When you mention surfing the first place to come to mind is probably not the UK but maybe you should think again. Our small island nation (small in global terms) has a illustrious surfing history having some great surfers and producing some world class hardware. The UK has some 250,000+ surfers hitting waves from Scotland to Cornwall. I come into this story when in the mid 90's after years of traveling to Cornwall to surf I decided to make a permanent move there to spend more time in the water. So after making the necessary changes to my life I made the 270 mile move from the landlocked county of Berkshire to the surf town of Newquay.
On arrival I had no real plans and spent my first summer mostly on the beach on a Eat, Sleep, Surf repeat merry go round, this did nothing to help pay my way in life but my surfing improved in leaps and bounds. Eventually I had to face facts that being a beach bum stoner was although a cool existence it needed to be funded so a job became order of the day. Through a friend "bugs" I was introduced to a local shaper (surfboard maker), bugs had been working for him as a airbrush artist spraying designs on boards. The shaper turned out to be a local legend with a long history in the industry, CJ or Chris Jones had been English and European surfing champion and had become known as one of the best board builders in the world. We got to chatting and really hit it off, we talked about my time on the tools in the building industry and that I was trained as a fine carpenter, he said a lot of my skills would be adaptable to surfboard production with the outcome being he offered me a job, initially as a surfboard finisher this involved coating the shaped foam board in fiber glass and sanding to a smooth finish.
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I learn't all aspects of this skill from the old master from modern techniques to old methods as shown above, this is from a feature about Chris and his factory. I picked up these new skills quite quickly and under CJ's tuition became a bit of a expert and before I knew it had developed a bit of a reputation for my resin work. Along side glassing boards I also became a bit of a dab hand at making fins ending up producing my own signature models.
CJ one day came to me and said I needed to expand my skill level in the business and did I want to become a shaper? well "yes" of course I did this was considered to be the premier position in the industry and some shapers were looked on as gods. Over the following weeks I followed CJ in the shaping bay as he taught me what he had learned over decades, I was already comfortable with all the tools used for the job as they were generally carpentry tools and I have good hand to eye coordination so it was all about technique.
After about a month of attempts with CJ jumping in to bail me out when I was going off track, we decided it was time for my first shape, I said I wanted to do a traditional longboard, not the easiest thing to attempt but it was the style I was into so with some trepidation I pulled a 9'6" blank (polyurethane foam core) and set about the task. First job was using a power plane to set the contour and curve of the bottom, next set out, mark and cut out the template giving the basic shape of the finished board. From here on it's all hand tools, rasps, sanding blocks and abrasive gauze cloth to fine tune the shape. Below is a photo of me getting close to finished, stupid grin is a optional part of the job but I was clearly happy with myself, it's a very bad phone photo of a real photo if anyone remembers them but it's the only image I have of this moment.
After finishing shaping it was into the spray shop, not my usual domain but I wanted to do this board from beginning to end so I kept it simple with red rails only, from this point onward's I was already on point so a couple of days work and I had made my first of what would become many surfboards. Again apologies for the quality of the photo and my even cheesier grin, in my defense there's only a small number of people in the world that get the chance to do this and for me this was the next step in my surf career complete.
I continued to work alongside CJ for many years and will be eternally grateful to him for giving me a way into this industry. The knowledge he passed onto me can't be found in books it was learned hands on through decades of surfboard development I just got lucky when a good boss and now a great friend took me under his wing and gave me all that he knew. Like all little chicks I eventually flew the nest and set up my own factory with CJ's blessing, continued support and advice.
And the legend himself where you'll always find him in a dusty back room contemplating his next board.
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