Hot Stuff singlefin

This is a cool early 80s Hot Stuff singlefin, 5'10 and probably made in Newquay. These Hot Stuffs were mainly shaped by Chops or Martin Wright and artwork done by Andy Cranston. The board was found by Stephane in Brittany, a long way from his home in Biarritz; this is his third British Hot Stuff - all found in France ! I don't see too many of these over in England so Stephane is doing really well in finding them, and all great condition too.
As you probably know Hot Stuff was from Australia, with top team riders Rabbit Bartholomew, Kong and Chappy .Tad Ciastula got the licence to shape them over here and sold quite a few - mainly because Rabbit was so popular when he came over to surf in the early 80s Fistral comps.

This board has a classic spray and nice glassed in rainbow fin ; signed B524 175cm . Thanks to Stephane for the photos. Stephane takes part in the Vintage surf club France's meets which can be seen at http://vintagesurfclub.blogspot.com/

1981. I saw Chops out in the surf today near Hayle .On a board shaped like a woman.

Rabbit 1980

Rabbit, Shaun and MR in the 1977 masterpiece Freeride.

Shaun's boards

These boards belong to Shaun, who owns the Trebarwith Strand surf shop in North Cornwall. Over the past few years he has amassed an impressive collection of British boards to hang in the rafters of the surf shop, and these are some of his favourites. Shaun's collecting started after finding an old board at the back of the shop which had been used as a sign. He has a special affinity with Clyde Beatty's Lightwave label after sharing a house with the Lightwave crew in the 80s. If you visit the shop you can see more of his collection.

Creamed Honeys by Kevin Cross , a Graham Nile and a very clean Bilbo.

Mint Freedom thruster by Bobby Male, Lightwave by Clyde Beatty and two late 70s Tris' probably by Hillsey. My friend used to own this Lightwave and I remember surfing it around Falmouth 10 + years ago !

Thanks to Shaun for the photos. A classic collection of boards.

The three R's

Randy Rarick on Surfboard Restortion from Arico Productions on Vimeo.

Randy Rarick has made a name for himself in the last few years as a board restoration guru, and his Hawaiian surf auctions, which are a good place to sell some of his restored boards, have become the premier date for wealthy collectors to buy classic and important boards. Randy syas there are three r's in his business - repair, refurbish or restore. Sure we'd all like to find perfect condition boards all the time, but the reality is they usually show scars and bruises from their life. In the UK often the dings come from storage in a garage rather than big surf, and we're lucky in that quite a few people in the 70s/80s would buy a board, find out they couldn't surf it and leave it in the attic for 30 years.
There's always going to be a bit of disagreement about old boards having a glass off restoration, and the result is they are a perfect re-creation , with the only original bit being the foam and the shape. I think the board loses it soul and its stories through major restoration like this, but then again if a board is that trashed it will never surf again whats the harm. You get the feeling that the restored boards may never surf again anyway, they have become a valuable investment. Having said all that ,Randy does a beautiful job using the original techniques.
I can't see many glass off restorations happening over here - only a handfull of British boards are worth a serious amount of money,- and thats usually if they're in great original condition.

You might remember my Tris fish project. Its a board that had lots of weird add ons, including a car paint frenzy, a mast fitting, two mystery big narrow fin boxes and a non original single fin.

Jase at Leven surfboards has been helping to nurse it back to health and its half way through 'refurbishment' as Randy would say. Replacement keel fins are back in the original position, two huge and heavy fin boxes are now out and replaced with blown foam. Dings are fixed, a really thick non original gloss coat on the underside has been sanded back to get the weight down. The board was the heaviest 6 ft board I've ever lifted ! £70 spent so far which isn't bad since the fins were made from scratch , from a template from original Tris 70s keels. Sanding off the red and blue lines was a hard decision but it was obvious they weren't original and were put on to hide the original keel scars. All that remains now is to hide the white repairs, and I may do a cloth inlay over the fin box scars. Then gloss and polish and she's ready for the Hawaiian surf auction / 3 ft Godrevy - whichever is more likely.

This is what the board looked like when I bought it a few months ago. Why did I buy it ? Because UK 70s fishes are rare as rocking horse sh1t ...

