The Persistent History Of Channels

The general theory of channel bottoms is that they give grip and speed to a surfboard. The 'faces' of the channels give added surface to push against, and by removing bottom curve they create straight line drive.

Yet the history of channel bottoms is anything but fast and stable: it's a slippery history, and it weaves in unexpected directions.

When we embarked on this article we didn't set out to find who was first to make channel bottoms though we quickly found this issue was unavoidable. Curiously, and this was very much in line with our asymmterical article, we found a number of people stumbled on the idea while working independently from each other.

We've done our best to speak to everyone involved and hope we've done justice to their stories, however we wouldn't be surprised if new information tweaks the story you read below. History can be surprisingly fluid.

But perhaps most surprising is the ever-changing use of channel bottoms. What was a distinctly 70s design has evolved in harmony with the major developments to find a place in contemporary surfboard design.

(Note: This article was originally published in 2016 as 'The Tricky History of Channel Bottom' but has been corrected and also expanded)

1960s

In 1965 Greg Noll carved two shallow grooves, one either side of the stringer, into his Semigun model and select versions of his Da Cat model, calling it the 'Slot Bottom'. It's debatable whether they qualified as channels - in 2016, Noll told Swellnet he only did it as a gimmick to sell boards - but Hawaiian great Ben Aipa had no hesitation. "That was the birth of the channel bottom," said Ben Aipa of Noll's slots. "The idea may have come from the past - maybe Simmons or Blake - but Greg was the first to include the slot as a design element in production boards."

Noll built Slot Bottoms for just two years, 1965 and 1966, and only in select boards. Both Dewey Webber and Dale Velzy were other early shapers who contoured the bottom of a board, yet Noll had the first known photos. After 1966 the idea disappeared for nigh on a decade before re-emerging in four different locations on Australia's East Coast at roughly the same time.

Greg Noll 'Slot Bottom' boards from 1965. The ad appeared in the August 1966 edition of 'International Surfing Magazine'.

1970s

After settling in Kiama on the NSW South Coast, expat American Mike Davis set about getting the local reefs wired. "There's a wave there called Boneyards, a real mean wave at size, and I was looking to get barrelled there."

All the big wave boards of the day had long sleek pintails, but those designs weren't cutting it at Boneyards. "We'd get held up every time," says Davis. "I needed something wider to paddle into the waves earlier, yet wide-tailed boards would just skip out off the bottom."

In 1975 he was driving back into town after a session when Newton's apple fell. Davis spotted a ski boat outside of Bombo Beach and saw how it moved in the water. "I could ride a wider tail, a rounded pin, and drop channels into it for grip!"

"I raced to the factory and quickly shaped the same vee bottom I always used, and then shaped concaves that got wider towards the tail like the Bonzas. But instead of the one concave on each side of the stringer I carved in three on each side and were deepest at the extremities."

Davis recalls the design working wonderfully. "The board penetrated early and it could drive off the bottom with grip. We dropped our big wave boards from 7'6" to 6'10"."

However, board size wasn't the only thing that dropped. "My production just about halved," says Davis of the increased labour to shape, glass, and sand the channels. "They resembled channels as we know them now," adds Lee Middleton who frequently bought channel bottoms from Davis for his shop, Sunshine Surf Shop in Barwon Heads.

"The depth of the channels was an issue," explains Davis. "The crude fibreglass of the day wouldn't sit in the channels. It would be eighteen months or so before Midget imported a nice supple glass so we could market lots of them."

Yet even after suitable glass was sourced, Mike Davis' channel bottoms failed to catch on, at least relative to what came afterwards. Geographic isolation may have contributed, though at the time Davis was supplying boards to 65 surfshops around the country. He also, ironically, shaped boards for Col Smith who would later be an integral figure in the development of channel bottoms. 

Whatever the reason, Davis was a pioneer whose his name is conspicuously absent from the accepted history of channel bottoms.

Mike Davis Designs ad in 'Tracks' 1978 - 'Black Max' is Davis' channel bottom design. At right, Davis at Rincon in 1969.

