Have you ever been surfing, paddled out and nailed a wave immediately after reaching the lineup? Makes ya feel like hot shiz, huh?. “Yeah, i know what i’m doing. I’ll take this wave right here….” And then that’s the only wave you get for the whole session. I hate it when that happens. That’s what went down at Westport for me yesterday. One wave, 2 hour session.
It wasn’t that it was packed with rippers, that rarely happens at Westport. The waves were just super mushy. The swell had a slight south in it, tide was pretty full…. The waves would jack, fold over and then mush out. Zero shoulder. I pretty much knew it was gonna be like that when i drove out there but it was pissing rain in the mountains so no sense in driving east.
Even better than a one wave/2 hour session was taking my rail to the mouth. Stepped up, fell, board got sucked under with the breaking wave, leash retracto’d back at me and boom! Right in the face!
I got one of them fancy surftech pop-out boards. They’re sturdy. You can pretty much bash em into anything and they just maintain. Check the pic below of where it whacked me in the grill. Somehow i managed to keep my tooth in my head but took a chunk out of the rail. Ouchie.
Fat lip, loose tooth, bloody mess, another 1/2 hour of hunting and no waves. But that wasn’t even the worst part. The damn taco truck behind Safeway wasn’t open–it wasn’t even there. I was really looking forward to a quesadilla adobada.
Happy New Year bro!
blunt trauma will put ya in check every time… way to get out there, looked super full
thats what you get when you should be riding nw fresh pooh instead of salt mush, god did that to you because you chose poorly
where'd you ride on sunday that wasn't crappy?
Man I called up your mom and had her meet me at Stevens (so I was planning on it being a good day), problem is that she wore a white snowsuit and she is sooooo FAT that the lifties thought it was an avalanche when she was riding down to blow me.. hahahah ohhhh man your mom is fat … AVALANCHEAAAA!!!!!!!!!! anyways they closed the lifts when she rode down from the upper parking lot cause she is so fat, thats my point
but seriously folks.. telling us on this site where the snow is good is your job… not mine. I had a deep thought about surfing vs snowboarding… seems there is a lot more bro in snowboarding cause you and your bro's can all hit the same keekor, or hike the same ridge, etc.. sarfing doesn't seem to get the same bro appeal, nay infact sometimes it's the anti bro
"there is powder out there, it's not going to find you" -Baker dude
"…sarfing doesn't seem to get the same bro appeal, nay infact sometimes it's the anti bro"
good
I think we should all quit surfing(by "we" i mean all of you) so we dont overcrowd all these nasty crappy mushy NW waves. Stay in the snow on the other side of the sound:)
thats what you get for buying a surftech. way to support real shapers! maybe next your white VW van will bust your lip…kook!
thanks for setting me straight brah.
i agree with supporting real, maybe even local shapers…but goddamn if surftech boards aren't the way to go if you're traveling. i've seen friends boards get fucked up broken, dinged, holes, noses broken, etc. only damage my board has seen despite being on about 5 flights is from me.
maybe you can take the faggotry one step futher and buy a pink $99 costco soft-top board to travel with. can double as a sleeping mat! but really…there is no excuse for pushing the slow painful death of true craftsmen by spending your $ on shit built by slaves in Taiwan. besides…randy french (surftech kook) is a fag who is responsible for getting Clark Foam shut down by the EPA. and what do you do?? slob your hard earned $ all over his cock and then defend it. way to go!
P.S. fixing dings is retard work…brah. so easy a kook could do it….
So, what boards are actually handshaped these days??? Even boards still made in the US are mainly CNC’d popouts, that take a quick light sanding to “hide” the lines that the cnc machine left behind. As for local shapers, i only know of 2 (Cove boards at Westport, and Scott Rowley.) I think perfect wave and ewaliko are even cnc’d now. COuld be wrong though.
Think again. Tom Jensen. And think Oreygon. Tom Scott/TVS, Lanny Shuler, Art Coyler/North Pacific, Brian Bates, Russo, and Ocean Pulse. There’s so much talent right here in the PNW. And pleanty of hand shapin going on in Ca still. Stretch still hand shapes all his boards as well. If you want tough try EPS/Epoxy. Shuler boards are bullet proof.
I wasnt even thinkin about oregon. I checked out some of shulers boards at the seasidesurfshop before. Nicely done.
Surftech and CNC’d boards are not Apples-to-apples. Even CNC’d shapes require a certain amount of hand shaping to complete the finished board. All CNC does is allow the shaper to start with a template that’s almost complete. Anything that’s done to get the board to the ‘almost complete’ stage is something these guys have done 1000’s of times anyways and should be able to do blindfolded, or already have ghost shapers doing for them. A CNC simply saves you time grinding down a totally asymmetric shape, width, volume…etc. So shapers who don’t use CNC’s are wasting their time (IMHO). I would rather they spend the majority of their time working on improving templates and perfecting the subtleties of the board instead of mowing foam. One the other hand I’m sure it is really important for shapers to do boards by hand every so often to remain connected to a tangible product.
As for Surftech’s… I love `em for the fact that they take a beating. I would love to say that I cherish my surfboards like I would an urn of my mother’s ashes, but no matter how much I love my boards I still bash them around.
