NINE LIGHTS "OPEN FACE SANDWICH" #2

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The second stringerless "Open Face" composite sandwich constructed board with flextail, made for me by Jeff Beck at Nine Lights, waiting for a tinted glass job. If interested in the details that go into the construction of the "Open Face Sandwich" Flextail board, they can be read on the post of "Open Face Sandwich" #1. "Open Face Sandwich" #2 will be glassed with Resin Research's 2020 epoxy to compare the overall board flex to "Open Face" #1 which was glassed with Resin-X.
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The deck of balsa wood "skin" composited over shaped, stringerless, EPS foam core with balsa rails.
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The foam bottom, with balsa rails, and balsa tail block. Although hard to see in the picture, the wood of the rails ends where the leading edge of the front fins will be to produce the flextail.
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THE MAN IN THE PINK WETSUIT

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Gray, shine, offshore, or onshore— Hell will freeze over the day he wears any amount of black rubber. Always laughin' and keeping others around him doin' the same. You know you're in for good times when ya pull up next to his van in the beach lot.
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TONGUE-LIKE FOOT

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A close look at one of the beached clams and its foot, found two days ago.
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Sure am glad I don't have to lay down and use my tongue to push my body as a way of gettin' around.
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GOOD DAY FOR THE SEAGULLS

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While it was fun but slim pickins' for waves this morning with the big swell gone and the new one yet to really fill in, there was a littoral feast of swell battered creatures washing up on the shoreline.
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SUNDAY RISE

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Took a drive checkin' local spots last Sunday afternoon.
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More photos will be added to this post later.
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ARE WHAT YA DO

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Glasser, Terence Brandt, with his resin stalactites. Took 3 years to form— lots 'o boards in those drips.
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SHADOW FALLS OFF THE MIRROR

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Two different looks of last night's eclipse as the Moon regained and reflected Sun's light.
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My wife and I didn't know to expect the eclipse last night (somehow missed the heads up at Wine & Woodsmoke). We happened to step outside when the Moon had regained a crescent of light and she said, "Wasn't the Moon nearly full last night?" To then process and realize what was goin' on, rather then be told, was a magic way to experience the phenomenon— As if to feel an exciting moment of self-reliance and relieving independence from the sense dulling bombardment of the Communication Age. To feel a rush of primitive senses that I unintentionally diluted as soon as I started fiddling with camera settings. But then that's always been one of my inner battles... total immersion vs. documentation. With documentation being a form of collecting, and collecting, I think, being a primal urge in and of itself... it's a hard battle to win... probably because there's no need to. Better to think of some inner battles as rallies rather than strict matches, I guess.
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GRAYSCALE

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Photos from today— "Same Day, Same Beach Town" installment #2:
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CLEARING THE WEBS

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With all the things that can weigh on one's mind, it was nice to paddle out on a Valentine's lunch break and only have to think one thing, "left or right?"
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As can be seen, I tend to favor the left.
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CROSS SECTIONS

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Same day, same hour, same beach town:
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CLOWN MACABRE

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A low-grade, low-fi, cheesey, short flick made sometime around 1999 I called CLOWN MACABRE, recently re-edited to the song Friends Don't Let Friends Win by Hella.
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Approx. run time: 3.5 minutes
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DOG EAT CAT, CAT EAT...

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drawn in 1992. click to enlarge.
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SURF BUMPS

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Quite the odd piece of driftwood.
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IF IT WASN'T FOR SURFING WOULD I EVER STAND?

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Oh yeah, there's always showering, contemplating at the fridge, cookin' da food, brushing the teeth, taking a leak, pumpin' the gas, and... shopping for stuff.
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If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to check out The Story of Stuff. It's worth the movie load wait.
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NINE LIGHTS "OPEN FACE SANDWICH" PROTOTYPE W/ FLEX TAIL

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Two sessions on this 5'4" and so far I'd say this is the most exciting feeling board I've ever rode.
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A prototype board by Jeff Beck of Nine Lights Surfboards. It utilizes a composite sandwich method of construction of balsa wood over foam, however only the deck and the rails of the stringerless e.p.s. foam has the outer composite of balsa wood. The bottom inner edge of the wood rails stop at the chine edge and from there the entire bottom underneath the tinted cut lap and opaque sea-foam-green pigmented glass job is only foam, no balsa wood— Thus the "Open Face Sandwich" variation of a composite sandwich board. Also the length of the wood rails end at the leading edge of the front fins area. By removing the wood rails i-bar like rigidity from the tail area, combined with the Open Face bottom, adds flex to the tail. The balsa wood layer of the deck covers the entire width from rail to rail and length of the board from the nose to the pins of swallow tail. That layer of deck wood running over the tail area seems to create a really responsive, reactive spring in the flex tail.
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On top of all that, the board was glassed with the flexible Resin-X (urethane-based). Jeff experienced some technical and aesthetic difficulties to glassing with the Resin-X (for example, as seen in the irregular color and edges of the cut laps) that present a learning curve to working with it, but one thing's for sure... it is flexy.
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The Open Face Sandwich & flex tail construction combined with the Resin-X and you can really feel the tail load up with flex under your back foot during the first half of a turn and "snap" back to it's original tail rocker during the second half that creates an acceleration out of turns I've never felt before. The word that best describes the feeling to me is INSANE!!! I've really never felt anything like it out of a board before.
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The "Open Faced" foam bottom.
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A section of the tinted balsa wood deck and rail.
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Twin with small trailer fin set up.
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Sometime soon Jeff will be shaping another Open Face Sandwich flex tail board, but will glass it entirely with epoxy resin in order to learn just how much of the functional flex is coming from the Open Face flex tail construction versus the
Resin-X.
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THE IDIOT

