Iconoclastic wave tools. . . .

Iconoclastic: Greek for "image-breaking", is the deliberate destruction within a surfing culture of the culture's own religious hood ornament icons and other symbols of noseriding or pop outs

People who engage in or support surfing iconoclasm are called surficonoclasts, a heroic term that has come to be applied figuratively to any brave person who breaks or disdains established surfing dogmata or ignorant conventions.

Conversely, people who revere or venerate surfing myths and legends are called stupid iconolaters. In a Byzantine context they are known as duped iconodules or performance iconophiles , they can often be identified by their frequent use of the word 'Simmons'

adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm

A surfing iconoclast :

13 footer Pipeline Challenge board update

Here she is, the 'Queen of Diamonds' Future Primitive at Rhino's place in Honolulu, ready to go with the new fin.

Resolute Salmon 12 footer under construction

We're building three of these paulownia 12 foot Resolute Salmon tunnel fin plus one surfboards, one for Garrett Mc Namara, one for a Great Lakes surfer and one for ourselves as we have retired the original redwood 'Salmon' for a while.

The Resolute Salmon has been clocked at over 30mph in average head high beach break conditions, and is a brilliant paddler for hunting down those shifting peaks and catching them early. The board is equippped with a 6 inch diameter tunnel and a cutaway spitfire fin.

Here's an internal panel for the first one being constructed from paulownia today:









Here's the original board being ridden with a bulb tipped flex fin:

Controlling an SUP in the whitewater

The fact that SUP's are confined to small surf or breaks with easy paddle out channels hasn't been publicised, but it is obviously true. What bothers me is that people use them at breaks where there's an easy paddle out in conditions where they can't control the boards when caught inside, that's wrong and negates the 'waterman' image which the marketing tries to project.

Keep in mind that I have been riding a huge variety of very large boards for many years, and have been building and riding longboards of 27 inches wide and more long before the SUP craze. I don't wear a leash and therefore have a very good understanding of what it takes to control a big longboard in surf up to 4x overhead.


For big boards to be controllable they need the following features:

1) Weight. For a board to be rolled successfully it needs to be heavy enough to drive the rider underwater, a minimum weight of 25 pounds is needed although it does depend upon how much wetsuit buoyancy the rider has. 35 to 70 pounds works better.

2) A thin board with a low frontal area. Boards which approach 4 inches thick are a bane when rolling under as they catch the force of the wave too easily . That's why buoyancy is better distributed over a longer board, and is one reason why the very short thick high buoyancy SUP's are always going to be hopeless at getting through whitewater

3) A rail which is thin enough to be gripped strongly. With hands of my size ( average I presume) a board thickness of more than 2.25 inches makes the board much harder to hold on to as the grip strength decreases when the hand has to be opened up more gripping the rail

4) Two hands available.

5) A helmet. Not absolutely vital but helps a lot when getting hammered while rolling under big sets as the board can be pulled down on to the head increasing grip strength enormously


This 65 pound 17 footer is easier to roll under waves than a thick lightweight board of SUP dimensions

Jac comments on the 'Future Primitive' fin

"I love the shape man. It looks like an Aztec hatchet. I put together a parallel profile fish and really learned a lot. Almost every step I was thinking to myself, "so that's why he does that."

I don't think people really understand what you are doing with your shapes. But your building style has this romantic low tech aboriginal feel to it that really catches my interest. Your stuff is anything but low tech. You make me think hard about what I am doing when I make a board.

Jac"

Alaia blanks heading to the UK for the Loose-fit shaping day

23 hand made Paulownia alaia blanks:


Wrapped up and ready to fly

Twisted underground ninja olo surfboard dude article

"For the last 84 years underground tree Ninja artisan craftsman Roy Stewart, 43, GSOH, dog loving, LHD, well mannered, NS, with a clean driving licence, based in New Zealand surf guy, has been recreating boards of. . . .. "


http://www.surftwisted.com/roy-stewart-tree-breeder-tree-killer-and-olo-surfboard-dude/


What can one say ? . . . thankyou to team twisted for the compliments !

Oh and that isn't Roy's ear.

Surfboard flex

The very best way to have a board flex is throughout the board not just in the tail. The way we build wooden boards since 1995 is to make them flex throughout, this is achieved via a suitable length to thickness ratio and a parallel profile which prevents excessive ( stiff ) thickness through the middle of the board. t

Just having the tips flex is not as good, it won't give the board drive and projection like a board which bends like a bow, and it will generally make an inefficient accelerating rocker under load.

The Blake/Jensen/Fishbone method isn't ideal for flexible boards as it isn't designed to handle the stresses involved and is better as a thicker stiff structure.

Generally our more flexible boards deflect about 2 to 4 inches on a land test using the rider's body weight.

Here's a flex test on a longboard: http://www.olosurfer.com/flexy.wmv





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Makaha 12-9 feature in the Robb Report luxury goods magazine

In old Hawaii the pleasurable and noble pursuit of ocean swell gliding on long olo boards was reserved for Royalty. It was the ultimate in surfing pleasure. After a life time of surfing shorter alaia boards the great Hawaiian athlete Duke Kahanamoku returned to olo board riding, and described riding Castle surf in Hawaii on an olo board as the greatest experience of his life, even greater than winning his Olympic gold medals in swimming.
Roy Stewart of Power surfboards is dedicated to a new era of avant garde olo board riding, which he describes a uniquely luxurious experience. Riding a modern olo board like the 'Makaha' 12-9 is about pleasing the physical and emotional senses. It is both a calming meditation and a physical workout, it heals and nourishes the human psyche at the deepest and most subconscious levels while exercising both the mind and the physical bodily systems. It is a return to what Roy describes as 'Pure surfing' .
Creating the Makaha model was an exercise in design purity. The harmonious pure surfing glide synergy of wave, surfboard and rider requires a ruthlessly efficient waveriding tool. With such a perfect vehicle one's natural bodily actions are all that is required for success, making the board easy to ride, a kindly guide to the beginner and yet eminently capable of taking the experienced surfer to wonderful new places.

Beauty follows perfect form, thus the incredible 'art brut' visual quality of the Makaha with its enticing blend of luscious curves and starkly tangential military shapes is a natural result of achieving the design goal of gliding those waves further, faster, and with the greatest of ease !

Empress wood is the surfboard material of choice, due to its high strength to weight ratio, its water resistance, flexibility, and its excellent acoustic properties which enhance the resonance of the hollow surfboard structure. It is curiously appropriate that a wood so beloved of Asian and European Royalty is ideal for the olo boards of the 'Sport of Kings' .
Technically speaking the Power surfboards Makaha model is a hollow parallel profile torsion box constructed of over 400 individually crafted pieces of Empress wood engineered into a traditionally planked complex multi directional lattice of internal framing, creating a resonant pretensioned and subtly flexible hull which drives an integral low pressure annular wing enhanced fin system.

Specifications:

Length 12 feet 9 inches
Weight 30 to 35 pounds
Price includes a custom 'surf tubes' cargo series travel bag by Geoff Perry.

Surfing Clyde St Mount Maunganui May 2009