The Shortboard Revolution's False Start

Stu Nettle picture
Stu Nettle (stunet)
The Rearview Mirror

The following short story was recently written by Bob McTavish. It originally appeared on the McTavish Surfboards blog:

Today Gary Clist from Noosa rocked in with a real surprise: A board I shaped at Hayden's factory at Alexandra Heads in 1964. But that's not all. This board was 4'9" long, about 22" wide, and solid foam with a 1" thick balsa stringer. A copy of Greenough's kneeboard of that year, the first time he visited Australia.

The first time Algy Grud the sander, Russell Hughes the gloss-coater, and I the shaper, saw George surf we flipped our lids. What he was doing on his knees we wanted to do standing up. So I immediately attacked that blank, glassed it in typical "smoke-it-out" Bob fashion with two layers of free-lapped 8 oz volan and isophthalic resin, and stuck a copy of George's fin template on it, but made out of Hayden's standard chopped-strand mat. Russell and I attempted to surf it.

Remember, everyone was riding nine-foot-plus till 1967. This tiny board was so small and heavy, with George's deep hull front end. We rode it at Alex shore break, and found it very challenging, discouraging actually. Couldn't find the speed - wobbly in weak situations. I can't recall surfing it again after that first try-out. The board went into the dusty archives at Hayden's, but we immediately borrowed the fin design, laid up the first fibreglass cloth panel, and it went viral and took over the planet!

If only we'd persevered with it. We may have started the Shortboard Revolution three years early. Interesting hey?

Comments

the-roller's picture
the-roller's picture
the-roller Friday, 5 Oct 2012 at 11:26am

with the key word in this article being. Knee board,... might want to google keywords such as, paipo boards.

http://www.paipo.com/

which were being crafted well before Bobby Mc was a short sled Builder. ;-)

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Sunday, 14 Oct 2012 at 11:30am

Without wanting to be too disrespectful to a real legend the great mystery of McTavish is how the most vocal proponent of short boards ended up as our largest manufacturer of mals.

stunet's picture
stunet's picture
stunet Sunday, 14 Oct 2012 at 4:32pm

It's one of surfing's great ironies, eh? But then in all fairness Bob moved laterally from one of the leading board designers to one of the leading board manufacturers. He experimented with new materials (epoxy moulds etc) and manufacturing techniques well before Surftech and GSI made that business model viable. Anyone remember Pro Circuit Boards? Sure, he rode the nostalgia longboard rebirth well but he's largely done it using methods he devised.

It's all experimentation, the focus simply moved from design to process.

freeride76's picture
freeride76's picture
freeride76 Monday, 15 Oct 2012 at 12:25pm

Not so ironic in reality.

Bob had the arse hanging out of his trousers after Pro Circuit Boards went bust and he had to sell his name to stay afloat.

Making mals proved to be an adequate bread winner.

Still, his vision of the manufacturing of surfboards proved to be largely accurate, even if his attempts to make it reality initially failed.

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Wednesday, 17 Oct 2012 at 8:35am

Still ironic but less of a mystery!

1963-malibu's picture
1963-malibu's picture
1963-malibu Sunday, 2 Dec 2012 at 8:47am

The boards looks like the sort of thing some hipsters are riding today.
We are seeing versions of this outline everywhere today, 50 years later.
The boards Greenough was riding in the late 60s, the spoons and later the edge boards, no-one ever worked out what he was doing.

It was Greenough, all by himself, who introduced us to the shorter surfboards.

whaaaat's picture
whaaaat's picture
whaaaat Sunday, 2 Dec 2012 at 2:45pm

Hipsters + old age = kneelos.

victor's picture
victor's picture
victor Monday, 3 Dec 2012 at 11:58am

hmm interesting ..nat young has a different version to mctavish....his version in an american surf mag soon.

gowiththeflow125's picture
gowiththeflow125's picture
gowiththeflow125 Tuesday, 4 Dec 2012 at 1:25am

George Greenough is the man!

squidda's picture
squidda's picture
squidda Tuesday, 18 Dec 2012 at 6:37pm

bloody kneelos.

tezza's picture
tezza's picture
tezza Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 11:01am

This is a timely reminder that the evolution of short boards built on many of the innovations of kneeboard design. Greenough was just one in a long line of innovators. Specialist kneeboard designers like Neil Luke haven't stop innovating.
Credit to Bob for acknowledging it.

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 1:32pm

......not to mention one Peter Crawford (RIP) whose design innovations were a much bigger influence on what people actually rode than Greenough's. Yeh, yeh I know it's heresy but no less true for that. The orthodox history of the short board - the Greenough, McTavish, Nat line - covers the transition from 9'6" to 7'6". The more important transition from 7'6" to 6' is another story that rarely gets told. Maybe Jarrett tells it in his new book. I'll have to check it out!

whaaaat's picture
whaaaat's picture
whaaaat Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 4:59pm

BB, didn't you write a book with photos provided by the late, great PC?

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 6:26pm

Yeh we did a couple actually but the one you are probably thinking of was one of the greatest stuff ups I have ever been associated with which, looking back, is a big claim. The idiot publisher decided to both change the title and move the cover photo without consultation. There were various other problems culminating in him trying to rip us off by telling us he had had 5000 printed when he had had ten. Fortunately I had a contact who used the same printer so I caught the friggin' prick and forced him to pay up. Sill the whole thing left a bad taste and caused considerable unnecessary friction between PC and I which took a few years to overcome.

whaaaat's picture
whaaaat's picture
whaaaat Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 8:27pm

Wow! He remains a personal hero of mine. Died far too young.

http://lyttlestreet.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/the-great-peter-crawford-ta...

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 9:35pm

Yeh it was very sad. In his prime he was a pretty rare piece of work in and out of the water and great fun to be around. I still surf with his son Scott quite often and Peter's memory is still held in high regard locally. I still think of him every time the Point breaks at a solid size.....he always led the charge on those days and even with all the pros out there, no-one could get deeper!

steeno's picture
steeno's picture
steeno Tuesday, 14 May 2013 at 6:58pm

Nice avatar Whaaat

whaaaat's picture
whaaaat's picture
whaaaat Tuesday, 14 May 2013 at 7:01pm

Yeah, some bloke called Steen Barnes took it. A bit of a hot kneelo as well as a half-decent photog.

seanswords's picture
seanswords's picture
seanswords Tuesday, 8 Oct 2013 at 11:32am

Great site! I'd like to add a few thoughts on shortboards, from a So Cal perspective. I'm in Santa Barbara, California, which was also George's home when he started playing with kneeboards, most famously at the Rincon. He demonstrated what could be done on a shorty trick-wise when everyone else was struggling to turn 10 footers. It was truly revolutionary.

Surfers being experimental, started chopping up long boards (myself a broken Jacobs nose-rider) in a quest to duplicate George's magic. Shapers from here to San Diego, almost all at once, started playing with shape and mass to obtain a stand up stick suitable to our conditions. Local shapers like Al Merrick have been pushing the edges ever since.

Amazing how one guy always shows the way.

kneepete's picture
kneepete's picture
kneepete Monday, 21 Oct 2013 at 3:41pm

More proof kneelos were the real revolutionaries!