound us. On every wave we’d catch, if you tried to turn your board a little bit, the backend would come out because there was no skeg, and you’d just slide ass sideways. You’d then hang onto the board and get dragged sideways to the inside where you’d try to save it from the rocks and then paddle back out again. So we came back to my house on Black Point, and I had two sawhorses set up on the porch. I took an axe and said, ‘Damn it, how ever deep this axe goes, I’m gonna cut that much off the side of the board.’ So I let it fly and it went into the redwood, and we cut the rails down and made a board with a tail about five inches wide. Where the two sides came together at the bottom it became sort of a vee shape. Then we used the drawknife and a plane to smooth it down and sand it, and by mid-afternoon we were back out there with this board. I caught a wave and the tail just dug in and I went right across, and we figured something had happened.”
BTW, sometimes I think the only reason this board was saved as it is hallow and could not be cut down.
Come to think of it, I always though it was a lack of balsa that put Whitey on this coarse, but this guy wieghs about 80 LBS.
A relief for those old timers hiking the “the Cove” in P.V,
Chamber? LOL Bil l:-{)=

At one point I was researching everything I could find on hot curl and came up with some Roger Hall pics and video that was pretty cool. But I never felt confident enough to try to build one.

https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Screen+shot+2012-11-12+at+7.17.11+AM.png

https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Screen+shot+2013-04-25+at+8.01.06+AM.png

Bill, let’s just all agree that you will promise to document this with pictures all along the way. And you will accept the services of some youngster here on the forum to come over and shown you how to take iPhone pictures and post them here on Sways. Tell me you don’t have a flip phone. Please. OK, all good.

all the best, your friend Greg