Tag Archives: mini simmons

board porn, design, history

design threads

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Those who have actually followed my shapes over the years may have noticed that the models that emerged from my rather selfish desire to shape the perfect boards for myself, have not been stagnant. They have evolved, along with my sensibilities, abilities, and knowledge of surfing and board design.

Extreme ends of the spectrum.

To be fair, no two hand shaped surfboards are ever identical. Even machine shapes vary depending on the final hand sanding and tuning. Even the unsung heroes at the factories (laminators, gloss and hot coat guys, sanders, fin guys, polishers) help determine the final result, each in their own way. Another factor for me though, it is my inability to shape as accurately as more experienced hand shapers. I am not one to rely on exact measurements of every aspect of the board. What consistency I achieve is sole a product of my doing each step of the shaping process the same each time. It’s an intuitive method that turns out shapes like mine because that’s just how I do it, each and every time. Often the process and what I see in front of me takes over, and in an effort to keep everything flowing and harmonious, goals and final results necessarily shift. I feel that far from being a bad thing, this reality allows for the opportunity to feel differences and learn from them, adding to the growing library of cause and effect in my mind.

HPH on the left, and a one off variation on the right.

Here is an example of this process at work. I was able to pull a template off an extraordinary board that I had the good fortune to come across. For my first shape that I did for a friend from this template, I tried to match the original ‘70s shape, with as good of results as I could muster at the time. It worked very well indeed, and he still has it today, close to twenty years later. The second one, I made for myself, and I foiled out nose and tail a lot, carved deep bottom contours and really knifey rails. I surfed it to death. It was wide, but the fineness of the rails and foil made it extremely sensitive (which I like), while still planing nicely. I don’t want to say my surfing is tentative, but I am certainly no power surfer, so it suited me fairly well. The third one, again for a friend, I split the difference, and it ended up the best of the three, easy and fast. It had no element that stuck out as extreme (to me anyway), and it just worked nicely in a variety of conditions. Experiments like these are excellent learning opportunities, and I try to do them whenever I can afford to.

Middle ground between the two above.

One of the great benefits of hand shaping, is the flexibility it allows. Adjustments can be made, board by board, to improve (hopefully) any design, and back up on things that may not work out as hoped.

All of this gets me back to the point of this article. My model designations must be looked upon as an indication of the general feel and utility that one can expect from any particular model. They may vary slightly from shape to shape, but they typically retain a particular feel and purpose.

Original HPH, aka the thumb, aka lima bean.

So please keep in mind that if you have a board of mine from ten or twenty years ago and want to recreate it, I am happy to give it my best shot. I will be able to give you the same vibe, but it would be a very lucky day indeed that I could produce the exact same shape. If all of this sounds like me making excuses, that’s because I am. Whether it is a good excuse or not, I leave up to you.

boards for sale

coming soon!

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working at the factory now:

7’2″ HPH speedster (hydrodynamic planing hull/Simmons), done in 6oz volan, with Calvani/Bing keels

9’1″ EDB (every day board), done in 6oz volan with a single box

and for my own enjoyment and education a mildly asymmetric HPH at 6’8″ (plus or minus) with Mitsven keels and a special “fatigued” resin job by Bing/Adam

contact me for availability and prices, or look for them at Surfindian when they’re ready.

boards for sale, travel

New boards on the way!.

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Great trip. Got a lot of tattooing in at Avalon Tattoo, almost finishing two ongoing projects and meeting some nice new folks.

The interview with Takashi and Junko from Blue Magazine in Japan went very well I think. They were very professional and nice folks. I’m looking forward to their interview in an upcoming issue. Unfortunately Blue is not published in English at this time so I’ll be hitting up one of my Japanese friends for translation.

I’ve got boards working up on the hill at Bing (formerly Channin) and at Michael Miller’s. Here’s the line up of new stock on the way:

6’2″ arctail quad downrailer: insane Mexican blanket resin top in fall colors, Fins 101 bamboo canard quads glassed on, resin leash loop.

6’7″ HPH Speedster: cool aqua/smoke stripe over tail, Geppy #1 keels, glass leash loop.

7’6″ hillbilly quad round tail: light olive tint bottom, Geppy/Frye quads glassed on, satin gloss finish.

9’7″ HPH: “beetlejuice” smoke/opaque white jailbreak stripes top and bottom, Geppy #2 keels glassed on, resin leash loop.

Thanks to Larry and Robert for their orders. They’ll be done soon fella’s

design, history

Hullls

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displacement or planing?

I see a lot of traffic on the net these days looking for hulls. I’m am by no means an expert on surfboard design, but I am an avid student of design and have researched a fair amount. Here is some of what I’ve learned.

Although the recent fascination with hulls has centered around the Greg Liddle “modified transitional displacement hulls”, any surfboard can be considered a hull. There are displacement hulls, planing hulls and as usually is the case, some variant of the two.

As soon as you put an edge at the tail of your board you have created a planing hull. The very nature of the release provided by that edge, by definition puts that board into planing mode. It the edge were left soft and round, you still have a displacement hull. Now whether it is a good one of either type is another matter.

Have you ever seen the old footage of guys towing behind motor boats on their logs? As soon as they get going, the tail end of the board starts submarining and they can literally walk to the nose and go. This demonstrates a the principle of displacement hull theory. A displacement hull has a theoretical hull speed, above which the water actually sucks the hull deeper into the water (I’m simplifying here). Take a sailboat or any other displacement hull and tow it. At anything above the theoretical hull speed, the boat begins to submarine, actually being pulled deeper into the water. Old, soft edged boards are the same, as are any true displacement hulls being produced today. As soon as you put an edge at the tail, you release the water and the board begins to plane. The modern surfboard, most “hulls” included, balance these principles to achieve the desired effect or feel.

Now I’m sure I’ll get some flak for this, but displacement hulls, by their very nature, are not as fast as planing hulls. They may “feel” faster in a section, but without the release, they are constantly dragging more than a sharp edged board would. Now this is not a bad thing. The feeling of a well balance hull is one of the great pleasures of surfing that most people fail to credit. Surfing one well takes a different approach, especially if you are stepping off a thruster. Single fin riders tend to have an easier time.

Another thing I’ll take flak for, and I’m saying it anyway, Greg Liddle did not invent the displacement hull surfboard. He refined it to an amazing degree, made it work in a short package, championing it when it was completely against the trends of the time, but have you ever seen a Weber Foil? Have you ever really looked at almost any board before the mid sixties? All displacement hulls, although arguably not “modified transitional displacement hulls”, whatever that means. Please don’t take this as me dissing Greg Liddle. On the contrary, I think his boards are brilliant and have been a huge design influence for me. It’s just I get a little frustrated when I here people talk about hull this and hull that, without any understanding of what a hull is.

Thanks