The Daily Good News
Finally jagged one of those Simon Buttonshaw Gash shirts that occasionally get hocked on Instagram. I rarely use IG and Browny only ever makes 66 of them which sell fast.
Anyway, it's a damn good design this time 'round and I got inside the good number.
Feeling wrecked today from a big few days of surf. who would have thought springtime in vicco.
just booked direct flights coolie to hobart- $310 return.One month walkabout tassie feb-march-stoked and neck and shoulder coming good.
good bodysurfing shoreys in tassie anyone?
Funny, Blind Boy, I just bought a ticket to see Amyl & the Sniffers and Surfbort...for $20!
Doubly good news after You Am I's homage to Spinal Tap show got cancelled this week.
hey Dave, you will have a blast, east coast Bicheno - Binalong Bay & Bruny Island.
Daci and Daci Bakers in Hobart. Arguably the best bakers in the cosmos.
8th on the Tasmanian surfing rankings.
I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me.
Tasmania has twice the length of coastline as NSW .
More diversity of surfing challenges. We both know that’s worth an extra place on the rankings.
Yeh, my great achievement was over three rounds of 2ft weak onshore slop. I imagine your event was at Shippies.
The mate I was visiting in Tassie was state champ . We hung with him for 6 weeks and travelled everywhere. Such a cool place to explore.
Into the trip he had a comp at the West Coast classic . We tagged along and i went in the event for a laugh. Beat local legend James Homer Cross in one heat cause he forgot to screw one of his fins in ! Haha .
Great waves. Good people. Epic place.
Bought a used 9’6 soft board for myself / young son to use tandem in the tiny stuff. Got it out for the first time in the hot weather last weekend and had a bunch of fun just messing around and belly boarding together. Agree with all that’s been said above re kids, incredible to have them around.
Left the city early Tuesday morning; dead flat, near gale, cloudy.
Stopped for a great coffee at the usual, raced down the long, windy dirt road, then surfed perfect HH right point waves for 4 hours. Warm, glassy, sunny.
Perfect day off.
Oh, and I had my first Campari soda and first whisky in 3 weeks. Heaven.
really looking forward to tassie now, thanks for the stoke.
staying at snug beach first week so have to check out bruny i reckon.
Tassie is a great place to view wildlife, particularly mammals. Some of the most exotic roadkill you’ll see anywhere !
Seriously though , it’s an epic place to interact with animals. Friendly beaches are a nice place to do just that.
Good luck seeing a Tassie devil. I never got to see one which sucked . This is despite lugging a roadkill wallaby wrapped in a tarp around in the back of my car for a day then using it to berley them up at night. No devils but a nice bit of disgruntlement from the missus after wallaby juice leaked over our stuff.
PS I’m not saying that you shouldn’t indulge , but there is awesome blackberries growing wild that time of year . I gorged on some next to a trout filled stream and had a hell time. A hell time except for the fact that it made me constipated for 3 days. My mate reckons it’s cause they spray the blackberries with poison. I’d still do it again though , they were that good.
You won't find a vacant camp site at Friendlies, Bruny or any other coastal national Park or state reserve camp location during summer these days - these areas have been inundated with winnebagoes, wicked campers, interstate surfers and large vans for more than 7 years...last summer it was so overloaded that there were tents set in the no camping zones at Friendlies - the car park areas that are gravel based.....Bruny locals are trying to keep their heads above the piles of refuse and excretion that the hoards are leaving behind and there is a new ferry operator who is assuring more punters per day......quiet, uncrowded Tassie?...totally done and dusted.
Tassie is good quality lived there for quite a few years in my teens most of my best mates are from there or live there.
Wave wise every coast is different.
The south to SE area is a real mix of beachies, points, reefs, river mouths with all kinds of nooks and crannies and some world class set ups.
The east coast is kind of similar to areas of NSW not many reefs but some fairly consistent quality beachies with clear water and yellow sand bottom..
North coast is one of the most fickle coast in OZ but has more reefs per square kilometre than perhaps anywhere in Australia.
West coast is similar to Viccos west coast or areas of WA powerful rip type beachies normally at the end of beaches and is more often to big and almost always windy even when offshore.
Then the SW corner is one of the most remote untouched, unaccessible and wildest areas of OZ
Sure some areas can get crowded like anywhere in Australia, but plenty of empty uncrowded waves too, and the locals are generally very down to earth and friendly.
I've been glassing a board this arvo while you pricks, or at least some of you pricks, have been arguing about Trump - don't worry, I'll be back in that thread shortly!
It's the forgotten art in board manufacture is glassing, not to mention the most unglamourous. It stinks, your clothes gets messy, fingers get sticky, and the only way to clean them is with industrial strength thinners that are strong enough to dissolve your DNA chain.
But fuck a resin tint glass job looks good!
Prolly should've taken a photo...
Try a handful of washing powder to clean your fingers Stu. It gets the bulk off so you only need a little thinners
Yeah, my glassing aficionado buddy concurs with the washing powder.
He's also a big laps man. Are you?