In the mid-70s, Erle Pedersen from Cairns and Jick Mebane from Hawaii traded ideas while living at Whale Beach on Sydney's far northern beaches. Before moving south, Pedersen created the 'Kewarra Jet Bottom', devised to maximise energy out of the weak waves that broke at Kewarra Beach neach near Cairns. The Jet Bottom is a beautiful arrangement of intersecting curved channels, which, says Pedersen, "busts all forms of water tension."

The October 1975 issue of Tracks ran a spoof article, 'U.S.O found in backyard' featuring a startled Terry Fitzgerald holding a futuristic surfboard. The Unidentified Surfing Object is one of Pedersen and Mebane's creations, while an accompanying photo shows four of their boards, one of them being a Kewarra Jet Bottom shaped in August 1975.

The Jet Bottom is unlike all other channel bottoms yet it shares the same purpose: to influence water flow under the board and increase performance. Pedersen's contributions are significant and don't end here.

Erle Pedersen, at left and centre, with an early version of his Kewarra Jet Bottom, while at right is an article from 'Tracks' October 1975 Terry Fitzgerald holding an Unidentified Surfing Object.The accompanying image shows a Kewarra Jet Bottom second from right.

In 1974, Phil Fraser returned from a short stint in New Zealand. “I went over there to show ‘Morning of the Earth’ when it first was released,” says Fraser, “I travelled all around the North Island, deciding that it was a very nice place with very good waves, so I stayed there for a couple of years. It was great.”

Fraser worked at the San Michelle factory set up by Cronulla's Garry Birdsall, where he began experimenting with deep double concaves. Upon returning to Australia, Fraser attempted to convert the same feelings the deep doubles gave him into a new design. At first he was doing backyard boards, small labels out of Newcastle for guys like Phil Pike and Mike Marshall, before starting his own label, Pure. On those early Pure boards, Fraser experimented with curved channels around the mid-point of the board which he believed worked similar to double concaves.

Sometimes he’d do four channels, sometimes six, and as the experiment continued, Fraser began to lengthen the channels from the mid-point towards the tail, but the thing all his channels had in common during those first years was the rail-centric curve - they ran parallel to the rail, not the stringer.

Phil Fraser's early channel bottoms were as crude as a crayon drawing yet quickly evolved into refined craftmanship. At left is a 1975 version, while at right is Fraser with a ten-channel from the late-70s.

The fourth sprout emerged from the fertile mind of Jim Pollard. In 1975, an article appeared in an American surf magazine titled 'Groove Ridge Theory'. Co-authored by Jim Richardson and Art Shafer, it detailed experiments using rubber ridges stuck to the bottom of a surfboard concluding that they improved lift and increase directional stability. Whether the science was sound or not, the article inspired Jim Pollard to begin his own channel bottom experiments.

Pollard, originally from Manly but living at Maroochydore when he began his channel work, sanded corrugations in a curved path so as to follow the board's outline - not unlike Fraser's. They were set in pairs either side of the stringer though some later examples have four or six channels. Each channel exiting the rail at a flyer. Pollard coined the design a bee tail.

For a few months in 1975, Phil Fraser worked at Pollard's Fluid Foils factory in Maroochydore. Pollard and Fraser were noticed by Shane Stedman and the trio set up Fluid Foils in the Shane factory at Brookvale. Jack Knight was one of the production shapers.

Setting up shop in the city brought them attention from the surf media and in Tracks May 1976 the first serious design article on channels appeared. It was both a coup and a disaster. The copy editor at Tracks stuffed up the print and what should’ve been six columns of text ran as three - each second column was missing, the design explanation made no sense. What did appear, however, was Phil Fraser thrice describing the boards as having "thrust" five years before Simon Anderson would coin the term for a different design.

"When you change direction you've got thrust instead of that dying feeling." Phil Fraser, 'Tracks', May 1976, and the first design article on channels - at least the first serious one.

At around the same time - 1976 - Jim Pollard hooked up with a phalanx of hot young surfers from the Redhead/Newcastle area, among them were surfer and shaper Martin Littlewood, NSW state champion Steve Butterworth, and rising star Col Smith. Butterworth and Smith began riding for Fluid Foils. The next year, Pollard began experimenting with deeper channels that curved out towards the rails at the rear of the board.

