Shaun and Randy Rarick, Sunset. This moldy slide is almost 30 years old …..not sure who took the photo

One day I found myself surfing with Shaun at small Pupukea. I asked if he had ridden his wooden board – he said not yet, that he “had to practice for the contests” but he loved it.

1978 Wooden Boards™ for ‘da Prawn’ at Sunset. Shape: Bill Barnfield; Wood lamination: Gary Young. Padouk veneer with mahogany rails.

Probably one of the most beautiful multi-wood boards I have ever built, this was a 6-10 Clark Foam core, shaped by Steve Boehne. Tidepool shot on the North shore circa 1979 by Erik Aeder.
From the rails inward, the woods go: teak, bacote’, zebrawood, padouk (from the Adaman Islands, for you tsunami buffs) and English brown oak. I sure would like to know who has this board now!

The best part of any wood board building is when the first coat of epoxy (or resin or varnish) is applied - giving the wood grains depth and bringing out the contrasts and color intensities. This board had it all.

Bookmatching this many different veneers took time to find enough veneer for each side, select the order and to laminate. As each veneer was 1/42nd of an inch thick, sanding was always the high anxiety part of the process.

1979 Wooden Boards North Shore quiver: Ash, English Brown Oak, Padouk, Mahogany, Black Walnut, Teak, Zebrawood. Photo: Erik Aeder

At this stage I had developed the wood veneer laminating to where I could wrap the rails. Gluing and carving wooden rail strips was no longer necessary. Sometimes a little airbrush accented the rails and help set off the wood.

Ash on a Renny Yater shape, circa 1979 - Fort Point, just inside the Golden Gate Bridge. Owned by Phil 'Chick' Hoffman.
[ Webmaster note: "this board so rips!"...mike ]

I had some investors and moved the Wooden Boards™ workshop inland to an old refurbished Milking Barn where perhaps two hundred wood veneer boards were built until 1980.

Early ads in Surfer 1977-78. Kirby Ferris was proprietor of Live Water Surf Shop in Stinson Beach. The Dave Caldwell shaped fish is from the blank at right.

Upper left: stringerless EPS blanks, one became a “teak featherlite twin” fin with Ash rails – 6 lbs. It really was balanced on my finger, check the shadow. Outside the Marshall milking barn. 1978

Testing the “teak featherlite twin” 1978, Nor Cal.

Testing Wooden Boards™, Baja in the 1980’s.

Clark foam - big stringer cross section, wood veneer/epoxy skin, circa 1979. This piece is left if I cut 3/4 inch off the tail to glue on a wooden tailblock.

Foams and the search for lightness

In the late 1970’s one thing became obvious - the weight of the shaped Clark foam blank did not leave much room (in the weight category) for a durable skin. The first Wooden Boards™ were stronger, but slightly heavier. I began a practice of weighing a board at every step in the “wooding process” to try to get more in tune with how weight was “spent”. Shaped blanks were as light as 4 pounds for a 6-8 Clark with a 1/8th stringer to 7 - 9 pounds for a longer, thicker blank with a wider stringer.

Conventional wisdom said a bigger stringer made a stronger, less likely to break board. My thoughts were that if the wood in the stringer were in the skin and rails, the weight spent on the stringer would do double duty: provide a less dentable skin yet still contribute to breaking strength. This has proven to be a valid approach - in 1978 I said “Put the stringer in the rails.” This worked well, but made the boards rigid, and really hurt you if you got a rail in the shin.
(Today my motto is “Put the stringer in the skin!”)

Another approach: if one wants to make a lighter board, the blank would have to be put on a diet. Then lose the stringer too, if performance and strength were not compromised.

While Clark was working on lighter foams, the only real way to make a lighter board in those days was to cut back on the structure - smaller stringer, fewer fiberglass layers or lighter weight cloth. Lighter boards were good from a manufacturing viewpoint - less ‘glass meant less resin, lower material costs and of course - a more “disposable” board. It was not a manufacturing conspiracy- it was what the market demanded. Somehow lighter and or stronger materials would have to be found to increase durability.

Some, like Graphlite – the carbon fiber/Kevlar boards of the late 1970’s – chose the “hi-tech” approach. I think production problems and material costs got to them.

I felt wood and epoxy had advantages – so I continued with natural fiber composites. Part of this approach was the idea that less energy was required to make wood veneer. Another was wood was lighter and had stiffness before it was laminated. Compared to fiberglass, which was limp without resin, wood also used less resin when vacuum bagged.

From a cost angle, wood was an agricultural product and ‘glass had a lot of processing to make purified sand into fibers, then into yarn, then weave the cloth.

1978 shapes
Top – a Mark Angel shape. This blank became Wooden Boards ™ number 20.
Bottom – a sideways view of a stringerless Clark shape by Max McDonald. Max traveled to Marshall for a few days to shape in 1978 and showed we some moves he learned from Steve Boehne.

ABOVE: “Vertical chambers……. by drilling”
Clark blank in Marshall shop. 1978

Foams: Light makes right…………

The main factors in searching for new foam were: density or weight; shaping friendliness; water absorption; and resin compatibility.

In 1978 the lightest Clark made was ‘super light’. I don’t think ‘super blue’ had been done yet, so I searched for other foams to lighten up.

If you compare the cost of wheat to manmade materials, wheat is much more price stable over time. The idea is that agricultural products increased in price less than manmade materials.

One weight reduction experiment I tried was drilling holes through the shaped blank, but this lead to a reduction in durability - foot pressure dings were worse.

ABOVE: A hollow wood/epoxy skin experimental surfboard, influenced by experience gained in building Sailboards – circa 1981.

On left: Bottom shell with EPS cutaway foam blank. The nose is nearest.
Right: Deck shell tail is nearest.

A light board that worked, but alas – hollow boards get water in them, and EPS keeps it there.

The skins were laminated over the outside of a board that had no dings with a separator sheet to keep the skin from sticking to the board. The wood/epoxy shells with several crossing grain directions were strong and light. The only trick was getting it all together into a durable board