There's a lot of surfboard shapers in the world but few that create shapes that have never been formed before.

Greg Webber is one of the few. From deep concaves to Banana boards, both of which were surfed at the highest level, to a shed full of designs that remained experimental.

Greg's never one to moan about an experiment that doesn't work. There's always some element to be taken from it; an aspect that can be used to progress his knowledge of surfboard design.

Yesterday Greg revealed his latest design and he chatted to Swellnet about it. Apologies for the redacted copy, hopefully all will be revealed soon.

Swellnet: I've seen a lot of things in surfing yet most of them are derivative of something else. That's the first time I've ever seen that idea.
Greg Webber: That's why I did it.

When did you come up with the idea?
Well, on the Creature model I did a double concave deck and bottom. Have you ever picked up one of those boards?

I have. I've felt the top and bottom concaves.
OK. Well it wasn't the plan but I found that the design was doing something to the torsional flex. Picture the board in profile. Having volume in the rail, then a hollow next to it, then volume around the stringer, another hollow, and more volume on the other rail. It's like a length of corrugated iron. All of that decreases the flex from the nose to the tail, but it allows torsional flex, which is the twisting flex.

Whether that's fucking good or not, I don't know, but it got me thinking about this idea. The second thing was, about four or five years ago, I started thermoforming, which is when the laminating gets sucked down onto the foam under vacuum.

I created a board with rail channels and the laminate sucked onto the channels beautifully. So I thought to myself, "when the day comes and someone's doing really good vacuum bagging, then I'll do it."

I recently got a board done by Lucid Glassing and it turned out beautifully. So that was it, 'I went, all right, now I've got to do it. And so I did.'

After five hours in the shaping bay, Greg reveals his as-yet-unnamed experiment

Hand shape or by cutter?
Hand. It was a c#nt to shape. Absolutely annoying. The first contours, the ones that are perpendicular to the stringer, they're not hard. But as soon as they start curving, then you're using a straight tool to make a curve, and it doesn't want to do it.

You can't make a template tool for every single one of those things, or you're making whatever it is, thirty little templates. So then I have to use the straight tool and stop it at a certain point when it starts to become V-shaped towards the nose.

Okay. Have you looked at that cutter by kinaroad?
No, but I have looked at the robot that Jim Lucas and Sam Tehan at Cronulla have created.

Jim and Sam from Force 9?
Yeah. Fuck me dead, mate. I'm never shaping that thing again if they can design it.

But guess what? I've got a feeling they'll hate the design, but at least if they do the bulk of it with the little drill bit head that they've got, then I can do the rest by hand. It'll be one hour, not the five hours that it was.

I'm just about to chat to them.

Great to hear Jim Lucas' name again. Back to the board, what are you expecting it to do?
Flex a lot at the tail because of those corrugations that are perpindicular [to the stringer]. But as the angle gradually gets more towards parallel then the flex will evenly decrease, so there's no point at which you'll have a really radical transition.

You're not the first to introduce longitudinal flex. Mitchell Rae has been doing it for years, though by different means.
No, this a completely different way of creating flex. In fact, I just patented it this morning.

Okay. You're going all in.
Imagine vacuum bagging that with carbon and it's black and shiny. I'm going to take it down to Marc in het Panhuis at Wollongong. You remember him?

Yes, of course. Mr Flex at the Innovation Centre.
We've chatted and he's done some work with me on other experiments. I'll give him the board to muck around with and test it. And then I'm going to... [Greg asked for this section to be taken off record]

No-one's dealt with flex on the deck. No-one's really experimented with the deck at all, because they're just not thinking about generating flex.

And look, it's not going to be fun to stand on. But for this one, it's eventually going to be tested by Adam Robertson. Fucking Adam Robbo! He's not going to complain. He's beside himself to try experiments.

He could maybe put full deck grip on it? It's not going to last that long but he could still try it.
Maybe there'll be another time where the channels are half the width and it'll still work quite well. Or perhaps we could fill in the gaps a little bit?

Like with EVA plastic..?
Yeah, something that's not going to resist the flex effect but it'll stop your feet from digging right in. Then again, he might go, 'fuck, it actually feels okay, don't change anything.'

But really, that's not a big enough factor, is it? It's important to do the experiment properly.

Yep. If I recall you have a storage unit up the north coast and it's full of fibreglass experiments. The last time I saw them one of the Walters boys was riding them.
Yeah, I've got them. They're all underneath the house now. There's 91 of them.

Do you think this could be the 92nd? 
I don't know where it's going to end up. Yeah, I think it'll end up underneath here, but if it works and I can get it right, then guys will ride them. They'll go, 'this thing's mental, it flexes so well.'

The other thing about the flex is I'm going to put FCS 1 plugs in it. Not FCS 2 where the whole finbox would stiffen the back of the board.

But there's more, putting in FCS 1 is only the first bit. The second thing is to only screw them in tightly in the front plug, so the tab at the back has some give and it's not contributing to the stiffness. If you're bridging the gap between the plugs by screwing the fuck out of your fin tabs, then it's blocking the flex a bit.

You've thought of it all.
Oh, too much, yes. You know what my brain's like...

I think it's a great idea and it looks striking too.
Well, it's a bit loose and it looks lovely because of the gradation. Can you imagine if I just did a boring old parallel lines? Two things. First, it wouldn't look as sexy. And secondly, some motherfucker is going to say they I thought of that already.

So I came out with what should've been my third version first just to shut up the people, like [name redacted] thinking that he's come up with a fucking double concave bottom.

Can I include that sentence?
No you can't.

Righty-o. Plan to get it sprayed, like tiger stripes or something?
Unfortunately, it's got to be black carbon. That's what Lucid Glassing do.

Of course.
Yep. So I just dropped it off today. It'll look good in the black carbon. And I really do want to get it into the engineering side because...

[This part of the conversation was also redacted. In fact, right up to when we said farewell, but lordy it was exciting. Stay tuned...]