Jim Pollard in his shaping bay late 1977, and at right Steve Butterworth with a Pollard channel bottom. Note channels curving toward the rails near the tail (Photo of Steve Butterworth Steve Core/Surf)

In late 1977 Col Smith flew to Hawaii with a four board quiver of Jim Pollard-shaped channel bottoms. Three of them had shallow channels that followed the rail line, the classic Pollard bee tails, the fourth was a flat bottom.

Col Smith with Jim Pollard channel bottoms just before flying to Hawaii for the '77/'78 season (Photo Geoff Moore/www.crowsgarage.com)

In November 1977 Col Smith emerged from relative obscurity to win the Pro Class Trials at Sunset Beach against an international draw. Two-time Pipe Master Rory Russell called him the "most underrated surfer in the world". Upon his return, Tracks ran a three-page interview in their January 1978 issue. Speaking about the reaction his channel bottoms had in Hawaii, Smith had this exchange with editor Paul Holmes:

Paul Holmes: The locals don't usually go for way out designs?
Col Smith: No, they dont and it was the first time that they'd seen anything like them. Boy, did I get some funny looks. They were especially sceptical because I'd never been to Hawaii before. It only took a few surfs to show them that the boards do work though.

In the same article Holmes also spoke to Jim Pollard:

Paul Holmes: There have been a few channel bottoms on the market, all have had different types of channels. What has made your boards the way they are?
Jim Pollard: I'm not going to say anything about anyone else channels. All I'll say is that I've spent $15,000 and five years research designing and working out the dynamics of waterflow to find out exactly how my boards go.

Why do you think there aren't more manufacturers making channels?
They're scared of them – exactly that. It could upset the status quo too much in my opinion. I'm something they dont want.

Jim Pollard and Col Smith celebrate after Smith's Hawaiian success (Photo Geoff Moore/www.crowsgarage.com)

Following Col Smith's success - he backed up his win at the Pro Class Trials with a seventh in the Pipe Masters and another win in the Quiksilver Trials at Bells in '78 - a number of shapers began paying attention, among them were Martin Littlewood, Rod Dahlberg, Al Byrne, and Phil Myers. Also, Col Smith began shaping his own boards too. Each of them would evolve the channel bottom eventually putting their own spin on the design.

Martin Littlewood is often credited as putting the first straight channels into a board. "Jim started it all," says Littlewood, "Let's make no mistake about that, but I thought the shallow grooves weren't very noticeable." Littlewood subsequently went and dug a few "trenches" into his board. "I put them in straight and deep - sometimes over half an inch deep at the exit", while giving a simple explanation for doing so: "The flow of water follows the board, not the outline."

"We weren't thinking too much about rocker then," says Littlewood. "It was all about grip and bite. Straightening the rocker came later on." As grip was the primary factor, Littlewood says it made sense to have the longest channel on the outside. "It's when the board's on rail that you need the grip."

In 1978 Col Smith left Fluid Foils, firstly to shape with Martin Littlewood, and later to shape with Phil Myers under the Free Flight label.

A disagreement between Littlewood and Smith - "Yeah, it was a blue," chuckles Littlewood - led to Smith reversing the configuration to have the longest channel on the inside. "That was his way of distancing himself from me," says Littlewood.

Col Smith in his Redhead shaping bay, 1979 (Photo Geoff Moore/www.crowsgarage.com)

In 1977, after a chance meeting at Scotts Head, expat Kiwi shaper Rod Dahlberg spied a channel bottom single fin surfed and shaped by Phil Fraser.

"The channels were hard-edged, and they were long and straight," recalled Dahlberg. "It was a single fin, I'd moved to twins by that stage, but it blew me away. I couldnt get home to Angourie quick enough to shape myself one."

Owing to the wider fin base on twins, Dahlberg settled on four channels as the best number of channels with twins. In the following years he'd shape "hundreds" of channel bottoms through Country Style at Angourie and also through Sky surfboards at Byron. Despite the "trenches" being dug by Martin Littlewood, and those that'd soon be dug by Al Byrne, Dahlberg moderated the depth inventing his own formula for depth, length, and spacing. 