Took a few hours to shape on a Saturday night with Benny Hearn standing over my shoulder yelling out "Not like that, like this!"
Then it sat in the factory waiting for one of us to get an act together.
I chose a fish design only cos it's relatively easy to shape but in the interim I've got my taste for fish back. When I saw the blank again this arvo I got a kick of excitement thinking about how it'd ride. Dennis Wright, old Itchy from Addiction, did a small clean up of it then we glassed the bottom this arvo, blood red resin tint with average laps - nothing significant, it's a small wave board after all.
Doing the deck tomoz.
Shaped a few blanks when I was a kid but for reasons unknown I never glassed them.
Hugely satisfying having a hand-shaping whiz like Ben guide me through it.
I'm tempted to hire a bay and go at a blank with no instructions next time. See how that turns out.
Do it . Now that you’ve got a fair grasp get in there and freestyle it. Working in a proper bay would be amazing. Where did you shape that one ?
"Shaped a few blanks when I was a kid but for reasons unknown I never glassed them."
Ha ha...im glad it wasn't just me then :D
yeah its a trip alright,have shaped a board years ago and had it glassed professionally and it actually went o.k but you could see it was a home made job,bit wobbly when looking at it,also glassed a board that Mctavish shaped me,well thats another experience i can do with out,glass on fins.......well again it came out o.k but never bothered doing another...good experience though,shame its so messy.
shaping a fish @stu .... it seems timely to once again link this.
I'm shaping the board down at the Glass Hut in Wollongong. Corey who runs the joint is pulling it altogether.
Corey's got a hell of a lot going on there with guys working out of the bays, plus a few labels getting boards cut on the AKU shaper or glassed. At the moment there's Stretch, DP, Benny Hearn, Chad Ryan Shapes, Addiction, Serpent Sleds (Andrew Mooney).
And on the topic of first made boards, here's a few shots Blowin sent to me of him riding the first board he shaped:
Lived there in my teens too and still do (8 generations of Tas in the family here) - unfortunately the situation has changed significantly and it's a challenge to find a quiet wave anywhere within 2 hours of Hobart....local beaches, peninsular, points etc are always maxed out when on...the good news is that sea kayaking is still under the radar....to be accurate - the SE ( Tasman peninsular) is not a smorgasboard of reefs, beachies and rivermouths as someone has inaccurately posted...the number of accessible waves is very limited and given the large surfing population down here, crowded when on......
Over the years have bought a fair few sticks of various WA shapers last one off Wayne Webster and never bothered to suss out the 'how its done".
Just getting set for retirement like Blindboy so its on my list of must do's some where after getting more waves and become the local serial pest in the water.
Cheers for throwing those photos up , Stu.
Got to love shaping your own stick. Gives a deep sense of satisfaction riding a board you’ve made yourself and the process itself is pretty fucking cool. Foam is such an unreal material to work with . Firm and forgiving but easily pared away , a lot easier than trying to shape something as hard as timber , that’s for sure.
The first board I made was in 2001 or so . I’d been struggling at a wave I love with its abrupt takeoff and immediate down the line speed . I didn’t think the wave necessarily required a longer board , but i definitely needed to get in as early as possible.
Board fashion at the time wasn’t providing many solutions as I realised I needed a normal board outline only way thicker in the right places . Nothing off the rack available and I didn’t have the patience to undertake the trial and error, minimum 2 boards from a custom shape to get what I was after so decided to take matters into my own untrained hands and have a go at shaping it myself.
I started with a 6’0 Dahlberg that I loved but which was thin as fuck . Traced the planshape on butchers paper ( shitfight ) , then cardboard from a fridge packaging and was set . I got a blank from a shaper where I was living at the time and commenced going about everything the hard way.
Working outside on a pair of sawhorses, my first lesson was that foam goes fucking everywhere. Obvious to everyone except a stoned as fuck , virgin shaper I guess. It took probably a full week to shape . Do a bit , overthink it , walk away , then do a bit more later.
Little things got me . Like needing a spoke shave for the concave stringer section at the nose of the deck . Never would have thought of it till I was forced to . Enlightening journey and a reinforcement of my respect for quality shapers.
Finally got it how I wanted it and took it to the shapers to get it glassed. The look on his face told me enough about what my chances would have been getting this style of board shaped by someone else. Even when he had it in his hands he was trying to talk me out of it ! He relented , glassed it as it was and I was away.
The board went exactly as I’d hoped. Early entry with extra volume but rails foiled out to nice and fine. Rode some epic waves on that thing . It’s snapped now but I can’t remember where or when it happened...bizarre.
Too bad that I peaked so early as a shaper. It’s all been downhill for the 7 boards that followed. Been a nice little giggle for my mates though when I’ve been talking up my latest shaping effort then they finally lay eyes on it and it’s fucking atrocious. One effort was shaped in a hurry for a last minute Mentawai trip whilst I was in the Kimberly’s. I’ve never been that big on accurate portions and so I usually just freestyle the amount of catalyst for a resin mix. Compound this with the fact that I was attempting to glass a board in a tin shed with an air temp of around 38 degrees and shit went south real quick .
