Swaylock's Digest - March 2023
Build of the Month, Swaylocks School of Surfcraft & AkuShaper!
Together with:
Introducing Swaylocks School of Surfcraft On Demand Video Library
Swaylocks School of Surfcraft is a new, first-of-its-kind, on-demand video library dedicated to surfcraft culture brought to you by Swaylocks.com. SSOS features unique, rare and hard-to-find videos on the history, design & construction of surfcraft viewable at your convenience on any device.
For the launch of SSOS, I’ve teamed up with veteran film maker Carl Ackerman to offer up his full suite of shaping and glassing videos featuring Greg Loehr (available now) and John Carper (coming soon).
Checkout the ever growing library of videos or subscribe to the mailing list to get notified when new titles land.
Attention Content Creators & Producers
If you are creating or possess footage of any vintage or format on any aspect of surfcraft history design & construction, don't post it to YouTube or other extraction platforms. Instead, contact me and I'll help you get it in front of 16,000+ of the world's biggest surfcraft fanatics — and earn some extra 💰 at the same time.
My deal is super simple. Upload your content to SSOS's advanced pay-per-view video-on-demand platform, set your terms, and Swaylocks School of Surfcraft splits all revenue with you 50/50.
Want to learn more? Check out the SSOS FAQs.
Swaylocks BOTM winner for February, 2023
#18 / FlatDeck Retro Fish by Félix Bousquet
Congratulations Félix!! You’re getting a new Swaylocks T-Shirt, a Tool Pack from Greenlight Surf Supply and entry into the year end vote for a chance to win $1000!
This issue is brought to you by:
Resin Research was founded almost 40 years ago by Greg Loehr, a surfer/shaper turned self-taught mad scientist. Greg's passion for surfing started when he moved to Cocoa Beach, Florida at 13, and he quickly became a professional surfer, winning multiple tournaments. His love for the sport led him to shaping and laminating boards, and his fascination with its evolution ultimately drove him to develop best-in-class epoxy products trusted globally.
To learn more about Resin Research and what sets us apart, click here.
New, Stack ‘o Swaylocks T-shirts on Sale now!
Winners of the BOTM contest have been getting this lovely t-shirt designed by yours truly. Wanna get one fer yourself? Click here
Build of the Month - March 2023
SWAYLOCKS BOTM is the monthly contest for surfcraft builders. Learn more
Galleries below are best viewed in a browser
#22 Flextail Displacement Hull by Rian Davidson
Dimensions: 6’0” x 22.25” x 3”
This new flextail prototype features a fully rounded and aggressive displacement hull which has its wide point foreword. The rails are 50/50 flowing down into two flexible marbled panels. The board is glassed with Volan and S-weave 6oz fiberglass and Silmar Resin. Pigments supplied by Viral Surf in France. The glassed on single fin has a gradient from black to clear and is designed to also flex at the tip.
The board was shaped and glassed at my workshop in Barcelona.
Since 2019, Rian Davidson shapes and glasses surfboards under the name of Apollonia surfboards in Barcelona, Spain. He's currently focused on creating and experimenting with displacement hulls, flextails, and longboards.
#23 Full Re-Creation Restoration by Dick Gregory
Dimensions: 7’6”
This build was requested by my daughter for a friend who wanted to surprise her surfer husband with a wall hanger. She wanted to capture night and day; sunrise/sunset. I sacrificed a badly dinged and water damaged Petrillo that I’d intended to restore, but had been told had little value. The old foam was 4” thick and had enough nose rocker to accommodate the dims of a 7’6” Pat Rawson gun.
For the deck I re-sawed and book matched a parota plank that I purchased locally at Tropical Exotic Hardwoods. Parota, also known as guanacaste, is related to acacia and grown in Mexico. It is surprisingly light weight, and has beautiful figuring. The nose detail is parota and western cedar dyed black with India ink. The rails are paulownia with a redwood trim line.
The bottom is also western cedar dyed with India ink. I’d originally thought that I could incorporate a traditional Japanese charred wood technique (Shou Sugi Ban) for the black. Unfortunately, it resulted in a less than even surface with the cedar grain burning out unevenly. An additional problem turned out to be adding the quarter moon, inlay and rails. I couldn’t figure out how to achieve a clean line when blending the rails and inlay to the char, nor could I cleanly re-char the edges of the bottom. I ended up sanding all the char to a flat surface, and inking the bottom. This resulted in an interesting affect. Outdoors in full spectrum light, the bottom looked midnight blue. Indoors in artificial light, it remained black. Fortunately, the new owner liked the effect.
#24 Medium Performance Planing Hull by Óscar Gómez
Dimensions: 5’7” x 20.25” x 2.375”
My name is Óscar Gómez and I am from Basque Country, Spain. I am a garage shaper that loves surfboards and fins and make them from start to finish by hand.
This board is an evolution of a performance mini-simmons, similar speed and drive but more control and performance in small to medium waves.
Materials
Arctic Foam
Hexcel Fiberglass
Polynt Norsedine Resin
Construction
Bottom: 6oz. White off pigmented with fins patch
Deck : 2oz grey pigmented inlay and 4+4oz.clear with cutlap
Black pinline
Fins: Twin+2. Birch plywood hand foiled.
#25 Brownie by Stephan Saint-Louis
Dimensions: 9’6” x 24” x 3.25”
It is around 90 liters of volume. This board is made with Resin Research epoxy. It has 1 layer of 6 oz cloth on bottom and 2 layers of 6 oz on top, with an inlay fabric on the nose. I made a wood tail with laminated cedar. The resin is tinted in light brown, orange, and dark blue, with black pin lines.
The blank is from Shaper Supply and all the other materials are from Alchimie Surfboards Montreal.
#26 Bommie Torcher by Lightwave Surf
Dimensions: 7’8” x 20.375” x 2.75”
Materials & Construction
PU blank from PSISurfBlanks New Zealand
Polyester resin construction.
Vee bottom 6 channel 70/30 rails
Customer wanted a fast, in early bigger wave 6 channel quad. It goes under the torch tomorrow in big south swell conditions.
Welcome AkuShaper!
I'm very stoked to announce Swaylocks' new partnership with @akushaper.brd, a leading manufacturer of surfboard shaping machines and cutting-edge surfboard design software. As part of this partnership, AkuShaper will become a sponsor of the Swaylocks community and offer special promotions and discounts to its members, as well as increase its presence on the forum by participating in discussions and providing expert advice.
Use code SWAYLOCKS when signing up on akushaper.com to get 25% off a new subscription.
Swaylocks Digest is also brought to you by the generous support of:
Attention business owners. If want to get your message out directly to the Swaylocks community, please consider a business sponsorship. You can’t access a larger, more focused and targeted community on the internet!
Click here to download the sponsor guide.
And to the SWAYLOCKS community — If you like what you see and want to keep seeing it, please consider buying me a coffee or buying a t-shirt. I don’t get much from that, but every bit helps and keeps things free and open. It takes a lot of work to keep this thing going — and I need all the help I can get!
Thanks for reading and until next time, keep building with stoke,
Swaylock 🤙
P.S. If you haven’t followed it yet, checkout my new instagram handle @swaylocksarchive — I’m posting there once every few days.
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