The new one doesn’t have the concave deck, not quite as thick and we updated the nose.  It doesn’t have the old school thick down rail nose. Color wise as you can see it was very similar.  Fun to do as I don’t get to do those kind of color jobs to much these days. It’s glossed and polished just like the old one and Curtis said it was a good one to polish because it really made the bright colors pop.

The old one I felt had some really small fins on it for a twin so we increased the area of the fins a little bit also. Dimensions are 5′ 7″ x 20 1/2″ x 2 1/2″  It has a 13 3/4″ nose and a 15 3/4″ tail.  The wing is up 10″ from the tail and across the tips of the swallow it is 4″.

By the way they do a good job at the surf camp in the summer if your looking to send someone, check them out at SurfHatteras.com

If you have been to Hatteras any time in the past 5 years and there was a swell of some kind you probably saw Joey out on his green fish.  Joey  rides short boards also but likes his fish designs done old school.  The green one was glassed with all 6 0z glass ,  Green resin tint, cut laps, glass on twins, gloss and polish – the works. I think he rode it so much that it had been delaminated twice and repaired twice gaining weight each time and it was never a “Super Light” to begin with. Last summer he ordered a new fish and this one was to be a little different than the old green one. This one had the old school nose but a modern tail with a tri fin, not a twin like fish usually are done.

He said he liked it pretty much but only got to ride it a couple of times. Shortly after getting it he took a trip down to the Shackleford Banks to catch a SE swell. He caught some nice waves but paid the price.

The only way over is by boat and he was using a jet ski to get across. On the way back he was towing his boards behind the jet ski and it was pretty choppy going into a stiff nor’easter and they broke loose while he wasn’t paying attention. I think he lost 3 boards that day, and he searched for them as much as he could before dark but never found them. (Somebody somewhere has a nice red fish.) So it’s now been a year later and Joey saved up enough money to replace it. Joey is going to school at COA and working commercial fishing so it took him a year to do it but we just finished up the new one. This one is done all old school just like the green one was.  A nice red tint, with cut laps, glass on twins , double pinstripes and a gloss and polish.

Enjoy the photo gallery of the making of Joey’s new red fish… 2 years later. Just as it got finished up it coincided with a nice June mini nor’easter and a couple of fun days of waves.

After the blank has been cut it can be cut lengthwise to insert the stringer or stringer combination of your choice. This is more work for the shaper but the benefits are all the rocker templates are your own and you can design and adjust the blank to your liking. It is a great tool for any shaper as the product is completely your own , not a reshape of whoever shaped the plug in other foam blanks. By doing it this way, the blank is very true to start with and little time is spent truing up a molded blank.

Marko EPS foam with parabolic stringer

The mega rocker boards that were so popular in the early 90’s would probably never  have happened if it wasn’t for this method of construction. These boards were first made out of EPS because a new design can be done so easily.  Greg Loehr first started building the mega rocker boards for Bill Hartley. Bill is a well respected surfer at Sebastion Inlet and as Kelly Slater saw them being ridden he took the designs to California and the rest is history.  At the time Clark foam had no blanks being made with that type of rocker and new rocker templates had to be made along with new blank molds to accommodate the design changes of the time period.

Many shapers like shaping a blank like the molded urethane they are used to and Marko foam makes a styrofoam blank that looks like the old standard. The benefits of doing it this way is there is less waste as cutting it out of a large block there tends to be a lot of waste. The foam can be recycled but finding a recycler and the logistics of doing this are hard, especially for us out here on the Outer Banks. We do find ways to use some of the leftovers though still find ourselves throwing to much away.

EPS foam is readily available, there are many manufacturers throughout the country, the type used for most eps boards is the 2 lb density made out of a “B” bead.  Originally many years ago when EPS was first being used for surfboards it was hard to find a good quality foam that had good fusion of the beads but that has changed as time has gone on.  Most of the foam manufactured is used in the construction industry and they have demanded a better product and we have benefited from their demands. One of the problems facing the surfboard industry is the fact that we are very small and have almost no clout with large chemical companies and manufacturers.  If we go to a foam company and request a change they will not even respond as the amount used is so small they feel like it is a waste of their time, but when the construction industry demands a better product they listen.

There are some other advantages of using EPS bead foam. I have never seen one delaminate. The foam will crush in and you will get the knee wells but because there isn’t a cell structure like urethane foam it doesn’t break apart from itself and delaminate. It is lighter and tends to be more buoyant so you can ride a smaller board than a urethane foam.

There are some disadvantages and even though the beads themselves will not absorb water the space between the beads will. It is really important to keep your board repaired. Remember to repair it with epoxy resin as polyester resin will melt EPS foam. Also styrofoam melts at 220 degrees and because of the fact there is more air space inside your board if you leave it in a hot car on a summer day there is a chance the board can “blow up”, however this has become more rare with the use of the 2 lb density styrofoam. I usually don’t recommend an EPS board to someone who throws his board in the back of the pickup and leaves it all day and rides his board with dings in it.