Many of his early channels sat inside a vee with the inside channel fading out before the tail, a design that'd shortly arise elsewhere along with a name for that style of channel bottom.

In 1981, Dahlberg shaped what he considered his best twin fin channel ever just as Simon Anderson turned the surfing world on its head. However, he was one of the very few surfers who didn't immediately switch to three fins, sticking with twins for at least two more years.

That said, Dahlberg persisted with channels, evolving the design, his work reappearing in the subsequent decades.

At left, a circa 1978 four channel twin shaped by Rod Dahlberg for Country Style, while at right are two more examples of Dahlberg's early channel work, with a four channel twin at left and at right a four channel single - all swallow tails despite how it appears (Photo of Country Style twin by Dan Dobbin)

In late 1977 Al Byrne landed in Hawaii after three years in the New Zealand Air Force. Byrne told Damaged Goods Zine about the first time he saw a channel bottom:

"I was standing on the beach at Pipeline and Col Smith had just gone out and I’d never seen any surfing like it. He had this Jim Pollard curve channel, single fin. I watched until he came in and he had it sticking in the sand."

"I went walking up to him, “Fuck, can I have a look at that?” And he kinda looked at me sideways and goes, “Only if you don’t tell anyone.” He then went on to like third or fourth at the Pipe contest a few weeks later."

Byrne replicated what he saw on Smith's boards. Just before his death in 2013, Byrne told The Surfers Journal: "I made the mistake of making the channels too shallow. I was dissappointed and didn’t know why. When we got back to Newcastle, this guy Martin Littlewood shaped one for me and really dug in the channels. Really deep. Littlewood is really the progenitor of all my channel bottoms because he was not scared to really carve them in, like a sculptor. He took the shallow Pollard concept and deepened the whole concept physically and philosophically. Then I took mine toward breaking the sound barrier."

Though Jim Pollard and Col Smith had some success with channels, arguably it was Byrne who popularised the design. He made visually striking boards, put them under the feet of the best surfers of the era, and honed his designs on the Gold Coast and Hawaii - two channel-friendly surf zones. On the Gold Coast, Byrne started shaping for Hot Stuff, where he stayed until 1986 before going out on his own with Byrning Spears. Until his death in 2013, Byrne's commitment to channel bottoms never wavered.

Allan Byrne in his shaping bay 1998, and at right a classic Byrne six channel.

In the late-70s, twin fins made a revival on the back of Mark Richards' success and shapers tried to fit channel design into the new shortboard template. Rod Dahlberg was one of them, see above, and so too was Wollongong's Phil Byrne. Byrne constructed the Clinker channel, sharp and deep channels that resembled clinker boat hulls where an overlapping series of planks form the structure. Like Dahlberg, Byrne's clinker channels always had the inside channels fading out before the tail so as not to grip too much and hence diminish the twin fins best quality.

Byrne clinker channels on a late-70s twin fin (Photo Damion Fuller)

Up on the Gold Coast, Allan Byrne's influence was spreading with more channel bottoms appearing. Especially notable were those from the Pipedream factory shaped by Murray Bourton and a young Dominic Wybrow. Like Phil Byrne, Wybrow found a way to mix the skatey feeling of the twin with the grip of channels.

1980s

In 1981, Simon Anderson invented the Thruster which largely put a halt on clinker channels. Al Byrne, Rod Dahlberg, and Murray Bourton persisted, but elsewhere shapers found three fins provided enough bite. Too much grip and too many fins made for a locked in feeling.

Down in Wollongong, Phil Byrne adapted his channel designs to three fins. He, like other shapers, had discovered the key to the channel bottom's speed: the channels straightened the rocker providing a quicker route to the tail of the board. Because of this many shapers were reluctant to do away with channels altogether. The solution was belly channels, an idea that appears to have been grasped by multiple shapers around the same time. 

Belly channels were usually set in four, two each side of the stringer, and they were shallower and shorter than those shaped in the late-70s.

