Big wave rescue

       Link 
EMS Rescue Team Works Big Wave World Tour
A good read on who is there when our big wave riders have mishaps.
By Loralee Olejnik, Monica Thatcher

http://www.jems.com/article/training/ems-rescue-team-works-big-wave-world-tou

The bones above

•   The photo top left is an example of what Hotrod Surfboards is involved in.  This is a photo of the bulkheads, nose and tail block of a c. 1930 Kook Box from the Tom Blake school of hollow, paddle and surf boards.  These were the state of the art newest devices for propelling one self through the water beginning in the mid-nineteen twenties.  The weight of this one is fifty two pounds and the length is 13' 3".
     This one came in to our collection as an, almost, gift from, a friend, Hans Newman about 15 years ago in very poor condition. The deck had full length linear separations, all of the seams were loose, most of the finish was gone and termites had gotten to the gunnel on one side. one special point about the box was that most of it was put together using bronze ring shank boat nails.  Most of the kook boxes were held together with brass screws.
     This became a pet project.
     To begin with the box had been coated many years ago with resin, no fiberglass, just resin and where it remained it had to be sanded. The rest of the box had weathered badly and would also need sanding to match.  When I would carry the box to my sanding area nails from the deck would fall along my path.  After sanding I commenced to disassemble the box taking it down to its individual parts.  This was fairly easy in that the nails were all loose in their positions and came out with little effort.  This provided a later problem.
     Once the box was apart I began repairing all of the broken areas.  Each side of the deck and bottom were of single pieces of  5/16 inch Mahogany.  I had to make special glue blocks to rejoin the splits and not become stuck to the deck it self.  There were also places where I had to fill in gaps with newer materials and on the rotted gunnel a lite weight boat putty was used. 
     To reassemble the box I discovered that an acrylic resin used in water proof decks was also very strong, flexible and a good water proof glue, this proved exceptional in gluing and sealing the box.  When it came to the nails I knew that the original ones would never hold so I located a boat repair supplier in Delaware who had over sized bronze ring shank nails made for this purpose and used in older boats.  The gunnels were made of spruce and the wood in the nail holes had taken on the quality of bristles.  This I dealt with by dripping a drop or two down each hole, letting them dry and then driving the nails in.  It worked perfectly.
    One more sanding and it was ready for the finish.  
•   So far I have coated it with nine layers of boat varnish and at this point I think it might be finished. 
•   The older gentleman is Woody Brown.
•      JBR
  

Color, Lots of Color

               The only old surfboard that is thought to have real value is one in its original condition with maybe a polish on it and nothing more.  The closer a board is to this state, the higher its value.  A board like this is one that never saw extensive use.  It was probably bought for a youngster who had visions of The Pipe Line and taking the Van Artsdalen line across the face-swish, but, on attempting to ride it found it, for one reason or another, to be something he would rather not do. 

The board was then set aside, put in one place, then another, and always found to be in the way.  Ultimately it would be stuffed up in the rafters of the garage, slid under the house, or placed behind some building where it would be covered over by foliage or other discarded materials.  Here it would reside for decades until the time came to sell the house.  It would then be uncovered or dug out of its seclusion to be put out at a garage sale or given to a friend who had shown interest in it.  At some point the board would find its way to a “collector” who would clean it up, neatly repair any dry land pukas, polish it, and then haul it down to some local gathering place. There he would display it to his interested associates, telling of how he found it, giving a brief history of it, and its cost to him, all of these points being quite possibly contrived.

            That is a short story of how some of these fine museum-quality boards find their ways into the collections of a few.  But what of the more than 95 percent of the boards that were manufactured, then sold maybe several times? They were ridden to the point of being water logged and stained, dinged and plugged with Bondo, darkened by the sun, delaminated, missing a fin, and possibly broken in half at some time or another.

            What of these boards with their histories of exciting times? Should they be relegated to the refuse pit, just more oil bye-product trash to be buried and forgotten?  What of provenance and patina - should they be of any value? That is the thinking that created the Hotrod Surf Board concept. Rebuilding classic surf boards, doing to them what has been done with old cars for more than 50 years: cleaning, repairing, coloring and polishing them; taking damaged hulks from not so much to a resurrected, and, at most times to a very usable state. 
            The purpose of this blog is to update you on the development of our business and passion, Hotrod Surf Boards, and the characters we meet along the way, as the people of surfing, much like the boards themselves, are all about color, lots of color.