I personally really like EPS boards. I have been riding them for many years now. I like the light weight and they feel alive to me.  Some people say they are to stiff but I’ve never felt that. You can’t compare a custom made EPS to a molded sandwich construction. As I explained though there is a different care procedure and as long as the customer is aware of that all should be well.

Eric Holt from Michigan came across this old Velzy and sent it down here for us to fix up and refurbish. When we saw it there was something that puzzled me about the board. First off I had never seen this particular Velzy logo ever on a board before. I also noticed that this board was glassed with a matt cloth and displayed all of the characteristics of the old popout boards.

I am sure Dale Velzy had hand shaped everything at that time so why would his name and logo be on an old popout?  I looked for a couple of board collector sites but didn’t find any that seemed like they could answer my question so I fired off an email to Steve Pezman at the Surfers Journal.

I figured he had to have seen many collections and growing up in that time in Southern California he might possibly know the boards origins. Here is the email I sent him,  Maybe Steve Pezman could give me some info about a board someone brought by for us to restore.  I’ve never seen this Velzy logo before and upon inspecting it I feel for certain it is a popout and not a real Velzy.  It looks shape wise exactly like the old Cutlass and Duke Kahanamoku’s I used to look at for sale at Sears when I was a kid.  It is also built with matt glass and as you can see the bottom has the stringer covered up with gloss work making me believe that it has the fake redwood stringer on the deck like the old popouts.

Could anyone tell me what the deal was with these?  Did Velzy lend his name to be used on pop-outs? Did they do it without his consent? Is it worth anything because of this or is it just like any of the old pop-outs?   Any info anyone could give me would be appreciated. I felt like someone at the Surfers Journal might have a clue about it’s origins.

Thanks,

Scott Busbey
Natural Art Surf Shop/ In The Eye Surfboards Buxton,  NC.
———————————————————————————–
He sent me 2 replies.

Hi Scott,
I never seen that logo either. When Velzy went out of business, closed by IRS, this guy named Bernard took over his name and built some boards in like 1960. That could be what that is.-Steve   Hobie: “There was a thing in Velzy’s book about him going bust in the early ’60s. He’s pretty accurate on that. We couldn’t figure out how he survived. God, he was giving boards to everybody and he’s got all these Hawaiians down in the shop—they were good guys—the Patterson’s and that (when they came up we got them: Bobby, Ronald, and Raymond) and he was driving that 300 SL. Then, this guy Bernard, he came to me first and I sold him 50 surfboards. He was going to take them to Hawaii.

I was to ship them to San Francisco C.O.D., freight collect, and when they got there he wouldn’t pay the freight. I said, “Oh, shit, that wasn’t the deal.” He said, “Well, I changed my mind!”  I said, “OK, just pay for the boards,” because I didn’t want to ship them back again. Well, right after Velzy went broke, Bernard got into Velzy, took the shop, Velzy’s name, and he proceeded to screw Velzy, royally.”  So anyway this is where I am on trying to find out about the origins of this surfboard.  If any of you out there know or know someone who might know, send them this link or send me an email.

Thanks Scott.

PS: Eric is interested in selling the board.

There are not a lot of kneeboarders out there, but I have always managed to build one or two of them each year. The hollower waves of Hatteras are the kind of waves that kneeboarders are attracted to. I’ve known and ridden with many of them over the years, Robert Finchem, Danny Burrus, Danny Couch, Jeff Oden and Landry  Gray are some of the kneeriders I’ve known and built for.

Most of the guys like the wide swallow tails but I’ve done some round tails also. One that comes to mind is a little 5′5″ disc made for Rob that we called the “The Breakfast Special”. It was oval looking like a plate so we airbrushed bacon, eggs and toast on the bottom, hence the name. But this is one I recently built for Jim Norton. As you can see the outline is slightly forward because a kneeboarder usually is leaning that way while driving through the tube. The tails are relatively thin for good holding power with the wider tails.

Deck of the board carved out.

Corecell ready to insert

One problem the riders have is even with the thick pads the pressure from their knees tend to destroy the decks of their board. Recently we have been using a very dense 1/8″ core cell foam on the decks of our epoxy boards and the results have been really good as far as the decks holding up. Jim wasn’t searching for the lightness of an epoxy and wanted a PU/Polyester board but wanted to increase the deck strength.

To solve the problem we inserted a sheet of corecell into the deck. Originally we planned on a raised deck but later Jim decided he would rather have it blend in on the rail so I shaped out a place to insert the hard foam into. We really wanted to add some strength so underneath the layer of corecell and between the foam blank we used a 12 0z triaxle fiberglass cloth. If we had done the whole deck like this it would have probably been to heavy so we only did an area where the knees would be doing the most damage.