In 1983 Tom Curren surfed the Australian leg of the tour on a Channel Islands Thruster with four belly channels, while Tom Carroll also rode Byrne belly channels throughout 1983, the year he won his first world title. The channel design had subsequently evolved with board design, from single fins to twins to Thrusters, finding its rightful place at each stage. And with the two best surfers of the early-80s riding belly channels many others followed suit.

A classic 80s Byrne Thruster with belly channels

Down in Ballina at the Free Flight factory, Phil Myers was looking for a work around solution; something that'd keep him at the cutting edge of design - meaning it would have to include three fins - yet allow him to drop his beloved channels in.

Myers found it with the Hydro Channel, a regulation channel bottom with a drop out step to loosen up the tail. The step could be located behind or in front of the fins, yet either way it avoided the locked in feeling. In the early 80s Michael and Tommy Peterson visited the Free Flight factory and the seed was sown for a design that'd be ridden to worldwide acclaim a decade later.

Phil Myers in 1981 with single and Thruster version of the Hydro Channel. Middle and right show step in front of and behind the fins.

In 1984 Erle Pedersen moved up to the Gold Coast working out of the Pipedream factory. While there he shaped a mix of toned down Jet Bottoms and conventional channel bottoms. He also taught the craft of channel shaping to a young Darren Handley. "He was as green as grass," says Pedersen of Handley, "but he was always gonna go far."

In the late 80s, Rod Dahlberg was still shaping the occasional channel bottom, including a quiver for Queensland junior champ Sam Watts. While on an SW magazine shoot, a young Matt Hoy rode one of Watts' boards, liked it, and asked his dad - shaper Brian Hoy - for a channel bottom. With little experience in shaping channels, Brian Hoy approached Rod Dahlberg, who shared his six channel formula.

Matt Hoy qualified for the tour in 1991, then spent the next ten years on tour, finishing three times inside the top ten while riding six channels for most of his pro career.

1990s

During the late-80s belly channels faded out due to the increasing use of concaves. Concaves were conceptually similar to channels, they straighten the stringer line to provide fast transport of water beneath the board, but concaves don't have the inherent production issues of channels. The late 80s and early 90s marked the beginning of surfboard mass production, a matter that can't be seen as inseperable from channels falling out of favour.

However, arguably the dominant reason for the waning popularity of channel bottoms was competing design. In 1990, Maurice Cole began working with Tom Curren, a partnership that led to the Reverse Vee, and then in 1992 Greg Webber's concave and rocker experiments began bearing fruit. Both designs largely made channels redundant.

But that's not to say they dissappeared. Allan Byrne succesfully pursued his line of thought with Byrning Spears channel bottoms appearing in a great many Hawaiian quivers, and Phil Myers kept the fire burning at Free Flight. So despite much of the surfing world turning to concaves, channel bottom boards still found a way to cut through.

One of the greatest channel design of the 90s was the Tommy Peterson Fireball Fish, which was an evolution of Phil Myers Hydro Channel. Tom Curren rode a 5'7" Fireball in huge waves at Bawa, Indonesia, in 1994. That one session, which appeared in many magazines and Rip Curl's original Search video, helped ignite the Fish revolution. The Fireball, however, wasn't a Fish, it was a Thruster and had channels and a step very similar to Phil Myers' Hydro Channel.

Tom Curren on a Fireball Fish (on the cover he's riding a regulation 6'10" Thruster which he swapped mid-session), top right shows a still from Rip Curl's The Search, bottom right a Fireball Fish.

A few years later, Mark Occhilupo rode what was perhaps the most succesful channel bottom board of all time. Throughout the 90s, entrepreneur Roy Norris had run a skins-style event at Sandon Point, then in 1997 he took the same concept to Bells Beach, holding it the week after that years Easter Classic.

On the roster was Occy, who was on the comeback trail having won the XXXX Pro in large waves at Point Cartwright a week earlier. At Bells, Occy chose to ride the same board that worked for him on the Sunny Coast, a Rod Dahlberg-shaped 6'5" six channel with glass in fins.

A number of people, Kelly Slater included, considered Occy's surfing during the Bells Skins as the best backhand surfing they've seen. Occy won eleven heats in a row, pocketed $55,000 but more importantly proved to himself and others that he still had what it takes to compete at the global level. He qualified later that year and won the world title two years later.

