Williams of St Ives longboard

 This nice Williams longboard is very apt for its new owner - Alex Williams.
Alex acquired it when someone walked into the Truro museum exhibition and and said he had a local board for sale.
The board was made around 1967 by the Williams brothers James and Peter , and was sold through Keith Slocombe's surf shop in St Ives the Surfers Store . This is a slightly later board than the other Williams featured on the blog and has simple text logo with no artwork. This was possibly one of the last boards the Williams brothers made as there dont seem to be any ? entering the shortboard revolution of 67/68 onwards. Charles Williams and his Atlantic surfboards had this covered though.

 This board actually looks a really nice pig shape, very surfable and nicely foiled fin. The yellow bottom and black stripe arent original, but still look good. A good score Mr Williams.

Hot Stuff Rabbit model twin fin by Martin Wright

 This rare Rabbit Bartholomew model has been proudly owned for many years by my mate Ged . Its made by Vitamin Sea under licence to Hot Stuff Australia . Chops Lascalles at St Agnes was in charge of the Hot Stuff boards, and he and Martin Wright were the shapers. This one is by Martin Wright , and is a 6'0 . They got the licence in 1981 and probably produced boards for a few years, into the thruster era.

This  was a very popular shape, modelled on the MR twinnie, and copied the world over. As the early 80s progressed the nose got thinner and fin set ups varied to 2 1/2 fin and then tri fin , and sometimes two pairs of flyers ; and the swallow tail became a rounded square tail .

 Warner Bros. rip off logo with bugs bunny

 Rabbit and the late great Chops, 1981

Martin at Porthleven, photo by Alex Williams

 Hot stuff no 192 ? If they made so many how come they never turn up . You may have seen the one on ebay last week that went for a Bargain !

from Wavelength 1981. The Hot Stuff UK crew . Chops, Martin and the spray artist Andy Cranston .
Thanks to Ged .



Chappy Jenning from ENCYCLOPEDIA of SURFING videos on Vimeo.
Hot Stuff team rider Chappy Jennings . Footage from Kong's Island.
Wayne Bartholomew is 59! from ENCYCLOPEDIA of SURFING videos on Vimeo.
And here's Rab , the man himself

Boards for sale

 This Fulmar is for sale. Made in North Cornwall in the early 80s it has a nice 2 1/2 fin set up. A few old dings but it looks useable and you dont see that many Fulmars around. Mark is asking £80 , and its 5'9 x 2 3/4 x 20 . Email editor@forumpublications.co.uk  for details.

 Also for sale is this interesting late 60s stringerless Bilbo transitional . Its been in storage for a while but Im sure it could clean up nicely and probably surf nicely too. The owner says its in good condition for a board of its age (although there can be a wide scale of what people term good condition - but this board looks fine).
It does though have a replacement finbox and fin, after the original fin broke and he couldnt find another.
Email Stephen for details/ price at stephencatchick@gmail.com

Kejo by Kevin Cross and John Hall

That KEJO.......... Alex Williams asked if anyone was bidding for the KEJO on Ebay, and knowing how rare the first GB boards made by Kevin Cross are I thought that it would fetch big money , so went in with Alex 50/50 to win it .
 And that`s when our problems started, because the lady seller`s initial pleasure at our winning £510 bid turned into a phone call the following day to say that she had made a mistake because it was in fact her old dad`s board, and as he hadn`t given her permission to sell it she wanted to keep it. From various phrases she used we smelt a rat.
 It slowly emerged that her dad knew nothing about surfing, but had bought the board for peanuts in a car-boot sale. So why was he not thrilled with the sum we bid ? Then the lady wanted us to agree that we would not tell Ebay what was happening. Much later it emerged that after the auction was over they had received an offer £50 higher than our bid, and wanted to accept that .
 We told her that her greatest worry was not Ebay but legal action as 1) you can`t sell something you don`t own, and 2) we now had a simple contract between us which was enforceable ie., there was an offer to sell, an agreement to buy, and a sum of money involved. The whole process had been on Ebay so there were plenty of witnesses including Ebay themselves. After a few days of talk they reluctantly said we could have the board, but would not divulge the name of the 3rd person . When I picked it up `dad` said he had been furious when he was told it could make more, and he suggested that I was in fact a dealer who had robbed him as I was going to sell it on at a huge profit !