The rest of the board was glassed normally with a 60z bottom and a 6/4 oz deck. It did come out slightly heavier than normal but that won’t hurt, especially the way it will be used. The board dimensions are 5′10″x 22 3/4″ x 2 5/8″.  It has a 17 7/8″ nose and a 17 1/4″ tail. The width across the tips of the swallow is 10 1/4″.

- Scott

PU or Polyurethane blank

The traditional urethane foam has been around since the 50’s when blanks  switched from balsa wood to foam and gained in popularity with the lighter weight surfboards. It is a closed cell foam that is poured liquid into a heated concrete mold. The liquid expands rapidly filling the mold and after time the mold is opened and out comes a raw surfboard blank.

Later the blank is cut in two and re glued together with a stringer added to the center. The stringer adds to the longitudinal strength and also provides a focal point for the shaper to use. The molds come in many different shapes and sizes and when deciding which blank to use when shaping a board you try to pick one as close to the desired finish shape.

There are 2 reasons for this, first it requires less effort to get the desired shape and second the foam on the deeper interior of the blank is slightly less dense and the closer to the skin it is more dense creating a stronger finished product. The way to create a lighter core is to make a blank that is less dense but lighter also equals weaker.

The age old question is how strong/ light do you want your board to be. There are 2 types of urethane foam on the market today the most widely used is TDI which stands for Toluene Diisocyanate. It is one of the essential components used in the making of urethane foam. It is also toxic and is the chemical used which was giving Clark foam issues with the EPA.

Also urethane foams can be formulated using Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate or MDI, this is more commonly used and you may ask why use TDI when MDI is available.  The TDI foams can be formulated lighter while retaining their strength.  The MDI foam blanks will be slightly heavier and not quite as white in color, but they would also be more “eco friendly”.

Most customers demand a lighter weight board and the costs are the same so TDI is the most used in surfboard construction. Urethane foam is what we are used to, we know the way they ride, we know how to glass them and we know how to take care of them. They are relatively low cost and easy to shape by hand or machine. Most boards in the world are still made the same way they were 50 years ago and you know what to expect when you buy one.

- Scott

Deep 6 Channel Single Fin

Today I shaped a board for a customer from NJ, Michael Letso.  This board was a little different than most nowadays, first being a single fin that isn’t a longboard and second we incorporated a design made popular by Alan Byrne of Australia back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Michael is a pretty big guy and the board is 6′6″ x 21 3/4″ x 3 1/8″ with a double wing swallow tail.  The basic design is forward of center with good volume under the chest and nose which will facilitate better paddling.

I even shaped that old school “beak nose” to get the most volume out of the blank.  The 6 deep channels are cut to run right out of the tail are designed to help create a little lift in the tail and channel the water flow directly off the rear of the board.

Mike's board

I’ve had many of these myself over the years and have liked them all. They tend to have good drive off the bottom and feel positive through the turns. They take a bit of extra time to shape and I had to bring an old custom made sanding block out to do them but it was fun to do one of these again.

Curtis may not be so happy when it comes to glassing and sanding it but we long ago learned a few tricks to make that a little easier also.

There are still a few left

Since this will be my first post in the Shaping Bay I will start where the board starts and that is the foam.

When Gordon Clark closed his factory 2 years ago the common theme was this was the end. It didn’t take very long for a variety of companies to fill the void.  Where at one time in US , board builders had their choice of basically one supplier they now had a choice of many suppliers.  Everyone was in hurry to “be the next Clark Foam”.  Here on the East Coast we filled the immediate void with 3 different suppliers from Brazil. Rhyno, Teccel and VI.

Shortly there after foam from the west coast showed up from Walker and King Mac and from South Africa, Safari.  Within a year we now had foam from US Blanks, Eskimo, Bennett and SurfBlanks. There were, and are others but these are the ones we had seen in the mid-atlantic area. We also saw the introduction of the MDI foam from Ice 9 and Warvel. With a shortage of Urethane foams we saw the increase in EPS or styrofoam blanks and resurgence of epoxy boards. Pretty confusing for a builder , but even more so for the consumer.

Another year later and the cream appears to be rising to the top.  Several west coast companies didn’t make it and have ceased operations, Bennett, King Mac and Walker. The companies from Brazil have scaled back on the imports and in the mid-atlantic there are no nearby distributors. All the urethane foam companies that are left produce a good product and what we are seeing is mostly used US Blanks, Surfblanks, Eskimo and Rhyno. They all have slightly different properties but I believe all are comparable to the Clark Foam. With time, we are even seeing improvements to where some of the stuff could be classified as better than Clark Foam.  Later I will try to explain the differences between urethane foams and EPS foams.     – Scott