Blast from the past....

Rummaging around the Lucke Surfboard Factory, I discovered a trove of old Clark Foam blanks and couldn't resist shaping one. With extra thickness and extra width, the Clark 6-9R "Super Blue" density blank was designed with the larger surfer in mind. (Follow this link if you're a surf-design geek and want to knnow the blank specs).

The blank was perfect for a 6-8 "Big Boy" thruster, and Ray said "go for it", so go for it I did. More rummaging produced a suitable template from Ray's collection, and with some subtle modifications this is what I came up with.

Skinned, foiled, rockered and template cut

The board has a full outline which will help the "larger" rider in our typical California conditions, but thickness was kept at 2-5/8" to reduce corkiness. Standard single-to-double concave with slight "V" out the tail. Dims 13" x 20-1/2 x 15".

Rails shaped...

...and ready to glass

Ray is planning on doing this one in a light-yellow resin tint, deck and bottom with red pinline on deck. It'll look sick with red fins. If you've been looking for something like this, shoot Ray an email at raylucke@gmail.com. Not too late to make a color request!

Mini-Sims, Part 2....

I wrote in an earlier post about finish-shaping a few mini-simmons shapes for my buddy Ray. Here's one of those boards in action, under the feet of expert surfer Shawn Tracht captured by Photographer Brent Lieberman. This board and others are now on demo at Esteem Surf Shop in Pismo Beach.

Eggy R&D...

Photo courtesy Jay of Slider Magazine

Today I lucked into this little nugget at my local break. I'm surfing my 7-11 Nomad with the quad-fin set up. I'm using the T.Patterson Quad front fins 4.35"x4.3" and the new 3.25"x3.25" TA Side-bites for the rear fins. The smaller fins really help to keep the handling loose and speedy in the small stuff. I've been surfing the Nomad pretty regularly, both as a tri and and as a quad, and find that it paddles really fast, catches waves easy and is quite responsive. It makes a perfect transition board for someone wanting to step-down from a longboard.