Newquay 80s twin fins

Alex has just acquired these two classic Newquay made twin fins, and they were acquired the best way - not through ebay but through old friends and connections who wanted the boards passed on to someone who appreciated them.


The Many Returns is made by Dave Farrow, who still shapes under this label today. This board is an example of the quality short and wide twinnies that were being produced in the surf capital in the early 80s by Many Returns, Ocean Magic, Vitamin Sea and Wavekraft, all successful makers.


Dave started making boards at east Runton with friend Bob Browsall, and then went on to start his Karma label, a few of which can be seen on the Norfolk surfboard collector page here



In 1983 Dave moved to Newquay, working as a shaper/glasser for Hott alongside Newquay legends CJ and Mac. By then he had started his Many Returns label and has been based in Newquay ever since.

Here's another Ocean Magic by twin fin master Nigel Semmens , and the logo says 'european designs' , probably a reminder that Nigel was European champion. This is one of those rare 2 1/2 fin set ups which marks the transition towards the thruster way of thinking, which was the industry standard set up until the retro revival mixed things up again. This is a high performance board of the time, around 1981 or 82, and uses super light Clark foam.

This is an article on Nigel by the late John Conway -

'It is a rare combination of talent when surfing and shaping skills are embodied in one human being. Surfing is 90 percent natural talent; surfer who have to work hard on their style look mechanical. Shaping, on the other hand, is 10 percent natural talent and 90 percent technique. Like any handcraft it has to be learnt.

My first encounter with Nigel was as a young kid. He marched purposefully into my surfboard factory and asked me to shape him a board. He filled in his order form, paid his £5 deposit and left the final details to me. Over the years I have made more than 2,500 boards and I must admit I don't remember many of them, but I do remember the board I made for the young Semmens. I had no small templates at the time so I scaled down a version of my own board. It turned out to be a sweet little shape. I was so stoked I gave it a custom colour job and special showroom polish. Upon completion Nigel picked up his board, paid his £25 balance and the 13- year-old started a love affair with the Atlantic Ocean that would carry him to the very pinnacle of surfing and shaping in Europe.

Nigel took up the sport in 1970 and by 1973 he was on the podium at the English Championships taking second place in the juniors. In 1993 he was again on the podium taking the English Masters title. The many victories in the 20- year span are punctuated with two very special events: winning the European championships title at Thurso, Scotland, in 1981; and the World Amateur championships in France in 1982, Where Nigel finished seventh in the world.

As the twin fin era drew to a close and the thruster made it’s debut, Nigel Semmens was ready, at 25 years of age, to concentrate all his efforts in developing his talent as a shaper, and make Ocean Magic Britain’s leading factory. Under the watchful eye of shaping mentor and master craftsman Peter Mooney McAllum, the NS label kicked off.

Nigel started work in the Ocean Magic factory at 18. He served an apprenticeship with Mooney, and after two years of dust dirt and resin he made it in to the shaping room.

To start with, his influence in the single-fin era came from Richard Harvey. On a trip to Hawaii at the age of 18, he came back with a Ben Aipa stinger that Ben had shaped specially for Nigel. In those days British surfers were dependent on travelling surfers visiting Britain or British team members like Nigel bringing back boards for up-to-date designs. These designs were adapted to British waves. From the moment Nigel channelled his concentration into shaping, Ocean Magic took off, and after a couple of seasons and a move to Newquay it became a professional surfboard factory. In recent years Nigel has worked alongside guest shapers of world renown like Maurice Cole, Wayne Lynch, Greg Brown, Ned McMann, and Jeff Johnson.

In 1987 Ocean Magic opened their retail store in Newquay. For the first time surfers could go and choose from racks full of brand new gleaming NS boards, or place a custom order, in the relaxed atmosphere of a retail environment rather than the ever-busy factory.

In 87 the whole surfing industry in Britain went up a gear and Ocean Magic was there at the forefront. Nigel had always surfed with his team riders, translating their surfing style into the board he shaped for them on an improving performance curve. He recalls that his best relationship with any of his riders was with Randall Davies. They had an understanding that culminated in Ocean Magic’s first financial sponsorship package of any surfer, and this surfer-shaper relationship peaked when Randall won the British title in 1994.