 Anyway, getting on to the board ( at last ) it`s 5`11" x 22 1/2" x 3 3/4" thick - a fat little *** which brought 1970 vividly back to me, as boards got so short from the 9`+ of 1967 that we thought we needed extreme thickness to give them some `float`. This led to the bizarre sight of some very good surfers - and trust me, no-one else could ride them - trying to sit up straight while wave-waiting, then toppling slowly sideways into the water. Kejos are the first boards made by John Hall ( shaper ) and Kevin Cross ( glasser ) after they arrived in N. Devon from Oz in 1970. John went on to shape a lot of Tikis, Kevin to own 3 more labels including Creamed Honey. This looks like one of the earliest Kejos as the seahorse isn`t on the logo yet. It looks like it`s all been drawn by hand with Indian ink on tissue, something which Groves, Fitz and me all did before we finally got them printed. No doubt Kev. Cross can tell us ?
( Actually Kevin has been in touch about this Kejo saying '' that board plan shape was taken off one I made at Clive Barber's shop in South Africa and brought to the UK. It was a great board'' )
 The usual dings & damaged nose and tail will be repaired properly, and the ` paper-jam ` fin restored, as like many others it`s been resin-ed in, this time using grey car filler. The only other Kejo I know of is the slightly later sideslipper owned by Pete Newman , an altogether more sophisticated board in both design and finish . But we are delighted with our board , Alex as he`s a Devonian, and me, part-owning another Kejo 44 years after the first.
 Tony Cope / Alex Williams.

So there we go, thanks to Tony for the words and photos. What looks a relatively modest little board now was at the cutting edge of modern surfboards back then; made by two Aussies who helped keep surfboards in the UK on a par with what was going on in Australia, South Africa and the US.  Kevin and John also went onto shape hundreds of quality boards here mainly for Tiki and Creamed Honey in the 70s - so we have a lot to thank them for.

And also on the subject of ebay bidding - play nice . If you don't win the auction don't go to the darkside of collecting ; respect the other bidders.

Pete Newman's slightly later Kejo Powerboard s-deck , with more professional decals and finish.

60 surf cars

Surf cars of the '50s and '60s from ENCYCLOPEDIA of SURFING videos on Vimeo.
yes please...

Bilbos by CJ

 This big and beautiful Bilbo was recently acquired by Paul . At 10ft 6 its longer than most boards of the time (circa 1966/67) , shown by the fact it needed some high density foam added at the tail to increase the length of the standard blank. The previous owner bought it in 1971 for £5 from an Aussie traveller who had come up to north Devon with it from Cornwall.
The shape is by Chris Jones and shows the develpoment of his tail shape which would become a feature of his sought after CJ models of '68 - '70. The rails are bladey and 50 50 , the fin refined and manouverable . One of the rarities of this board is the beautiful cloth inlay. Flower power had definitely hit the Bilbo factory.
Although fabric was quite common in their popouts, they didnt use it much in the custom boards. I guess it depended on the customers taste or imagination. the dims are 10'6 x 23 x 3 .Thanks to Paul for the photos.

 This CJ model was on ebay last week. At 7'3 is quite far along the develpoments of the late 60s and must be made around 1969/70 . The seller put its date as ' looks like it was made in the late 70s / early 80s but could be as early as 1965 ' - so keeping all options open then .
This board looks good fun although the fin had been refoiled and is quite far forward so might be a bit slippy.

Jersey Surfboard Club auction

 The JSC is having a charity surfboard auction starting 7pm on friday night with 10 % going towards raising money for the Euro juniors . There will be quite a few vintage boards for sale, and not surprisingly Freedoms from the 70s and 80s. For details email Ashley - ashley.87.johnson@hotmail.co.uk

 Early 70s Freedom and El Tico bellyboards

 Mid 70s Freedom

Other boards including 80s Freedoms and a Semmens stinger (presumably Ocean Magic) .

Board for sale

 Gee is selling this very rare PM singlefin . Made by Alan MacBride and Chops Lascalles when Mac was at Piran around 75/76. It was built in Aggie as a sideline for Mac to get some extra income and for the newly arrived Chops to learn his trade .This was before Chops had started shaping for Tris.
It was shaped my Mac and glassed by Chops. Apprently around 30 PM's were made, all similar gunny shapes to this. The board is in Newquay, offers to Gee at geepiper@yahoo.co.uk  .