Yeah, so I own a surftech, along with a few hand shaped boards, and I bet a good portion of the money I spent on my surftech still went into Stretch’s pocket and maybe some of it fed a few families in a 3rd world country.
I just bought my first epoxy surftech from Doug Haut at his shop in Santa Cruz. It’s his shape, with his name, and he recommended it to me personally after two separate visits and over an hour of discussion. Must admit, had an ear to ear grin chatting it up with a shaping legend. Was very happy to support him and his local shop.
love reading this site.. what a world away from the cali scene, which I am sure you all want to ensure stays that way (I would too).
Heres a list i found online.
Northwest Surfboard Shapers
Ewaliko, Precision Shapes – Seattle WA
Scott Rowley, NW Surf Design – 503-701-8923
Art Colyer, North Pacific Surfboards – Hood River OR
Bryan Bates, Seven Surfboards – Pacific City OR
Dan Murdey, Murdy Surfboards – Portland OR
Gary Swanson, Hammersurf – Hood River OR
Gerry Lopez – Bend OR
Lanny Shuler – Seaside OR
Lars Bergstrom, 42 Surfboards – Hood River OR
Rob Russo – Lincoln City OR
Robert Rube – Corvallis OR
Tom MacNarmara, Ocean Pulse – Newport OR
Carl White, Barracuda – BC
Stefan Aftanas, Aftanas Designs – BC
Sitka Surfboards – BC
Jason Heinz – BC
cool…i'll hunt down these dudes contact info and make a permanent page.
good man for putting up some links! on the other hand…no point in defending surftechs. they are no stronger than a board glassed with 6oz s-cloth epoxy. just try to avoid eps. that’s hands down the weakest shit out there! regular mid weight blank glassed with s-cloth (4 or 6oz epoxy) is the way to go. better flex too. and machined blanks do not require just ‘a quick scrub down’. get one and try that on it. see where that takes you…it requires more skill to ‘finish’ a board than anything that comes before it. reconize fool…
a friend and i (really i just watch) are "re-glassing" up a clarke blank with one layer of 6oz and some SB112 epox. should be plenty strong.
stoked…it's turning out pretty rad.
I have a Marco foam EPS board 6oz all the way around and it’s super strong. But not as strong as my Shuler.
Im sure it takes tons of skill to finish a board. Hell, ive shaped 2 boards start to finish, and i still wont glass either of them (Fugly!!) I wonder if i could buy a CNC’d unfinished board from a manufacturer for dirt cheap, then attempt to “finish” and glass myself…..it would still end up like the other to i have,ha!
it is not easy. i've made two boards that turned out like shit.
but it sure is fun to try…
Scott Rowley is a badass. He's hard to get much info about, but the guy charges. He'd never tell you though. Super humble and fits in well in the NW surf scene. And like others have said, hand shapes his boards start to finish.
Not to mention his boards are badass. I have two of his boards…
I had two NW surf designs. A 6' 8" hybrid, mini tanker thing…and then a 6" something shortboard. The hybrid seemed to be a good idea in theory, you could surf it as a thruster, a twin, or even a single fin. (had a longboard fin box in the middle). It actually was a really good beginner'ish board. I personally wasn't all that stoked with either of them though. I'm sure he makes some great shapes, but I think I picked the wrong ones for me. I sold out to the stretch, and the super sell-out Randy French surftech. Even worse, i bought them both over the internet…… I'm all for supporting the local shapers and/or shops, but at the end of the day I just want a board that works and I didn't have to take a loan out for.
Do all you fags ride Surftech Strech poop-outs?
From what I've seen and rode a few times, Rowley – da Kiwi, makes really nice high performance step up boards. After all he lived in Seaside for a long time, before he sold out and became a snowboarder in Glacier : )- Boards are apparently still glassed in da O R E G O N.
I'm pretty sure we do. One day we were sitting around talking and figured it would be a good idea to form a surf posse. No, better yet- a surf gang. All we would need is some matching gear, and bad-ass attitudes! We could have had any color boards we wanted, but immediately drawn to the powder blue of the Stretch. That's how we roll.
"…still glassed in da O R E G O N." I'm pretty sure that you would be hard-pressed to not find a NW shaped board glassed in OR.
i watch Rowley shape out a board for a friend a while back. this was after i'd shaped surfboard#1. i was pretty much blown away how quick he roughed out a shape–something that took me 100 times longer. has a sic shaping zone too. pretty rad just being there yappin it up with him. super nice guy. as far as i know his boards are glassed in seaside–or at least they were.
ps – i put up a NW Shapers page. cheggit: http://nwbroweather.com/surf/nw-shapers
Rowley has a glassing setup in Beaver, OR. (ha, ha, ha) Near Pacific City.
Nice links!! Thanks for diggin up the rest of the info. Lookin at gettin a fish/shortboard hybrid shaped soon. After i sell my new Tknox Merrick i just freakin bought!!
bummer. is that the one that's been on Craigslist for a while?
if you got the cash..and know what you want, i'd get a custom shape for sure.
"goofy footers are an inferior race…."