Resin drying in stalactites hanging from the edges of the unglassed deck and massive uneven lumps covering the whole thing. No shit , that resin mix went off in under 5 minutes. I would have binned the whole thing except it was my only back up board and I’d been talking it up so hard. Sanded the whole thing back flush , taking huge gouges off the unprotected foam all over the shop . Figured I’d just fill them with resin and it’d be sweet.
It wasn’t sweet. Wasn’t anywhere near sweet. The board looked like it had been knocked up in a sheltered workshop and rode worse than it looked. It lasted 3 surfs. Mates absolutely pissing themselves as it literally fell apart wave by wave. Nicknamed the Great White Shark as it had that much jagged fibreglass hanging off it by the end that every time I slid to my feet I got cut to fuck so badly it looked like I’d been attacked by one.
Anyway , that’s my shaping story. So much fun . It’s always good to hear someone saying they’re going to give it a go cause you know they’re in for a good time no matter what and if it happens to go half decent then it’s a huge win.
Doing it in a proper shaping Bay would be a treat , but sometimes best to be secluded and left to your own devices, just so you can really get your freak on and indulge in some eclectic mind fuck that know one else would pass with a modicum of quality control.
Anyway , can’t wait to see the photos Stu. Hope it performs.
Great stuff Blowin. I have never shaped my own board. Norm Fitzgerald at Keyos on the basis that I turned up more often than anyone else, once had the unenviable task of trying to teach me to shape. Several butchered blanks later I went back to buffing and ding fixing!
Interesting Blowin and good pics too!
I started in about '93 as a reaction to the boards (and limiting close tolerance blanks for that matter) on offer, and a series of shapers laughing at me because I wanted a new board with volume distribution similar to my beloved Brothers Nielsen White Pointer. So I (rougly) copied it: nice board! Had a discard 70's fin glassed in. The narrow pintail held magnificently in the heavy down south waves, and the foam forward paddled in nicely. The most difficult part early on was finding a blank that would get (most of) the foam distribution I wanted. Thankfully, Burford now does 70DON blanks. I doubled down and built my own jig and then curves were millimetre perfect.
Have they changed in 25 years? Um, bottom rockers remain same, single/double concaves have evolved, I'd mod the deck rocker to contemporary, and put modern rails on the sides, and sprout side fins for 2+1, otherwise no. I'm happy. Maybe wider tail with a couple of wings for smaller wave versions.
FWIW modern shop and custom boards are way better than their 90's equivalents as they have incorporated foam tailored to normal humans while keeping the feel most people like - I'm too far gone down the other path to switch to this.
To be honest , you’ve got to have a grasp of basic skills with the equipment used in the building process such as a plane . But I think a lot of crew try it when they are young and don’t have much success , but as you get older , rudimentary hand / eye coordination improves and it becomes more about visualising the outcome. Picture the board you want and take away the excess foam !
It’s trite to say , but it’s like all sculpture- and you’re sculpting , no doubt about it , that’s the romantic part !- you’ve just got to remove the parts of the blank that aren’t part of the surfboard you want to ride.
Have another go BB . Worst thing that could happen is you’d wind up covered in foam and sharing a laugh with your mates at your expense.
Right up until you take that thing out and spray them in the face whilst ripping on your own creation.
Agreed VJ .
That’s why I haven’t shaped a board in nearly a decade . There is so many boards that are 80 percent of what you need floating around on the racks today.
But it’s the 20 percent of what I WANT that’ll drive me back to a dose of white lung.
Ha ha maybe. I think I have just been spoilt by always having access to great shapers. When I was working at Keyos Jim Beardsley was shaping there. Geoff McCoy had just left to start McCoys, Simon and Terry Fitz were across the road at Shane's, McTavish was at Barry Bennett's, Midget was in full production and that was just the A team!
Might I suggest another way to make them - chambered paulownia? More expensive, more time consuming, far less toxic, and a completely new wonderland of new lessons to learn as you fcuk up your latest creation because you didn't get weight/float/sealant right, or line up the grain consistently, or you put a chamber where the fin plugs need to go. It is genuinely renewable, you can walk wood shavings through the house, the planer loves the timber, and they have a feel and buoyancy that is completely refreshing, really something new. Very satisfying to cut, the little spokeshave on a red cedar stringer is *so* nice...
Way out of my league johnno, my son is a chippy and has banned me from further abuse of timber.
@TasX
When i said
"The south to SE area is a real mix of beachies, points, reefs, river mouths with all kinds of nooks and crannies and some world class set ups."
I meant from South East Cape area up to Swansea area (including Bruny) not just Tasman peninsular or South Arm.
That's in no way an inaccurate description.
That’s a silky machine.
Looks like it’d hover over flat sections and knife it’s swallows into the pocket.
Could be the Brown brothers Crouchen Riesling I drank with the Havati and olive on rice crackers talking.
Either way. Looks nice.
You’d be straining at the bit to hit the water on that thing , heh ? I would be.
Dedicated to good news ....