Looking at the list of NS team rider over the years, it’s a who’s who of champions; not just shortboard riders, but seniors, masters, longboarders and groms...... they've all won titles on NS surfboards.'

Childrens annuals

Thanks to Martin for sending in these pages from '50s & '60s childrens' annuals. For some kids this was their first introduction to surfing. Even though the articles are about Hawaiian surfers it could have got groms from Marazion to Morcombe to Middlesborough fired up enough to get their mum to buy them a bellyboard and give it a go.

Little fistral yesterday

Its been a week of classic - and pounding swells ,and yesterday was no different with a heavy and clean swell hitting Cornwall's north coast. Graham took these shots yesterday afternoon at Little Fistral (well not that little). Tow in riders included Russ Winter and Spencer Hargreaves scoring their home break.
Gray is looking for Wavelength mags no 27 & 88 in excellent condition for cash or swap , email him at grahamlooker@googlemail.com .

Gray says this guy got munched. Thanks for the photos Gray.

Infinity singlefin in France

Here's another old British board which has made its way over to France. Its owned and surfed by Jean-Christophe, who wanted to know a bit more about it.
It was made on the south coast for Bob Groves' Infinity surfboards label, made in the very early 70s. Bob had started making boards in the early 60s and was part of Groves-Davies surfboards. He perfected the art of blowing his own blanks in the 60s and supplied other shapers as well as selling diy surfboard kits to the general public.
Rod Sumpter became involved after he had left his sponsers at Bilbo and wanted a board shaped for the '68 Worlds in Puerto Rico, which Bob made. In return Infinity could produce some Sumpter signature models. Jean-Christophe's board is signed MAC , could this possibly be Alan MacBride from Newquay, another Bilbo employee ? I emailed Bob but got no reply so its a mystery for the moment.
The board looks a nice early 70s shape,around 7 ft and not too skinny so good for South coast waves . Classic artwork and text font on the logo.





I've just had an email from Bob Goves which helps explain a few things about the shaper and why the board is in France -

''Alan has never shaped any boards for me, when he was in France I was in Newquay and when he came back I was starting my foam blanks & board business in Fareham then later in Bournemouth. I had an order for 40 boards from a buyer in Biarittz one year and had Rodney shape up most of them so I can only conclude this board is one of those. I did use a method of numbering boards made, numbers to letters and the M A C is probably that. As 40 odd years have passed I'm sorry to say I can't recall at the moment just what the number is. Sorry about that. Thanks for the attachments, its great to know that there are still some of my boards around. ''

Bob Groves blowing some thick blanks

The Endless Winter

This looks a very good film about British surfing history meets British surfing now. Lots of clips from the archives and interviews with legends. There was at least one documentary made on surfing by the BBC in the late 60s /early 70s which some of these clips must come from. Anyone got a copy of the whole thing ?




'Level Films have just released the trailer for upcoming surf documentary, The Endless Winter: A Very British Surf Movie.
It follows British pro surfers, Mark 'Egor' Harris and Mitch Corbett, as they travel the country surfing some of Britain's most iconic spots.
Along the way, they meet several of the key figures who contributed to its existence and substantial growth of surfing in the 1960s and 1970s.
It aims to uncover history of surfing in Britain and discusses the resulting, unlikely evolution of a British surf scene throughout turbulent times of social unrest and cultural change.'

early 80s Tris

Michelle emailed with a story of this Tris by Hillsey made in around 1983 -

''found this vintage tris in Camborne, it has been propped up against a bedroom wall for about 15 -20 years as the original owner moved to Kenya. It is in mint condition with just a few pressure dents it also has the original cosmic leash still on it which was made in penzance which i will have to replace before taking it out. as far as i can gather it was made in 1982. ''

So for 15-20 years this classic sat in a timewarp in Camborne. Luckily its prospects have improved and it now has a loving owner. All that time without use has kept it in amazing condition and kept the neon spry job bright and fresh. I'm loving the early 80s computer type vanishing point graphics. Its a nice shape too with small swallow tail and 2 or 3 fin set up; shaped by Mark Hills who was the main Tris shaper in the early 80s and co-owner.It was made in Redruth, not a million miles away from Camborne.

Hillsey

Pete Jones 1982.

Teeps in 1983. He was the Tris sprayer from the late 70s - early 80s. Photos Alex Williams.