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Finally got in the water today after what felt like a long time. All the time spent indoors over the last week made me think of this scribbley piece I made some many years ago. I've always called it The Idiot. Probably passes as a self portrait from time to time.
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A SLOWER LOOK AT THE ALIEN

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A slowed down examination of two of my favorite Gavin clips from the CREEPY FINGERS excerpt in the last post.
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SENTIMENT & FLOATING

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Below are excerpts from a couple of the Volcom films I've made.
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In carefree moods I sometimes feel like I let this part of CREEPY FINGERS (2006) end up a bit "much" and a little overboard with the time synced score of the cymbals, but since I made it while in a sentimental frame of mind and since I'm presently feeling sentimental... I'm goin' with it. Plus Gavin Beschen's surfing is... well... there's a reason why people have called him 'The Alien' all these years.
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And an effort to lighten the load with Bruce Irons making the subject of passing away sound as trouble-free and easy as he makes critical surfing look in THE BRUCE MOVIE (2005).
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BUILDING TO LET GO (Andy Goldsworthy)

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With the recent storms and the heightening of the senses and cleansing by way of chaos that they can bring, along with my pondering of Daniel's Freedom To Roam and Cycles posts at Wine And Woodsmoke this morning (who, like me, also seems to appreciate the work of Andy Goldsworthy), it is only natural that I post the following excerpts from the documentary film by Thomas Riedelsheimer about Goldsworthy's work and relationship with his surroundings called RIVERS AND TIDES (Working With Time).
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FREEDOM TO FALL

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Behind the blood and fangs Ozzie Wright is one of the nicest chaps you could ever come across. I've always appreciated the fact that he doesn't try to overly edit out the act of falling in his sections of surf films... Always a refreshing take of reckless abandon and freedom when most surf flicks bend towards showcasing an illusion (which in my filmmaking, as hard as I try, I'm also guilty of) of athletic "perfection".
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Below is a recent interview with Ozzie about the ongoing kickflip contest thang:
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Some 2007 tube time:
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And some reckless abandon (excerpt from the older film Doped Youth made by Ozzie and friends):
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REMEMBERING ONE OF THE GREATS

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Today marks three years since surfer/shaper/father/husband/Surfers' Hall of Fame inductee CARL HAYWARD passed away from a brain aneurism while surfing the south side of Huntington Beach pier on January 21, 2005.
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My very first board was a 4'11", double wing, pintail, single fin Hayward that my mom bought used off Carl's shop rack (at the Huntington Beach location in above photo) for me when I was just a little grom. My next board was a custom order and Carl had my mom drop me off at his shaping "shack" so I could watch the process of shaping it. Between then and the time that Carl died there were only five boards I periodically owned that weren't custom Haywards. Carl knew I had a liking for his original logo lam, and sometime around 1996, in a period when he was running low on them, he gave me a stack of them to insure I always had my preference available for my board orders. Below are the remaining lams of that stack that didn't have a chance to make it on a board.
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Another personal testament I have of Carl's giving nature was when I met with him to order what ended up being my last board from him. It was to be a twin with little rear "stabilizer" fin all set in Future boxes. At the time, Future didn't stock the fin templates I was looking for, and the next thing I know, while saying "I think I know exactly what you're looking for... Here, take these," Carl's handing me a custom, unused, twin & stabilizer set of Future fins that he just received for a personal board of his own. Seems there are endless stories from other people of Carl's giving.
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Note:
Carl was an early embracer of the rocket fish board design. Reissues of Carl’s version of the rocket fish are available. Using a board shaped by Carl for himself as a model, the reissues are computer shaped and hand finished by the same craftsmen that worked on his production boards.
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Profits from the sale of the boards benefit his widow and children. The boards are available through Pro Glass in Costa Mesa. For further information contact Mike Ochsner at mochsner@bellsouth.net or Dane New at 949.574.0014
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Hayward shop and surfing photos by unknown.
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More about Carl Hayward at http://www.carlhayward.com/index.asp?ID=1
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FRONTIERS EXPANDING... TRACK BY TRACK

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Amid protests by my 20 month old girl to watch my least favorite thing, Barney, I put Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain (arranged and conducted by Gil Evans) on the turntable anyway, she quickly forgot about the purple dinosaur and started to bob and weave her head in curious approval. Inspired me to search YouTube and post whatever I could find... the track Concierto De Aranjuez:



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