Surfing Waves

Please Respond if you are against

"any surfboard that is not shaped. In one way or another, it is popped-out of a mold that duplicates hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of the exact same shape. This kind of surfboard cannot be customized by length, dimensions, weight, or bottom contour."

That means you BIC, NSP, south point, santa cruz, 7S, isle...

Not against new methods such as computer shaping used by Channel Islands, JS ect, but against boards made by slave labour by people who work for $4 a day. Support you shaper

surfsc77 wrote:but against boards made by slave labour by people who work for $4 a day.

Like most of us don't wear t-shirts or shoes, because they are made in "slave labour" factories ...

Like you don't have electronica that is made in "slave labour" factories ...



Sure, you can try, but this is bigger than the individual purchase of a surfboard. This is about politics.

And I don't have a local shaper, so ... I just don't surf?

Please stop criminalizing people that surf BICs or whatever.

The average daily pay in Indonesia is $2.50

So If a company offered $4 a day they would jump at the chance to work for that factory and be very happy working there!

You cant compare what they earn over there with what we earn over here

I tell friends in Indonesia that I have to pay over £100 a month just to get my bins emptied (they like to call it council tax) and they just dont believe it

So if you want them to earn the same as us, you should also expect inflation in their countries to go through the roof therefore raising the cost of living over here.

Do you really want to pay £5000 for a TV or Playstation?

Cos that will be the 'real' cost

You know, the molds they build those boards in don't stay true forever. After maybe ten thousand "pops" they don't produce the same board.

And part of this is the turnover in the factories and subsequent loss of trained staff. Original staff were trained by the tech guys themselves. And each time someone is replaced some of the knowledge is lost.

Funny, huh?

-doug

If it wasnt for cheap pop out boards I wouldnt have been able to begin to learn to surf. There is no way in the world I could have paid the intial outlay for a proper board before I knew I wanted to surf and made friends that also surf. I still dont have the funds to sort a new board so for now Im gonna stick with my BIC.

What Pat has said is of comfort to me as I dont want people in the world to suffer just so that I can take up a new hobby/way of life. I dont know where the blanks come from to make the boards in the first place and under what conditions they are produced

Pop out boards have their place, they're what many people buy until they're sure they want to continue with the sport. Once you're hooked and are certain that you want to continue...by all means support your local shaper.

will the shaper still be around when you progress? look at this

"A decade ago, an estimated 80 percent of surfboards sold in the U.S. were completely hand-shaped. Today, it's estimated that less than 20 percent are hewed by hand — some suspect far less"

"...Yet he is resigned to the fact that to keep up with competitors, hand-shaping will be consigned to nostalgic hobbyists and a few artisans."*

you might suspect that because of the money to be made, shapers would become outsourced more and more. so by not supporting your shaper now, your clearing the way for more pop outs and less handshaped boards.

and its funny someone mentioned prices rising, because imagine how much custom boards are going to cost when we put all the shapers out of business. Compare the cost of custom built furniture to the stuff that is imported overseas. Yeah its available, but its much more costly.

"For me, it’s not a protecting American Jobs thing, it’s a Surfer Labor thing. I believe that surfboards around the world should be shaped, airbrushed, glassed, hot-coated and sanded by surfers. The local surfboard factory has always been ground zero for mini surf scenes. The surf scene in France needs French board builders and the surf scene in Portugal needs local board builders and so on. I would like to see the rising surf stars like from places like Indonesia become shapers and open surfboard factories to service their growing local surf culture so that they wouldn’t depend on handouts from traveling pros."**


This is a chinese shaper. im sure he works hard to support his family, but he has no respirator or anything to protect him. that would be considered dangerous by most, would it not?






these are both great articles


*http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070715/BUSINESS/707150343/-1/BUSINESS
**http://actionsportsgroup.net/blog/ing/?p=83

surfsc77 wrote:"A decade ago, an estimated 80 percent of surfboards sold in the U.S. were completely hand-shaped. Today, it's estimated that less than 20 percent are hewed by hand — some suspect far less"

Please excuse my heavy editing of your quote there and I confess I have not read the articles you posted though I promise I will tomorrow/today, when I wake up in the PM part of the day ...

My first thought on reading on what you have quoted here is that the massive increase in the popularity of surfing in the last 10 years has led to the increase in the buying of popout boards. These people may or may not go on to buying custom boards. I do not think that it takes away from the place of the popout board. Whilst your figures are probably reflective of what is going on in the surfboard shaping industry today I would be very interested in the numbers of boards being produced by the local shaper compared to the the mass manufacturer.....