Occy reintroduced himself to the surfing world with two days of devastating surfing at Bells riding a Rod Dahlberg 6'5" six channel (Photo Peter 'Joli' Wilson)

2000s

The ripples from the Fish resurrection kicked off by Curren, with further help from Andrew Kidman and Derek Hynd, eventually reached the mainstream shore. High performance board lengths shrunk through the first decade of the new millennium causing shapers to look at their craft anew.

Daniel Thomson, a second generation surfer and shaper from Lennox Head, began making boards unlike any other on the market. Tomo took the 'shorter board revolution' to new lengths - at least metaphorically, some of his boards were meant to be ridden 6 - 8 inches shorter than exisiting boards.

To make up for the reduced rail line, Tomo put channels into some of his models. "The channel bottoms on these give it control so you can ride it in bigger waves as well," said Tomo. "You're never going to slide the tail out if you have that edge on the rails because it acts as a fin itself and lets you drive off of it."

The Evo by Tomo with channels for hold. According to Tomo the Evo "should be ridden as short as possible."

2010s

In 2016 Mick Fanning won the J'Bay Open - a popular win considering his shark attack there the year prior - riding a modern channel bottom shaped by Darren Handley. “I'm no stranger to channel bottoms,” says Darren to Swellnet after the win, he worked underneath both Erle Pederson and Murray Bourton before striking out on his own with DHD.

Mick's win put channels back on the high performance radar again. “The orders for channel bottoms have been flooding in," said Handley. "I'm doing lots of them."

With a roster of travelling pros, Handley had little time for retro experimentation. The board that Mick rode is 5’9" x 18 7/8 x 2 5/16, single to double concave, with four channels sitting inside the double - the inside channel fading before the tail.

Under Mick Fanning's feet, channel bottoms once again found a place at the pointy end of high performance surfing (Photos DHD/Corey Wilson)

There's no greater illustration of the versatility of channels than noting that, at the same time Mick Fanning was riding a four-channel high performance shortboard, shaper Simon Jones was placing wholly 70s-inspired channel bottoms under the feet of Torren Martyn, who did some of the most exciting surfing of the decade.

Though they'd worked together for a while, it wasn't till Jones shaped a 6'6" for Martyn, which he subsequently surfed in huge waves in Fiji, transforming their understanding of riding both shorter boards and twin fins in large waves. The 'Fiji' model gave way to a number of others from Jones, all of which were twin fins, and many of which featured four late channels peeling out through the tail.

Lending themselves to better waves, Jones generally dropped a slight vee into the tail with moderately deep channels that allowed the board to sit deep in the water and in turn let the surfer push hard on the tail - something earlier twin fins wouldn't allow.

While Handley dropped channels into contemporary shortboards, Jones found functionality in boards sporting a distinctly 70s-era outline and rocker. In a similar way, Phil Myers at Free Flight even began mixing edge design boards - first developed by George Greenough in the 1970s - with channels, while Dale Wilson - who assumed shaping duties at Byrning Spears when Al Byrne died in 2013 - also began a process of mixing channels with designs that weren't dead ahead Thrusters.

They're not the only pioneers still shaping channel bottoms. Jack Knight, who shaped alongside Jim Pollard at Fluid Foils, still fills orders for channel bottoms. These days Knight curves the end of his channels out towards the tail and his reasoning also sums up why channel bottoms have endured for forty years.

"The straight channels are like a race car," says Knight. "But when the channels curve outwards they're always working with you. They're graceful and they're smooth."

In other words, they're adaptable.

// STU NETTLE

Thanks to:
Phil Myers at Free Flight Surfboards
Mike Davis
Erle Pedersen at Surf 1770
Dale Wilson at Byrning Spears
Martin Littlewood at Delta Designs
Geoff Moore at Crow's Garage
Jack Knight Surfboards
Phil Byrne at Byrne Surfboards
Lee Middleton
John Boorer
Steve Core
Richard Palmer
Rod Dahlberg - apologies mate!
Simon Jones