“It’s really hard to compete with that, as they have flooded the market and have well established, well known labels.” He’s right. You’ve heard of Channel Islands. You haven’t heard of Head-High Surfboards. If recognition was based solely on who puts more effort, blood, and life into their product, maybe the scenario would be reversed. But is recognition ever based on that?
It almost feels criminal to ask him, but I do it anyway: is hand shaping dying? “I think there will always be guys like myself that shape boards by hand, but if you are trying to really build a business, it’s becoming more and more difficult to do so and remain competitive. I hope to see hand shaping continue, but I think it will depend on the consumer. If people want cheap boards, that’s what the market will provide. In the end, you get what you pay for.”
I watch Scooter draw an explanation of concave into the dust with his finger on the beautiful blue walls drenched in approximated sunlight. My friend is sponging it all up, trying to retain everything. I’m still stuck thinking about tools. There’s saw dust in my beer. Or pieces of foam. Pieces of something, but I drink it anyway. I ask him if he ever wishes he got more recognition around here than he does. The east coast isn’t the best place for that.
“You know, I’ve paddled out before and seen people riding my shapes and that’s always gratifying.” The “Bone” logo is pretty simplistic, but yet identifiable. Just the word “bone” on an image of a bone. Maybe a femur. It gives the board a brand without being obnoxious about it. “I’ve seen people getting barreled on my boards and that’s about as much as I can ask for. The coolest thing though was paddling out and seeing a guy air out and there’s my logo just spinning there in slow motion. That’s about all the recognition I need.” This guy is a mouthful of humble pie.
Scooter’s really doing it for the reasons he said. For asshole kids like me who just want a good board for a fair price from someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone who knows more than they do. Someone who knows the waves around here. In the background I hear him say: “I put a little more rocker in the nose. You’re going to need it for out here when the waves pitch like they do.” Local knowledge. I wish I had it. It’s something you can’t buy from …Lost.
He’s been teaching us all night. He’s not just shaping my board; he’s showing me how to do it myself, step-by-step. I think about the cells in the microscope. The last of a species. I remember thinking to myself come on little guys, hang in there. All they could do was hope I cultured them correctly into new tubes. Scooter is different. He isn’t just shaping. He’s teaching. He’s keeping an art form above the surface. Refusing to let it drown. And if that means passing on your tricks to a couple of kids, if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes. Anything to keep it breathing. There are still people out there putting sweat into boards. People that actually give a damn about the customer and not the bottom line. A bumper sticker I’ve seen on highway 12 comes to mind: No pop outs.
The majority of mainstream board companies shit out well over 1,500 boards a year. While hand shapers try and distribute on a county scale, these beasts have gone global long ago. No contest. But, as is always true, you need to hear both sides of the story.
The monster of Firewire seems to have the dullest teeth, so I approach, avoiding eye contact. I know what you’ve done to the others. If a surfboard isn’t hand shaped, then how is it being made?
I am safely informed that all Firewire shapes start with a shaper or designer who works on the design both by computer and by hand. Currently Firewire is working with the likes of Nev Hyman, Dan Mann, Matt Biolos, Daniel Thomson, and several others. Foam master shapes are then created electronically to allow everyone involved to get an idea of the model’s shape without the time and cost of building an actual board.
Then ultra precise CNC machines cut these foam master blanks while deck and bottom skins are applied using a vacuum bag process optimized to maximize strength and minimize weight. The result of this is a finished blank ready for lamination.
“Then what?” I ask. “All the rest is done by hand,” explains Chris Cary of Firewire. “Glassing and sanding.” That’s right. By hand. “Every single shaper that contributes to Firewire has extensive hand shaping experience and none of them would be where they are without it. However, there are technologies today that limit how much shaping a shaper actually has to do. Most commercially available boards today are not hand shaped from a rough blank to final board anymore. They are machined down to a rough shape and hand finished.”
Chris tells me that while most of the boards in stores aren’t hand shaped from raw blank to finished product, most of them come from people who have slowly and painfully shaped hundreds, if not thousands, of boards.
That resonates with me. And it should. I should have been looking for it since the beginning. I saw it when I looked through the microscope at those cells that were about dead. But I’ve forgotten the biggest secret to avoiding death in the first place: evolving. Evolution. Life evolves. Those cells I watched in the lens went on to evolve into more sophisticated and better suited forms of life, why should board creation be any different? Can they be faulted for finding a more efficient way to survive? Can the shapers of Firewire be faulted for putting in thousands of hours on thousands of hand shaped boards to get where they are now? Isn’t that the goal of everything on the damn planet anyway? To progress? If hand shapers aren’t surviving anymore, it’s not the large board company’s fault. How can they be blamed for adapting? No. It’s our fault. If we want those hand shapes around, it’s on us.