If, say; there were only 100 boards a day being made 10 years ago, 80 of which where hand crafted and 20 of which where mass produced compared to nowadays (making this up as I go along here and the figures are just to make my point) there were 1000 boards being produced a day....Going by your figures....200 a day were being made by hand shapers and the remaining 800 by mass production means that the local shaper is still massively benefited. I dont know the numbers - it is just something that Im asking here....is the handcrafting of surfboards really on decline? or is the manufacturing of surfboards going up? and the popout market increasing substantially because of the market conditions at present but in a way that it is still beneficial to the local shaper.

I see the photo you posted shows someone without the necessary respiratory gear, but like my last post - I wouldnt know where my blanks came from. Please excuse my ignorance...but isnt this board being hand crafted rather than machine crafted....I am sorry if this is very ignorant of me - is this how all popout boards are made?

I do not want the skill of handshaping boards to be lost anymore than I would like the handcrafting of custom built furniture to be lost and I understand your 'rebelion' (sorry cant think of a better word) against the mass production of board making but I am just interested in your point......playing 'devils advocate' if you will!
I wonder if the handcratfed furniture does in fact cost more of our disposable income than in used to. Is it not that we just buy cheaper stuff nowadays in general which makes the handcrafted stuff seem more expensive? I think that it was always expensive, its just now we buy stuff to last a few years rather than to last a lifetime and we pay the intial lower cost to make up for that.

How do they get their figures?- does every board that KS or Essex Sucks makes get counted?

If locally handshaped boards really are going to become more expensive then I better get myself a Harmageddon pretty quick!! until then - I will be riding my BIC and loving surfing

please excuse my spelling and grammar in this post...and maths never was my strongest subject

Went surfing at La Jolla Shores the other day, saw at least 10 soft top pop outs available at Costco (local "box" stores) for a bit under $100.00. Line up will get more crowded, more kooks will be out, less waves will be caught by experienced riders due to the overcrowding. Welcome to the 21st Century, like it or get out.

I'm sticking around.

Otter wrote:Went surfing at La Jolla Shores the other day, saw at least 10 soft top pop outs available at Costco (local "box" stores) for a bit under $100.00. Line up will get more crowded, more kooks will be out, less waves will be caught by experienced riders due to the overcrowding. Welcome to the 21st Century, like it or get out.

I'm sticking around.

if more companys would stand up against pop outs, such as the head shaper at Bing has done, then riding popouts could become so uncool that no one would want to do it. unfortunetly their are more companys selling out to surftech than those willing to stand up against pop outs. and i dont think i have to take things as they are, and i will be surfing. if popouts come to dominate the industry, ill find old refrigirators and steal the foam out of them, make my own xxxxx.

I read that a good shaper makes $30,000 a year, which is not exactly a huge salary. Every pop out sale takes money away from these shapers. make no mistake, mass produced boards take money away from shapers every single time one of them is sold. thats pissing on the past and future of surfing. if everyone is fine doing that, then wax up your pool toy and have fun riding a 2nd rate board.

and i believe that guy is hand finishing the popout. i dont know the exact specifics. do we really want to support people who care that little about their workers? those epoxy chemicals cant be too good on the human body.

These are serious questions every surfer has to ask themselves. Do i care about the future of surfing? about basic human rights? about quality boards made from quality materials?

Good debate, although the funny things is the pop question is not one that particulary worries me.
Yes i would like to see more people getting custom boards made by their local shaper but at the same time i would also like to see less surfers in the water.
I am also very dubuois about figures and photos you read in the press. I generally only believe what i experience myself and take everything else with a rather large pinch of salt. In my expereience i haven't noticed an increase in the numbers of pop-out boards like bics, nsp's south point over the last 15 years over that of custom boards. I have seen more of the composite boards firewire, surf tech, resin8 with the newer epoxy technologies and i see no reason as to why new technologies should not be embraced if it is to enhance the surfing experience even if they were mass produced. After all development and research is inevitable else we would not progress.
As for the photo of the chinese shaper. That photo could well have been taken anywhere in the world and should not be taken as any particular evidence. Myself i shaped and glassed a number of boards without the necessary precautions, we all do it.
Also clark foam who used to supply(alledgedly) 90% of the blanks to the surfboard industry themselves had to close due to enviromental issues and some impending law suits from employees due to helath issues so it would seem clark foam were potentially as bad as our chinese competitiors.
I do hear your point re the local surf scenes centred around the local shapers and shops and have to admit it would be a shame if this was to decline.
Agreed there's lots of bad things going on but im pretty sure Harmergeddon surfboards will always be around and i'll always have access to custom shaped boards (and the pleasure i get from shaping them) as will anyone i know and Sar as ive said before there's a team board waiting for you when your ready.
No i don't believe the local shaper will ever dissapear no matter how many mass produced boards there are.

