Uncle Jaffa's First Board.

[jaffa1949]

Searching old photos from early Aussie surf shots from the 1950 through the 60s I found a duplicate of my very first board known as the Can Opener( for obvious reasons)
It was made in Balsa salvaged from liferafts on the Mothball navy fleet moored in Sydney harbour. 9'6" long This was also known as a pig board.

The picture of me surfing it was in 1962, first year of High School, so I was 13 and had been surfing 4 years

1956 around the Melbourne Olympics a demonstration team of American Lifeguards the introduced the Malibu chip boards. A 9ft they were smaller, than the 16ft surfskis, had fins and
went places on wave that hadn't been imagined before.
Any available balsa got hacked into replicas of the American boards which were left behind.
Older ski manufacturers shifted into board making ! BooM Australin surfing was up and running on modern boards.

[oldmansurfer]

I found a picture of something similar to my first surfboard but it is about an inch shorter and 2 inches wider and three fourths of an inch thicker than my board was. If you look closely it has an offset leash plug probably added after it was made and at the time they thought that if you put a leash plug on ther stringer you weakened the board. http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/north-brighton/surfing/vintage-single-fin-surfboard/1070666688

[benjl]

Thanks for sharing Jaffa, those are some really cool images and fascinating to see what's happened with surfboard design since then.
I struggle to think how naturally skilled a lot of the surfers were back in those days without any of our moden technology, weight savings, performance rockers and fins etc. I'm almost embarassed to sometimes admit blaming a shortboard for not having enough rocker on steep waves when you guys were surfing probably the same kind of waves on those big planks!

It's also mind boggling to think that you've been surfing for roughly double my entire age Kudos! I hope to still be doing the same in my later years

[IanCaio]

Really cool images indeed, I can imagine it was hard to learn on those boards. But if you are having fun, and it does look like everybody was having fun on that picture, it pays off

The design of boards definely changed a lot since back then!

[dtc]

Jaffa, how did you know how to build the boards? Its one thing to see something, its another to build it. Were there plans smuggled around the country passed from hand to hand, or did you just copy some one else board or what?

I like the thought of balsa suddenly becoming a desirable item and being 'borrowed' from anywhere including left over lifeboats (well, hopefully they were left over - images of people leaving a sinking ship only to find a surfboard shaped gap in the liferaft...)

Whats the location for that second photo?

[jaffa1949]

Ah , the whole historical run down.
Prior to 1958 all surf craft were crafted as hollow plywoodsurf ski or strange Malibuish hollow things from Popular Mechanics magazines with of necessity square boxy rails and leaky seams.
A whiskey bottle cork provided a cork for the bung drain hole.
The Balsa can from the tin covered liferafts on soon the razor blades retired navy ships.
the rafts were about 15ft square and about 3ft thick. they could be bought for next to nothing as the ships were stripped of everything of value before be towed off to be melted down.

The major surf ski manufacturers shaped up to the new type of board, Bennett, Gordon Woods, Scott Dillon hired and trained the next generation of board makers .
Home grown boards flourished but were often pretty ugly.
Foam came in around 62 and surfing just exploded.

Factories were all around my high school and lunch was about dreaming of how you could save £37 for a new board.
Production lines were established to meet the demand and each manufacturer had a team of hot surfers shaping, sanding or glassing ( the next wave of board makers)

Check out the fins
Occupation health and safety was no existent , factories burnt down and it was a wild west time.


one pay back story was a peed off ex employee deliberately mixed a foam mix to double strength and let it loose in the blank blowing room where the doors opened inward.
The foam expanded and filled the whole room with the doors being unable to be opened.
Mayhem ensued.

The picture is of Dee Why Point, where I learnt to surf after being allowed out of the basin, it was a big day in your surf life where the old guys allowed you to come out the point. (That was genuinely enforced) Proud moment when you got the nod.

[oldmansurfer]

Meanwhile back in Hawaii they were making boards from solid wood. Innovation came from where it came. Change came a bit more slowly to Hawaii.

[benjl]

I just clicked that he guy on the far right is on his knee's paddling it like a surfski! These must have been some big logs haha

What a cool photo!

[oldmansurfer]

Surfers used to get big calluses on their knees and ankles back in the day from knee paddling

[jaffa1949]

Surfers used to get big calluses on their knees and ankles back in the day from knee paddling

Board lumps, board bumps, surfers knots, below the knee cap and on the top of the foot as we all knee paddled. Some surfers managed to use the lump as a way to avoid being called for National Service to Vietnam.

[kitesurfer]

This is a great thread.

KS

[dtc]

This is Dee Why point today (literally today, borrowed from the realsurf website). It looks exactly the same as in Jaffa's day, even the people are almost in the same place...., I'm sure there is a message there about humans changing and disappearing and the ocean continuing on and on....

image.jpg (47.57 KiB) Viewed 452 times

So Jaffa and Oldman, what proportion of people/kids surfed in your area? I'm imagining that Hawaii had a fair proportion while australia was still a bit of a niche sport. Although perhaps I'm influenced by the 70s and early 80s when surfing had become a 'drop out' activity

£39 back then seems quite expensive. the reserve bank inflation calculator says around $1000 in today's money, which is a lot when there wasn't as much spare money around. No wonder you built your own.

[oldmansurfer]

I am not really sure but surfed regualrly and surfed at some point will be markedly different unless you include bodysurfing, body boarding, skim, boarding. A guess would be 10% board surfed regularly. I lived in a poor area so a couple of the kids who grew up to being good surfers (one of them went semipro, had a sponsor and competed) started off surfing on a styrofoam board, the kind that you buy for kids in the supermarket....you know the kind that was meant as a play thing for pools? After breaking a few of them they got smart and tried to glass one (it melted). Anyway there were lots of kids who were watermen but not as many surfers due to the cost of a board.