Surfing in America
Male: Wave sliding an early form of surfing had been a passion of Hawaiian kings for centuries. Historians believe the sport mixed religion, fitness and on a big wave day a little wagering.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, a Honolulu teenager named Duke Kahanamoku started teaching Waikiki tourists how to surf.
Another Hawaiian named George Freeth gave a set of surfing demonstrations throughout Southern California.
And then in 1912, the Duke dropped in on Huntington Beach California after winning a good medal at the Stockholm Olympics.
The HB locals cheered as he showed them how to build a board, catch a wave then ride it back to shore. A star was born.
Between the wars, mainland surfing grew as a cool California cult. Lifeguards would ride paddle boards and early surfers would build their own 75-pound planks from Redwood.
This eventually gave way to the lighter balsa wood boards of the mid50s.
Hap Jacobs; I’m Hap Jacobs and I’ve been doing this probably since the early 50s. Actually it kind of started with balsa wood.
Balsa wood was very hard to shape. We had to glue it all up ourselves and it was quite a chore.
Male: But an anachronistic engineer named Bob Simmons pioneered a board built from Styrofoam, plywood, and fiberglass. Then Hobie Alter started building and selling his own foam boards.
Hap Jacobs: The 60s came along and we had foam. The foam was much lighter. Velzy and I said this will never work but it completely took over.
Male: Visionary board builders like Dale Velzy and Hap Jacobs led the way, an innovative wetsuit builders like the Maestro brothers of Formosa Beach helped make the early sport a year round worldwide possibility.
Fashion and media still plot the tides of the movement and right now that tide has floated the surf industry to annual sales worth more than $2 billion.
Scott Daley: The rate of growth over the next five or ten years will be significant. It’s directly related to the media that surf is receiving. This has kind of mystical essence that goes along with people’s thought process in association through riding waves.
Male: But the magic wand for the whole scene is the surfboard itself and the way, they’re still made by hand. Surfers may search for the ultimate wave but for board guys the sweet spot is the surfers other quest, the ultimate board.
Male: The quest for the ultimate board I think everybody has already had it and they sold it or broke it. Almost every surfer was saying you know I wish I would have kept this board.
Scott Daley: You can get a brand new surfboard and it creates this element of new life. Life and spring and everything that go with in your surfboard provided that it works for you is something that it inspires your surfing.
Male: So how does one build this thing that change so much and yet remain the same for over 50 years. Rule number one, always wear a respirator. Surfboards start with a costumer. Their age, their weight, how they surf, and how they want their board to look. Board makers take these factors and then shape a factory formed Styrofoam blank using sure formed files, spoke shaves and a lot of sanding.
To strengthen the board three coats of resin-impregnated fiberglass are laminated to the blank, two for the top, one for the bottom. The board is sanded. Cosmetics are added along the way whether classical crazy, a board’s look is critical to the customer but utterly meaningless to its performance.
A hot coat of thin resin is added. The board is sanded once again using slit polymer waxes the board is finished sanded and then polished out and ready to be delivered. Well surfing’s current explosion is threatened by a flood of cheap mass produced boards. For now the people who make the boards are the people who use the boards.
Male: There’s no place you can go to learn how to shave. The people involved are usually here because they love the sport of surfing. They came because an extra ride in a wave is the ultimate thing that you could do.
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