KS

surfsc77 wrote:These are serious questions every surfer has to ask themselves. Do i care about the future of surfing? about basic human rights? about quality boards made from quality materials?

Why not ask all "serious" questions? What about the environmental damage that comes from these blanks that are used to shape custom boards?

As Kitesurfer said there have been problems recently with this.

How different are the impacts environmentally between a custom and a plastic board?

My first board was a pop out, and as Sar said I would never have got into the sport and paid a local shaper if I never had my mass produced import.

this is my first post in a long long time..... my excuse is I've been on deployment.

Anyway, it's never bothered me. I have a Bic 6'7" popout, and I've also got a 6'3" Watsay Australia, a 6'5" Bone Idol and THE BEST BOARD EVER a 6' Harmergeddon Surfboards Retro Fish (see previous posts for more details). Anyway, I still surf the Bic for fun whenever there are logs, branches, etc in the water, or whenever there may be rocks around that could hurt my precious custom designs. My friends have Bic Mini Mals which got them into surfing, which I still use when I get a chance, and I have lots of fun on them as well. OK, I admit, the most fun I've had is on my fish, but as many people have said before, there is a place for popouts, even though some people say only kooks ride them, etc. If you can ride a surfboard properly, you won't look like a kook, no matter what surfboard you ride anyway.

Anyway, I'm not reading this post over, so it may not make sense.

KITEY, keep up the good work, and I will be getting in touch soon when I figure out what I want next!

timmo is the cheeze.

Um, anyway... To say that there will be more kooks in the water because they are making pop-outs is silly. Surfing goes through popularity phases, and suppliers are just keeping with that demand. Instead of newbies and groms buying used and second hand boards, they're buying soft tops and BICs.

Make no mistake - a new surfer typically bought a used board back in my day - so shapers didn't make any money there, either.

As surfers progress in talent, they won't tend to buy pop outs because they are looking for things you only get in custom.

i'm not cheezee actually..... he and I are two distinctly different people. isn't that right cheezman

hes lieing timmo is cheezee, after years of opression cheezee finds it hard to express his true feelings so he created el timmo, so he could live out his fantasys in a virtual world of being a gay boy sailor that likes to get nacked

I'm all infavor of shapers making a decent living, and protecting workers in foreign lands, etc. etc.
But it's not up to me, so I'm not wasting my time worrying about it. I buy maybe one board every 5 years, so I'm not going to make a heck of alot of difference to a shaper's income.
Some folks just like that good ole sanctimonious feeling of I'm right and you better believe it I guess.
Me, live and let live. God Bless us everybody!

Of course i realize pop outs have a place, but i would rather see that place filled by shapers. GSI (which makes nsp) is so sucessful because they filled a huge niche no one else was: they make cheap and durable boards for beginners. they might suck, but most beginners wouldnt notice. I think most beginners would be better off riding a board made by someone who spent a lot of time on the board.

and Mr. Otter, its that "can do... nothing" attitude that allows people to accept crappy situations. I realize i cant do it all by myself, just as an individual vegitarian cant do much to save all the animals in the world. but if surfers would ban together and say "dont give us crappy boards to learn on", pop outs wouldnt have their place.

surfsc77 wrote: but if surfers would ban together and say "dont give us crappy boards to learn on", pop outs wouldnt have their place.

and many people such as myself wouldnt be able to afford to learn to surf ....but then, I guess that would keep the lineups quieter

Sar wrote:

surfsc77 wrote: but if surfers would ban together and say "dont give us crappy boards to learn on", pop outs wouldnt have their place.

and many people such as myself wouldnt be able to afford to learn to surf ....but then, I guess that would keep the lineups quieter

nooo. i think people would have learned their lesson and made quality handshapes for beginners. a lot of shops are doing it now so they wont lose the beginner dollar without selling out to pop out companys