My first shaping hero - Chris ‘CJ’ Jones - part 01 (of 5)
My first shaping hero – Chris ‘CJ’ Jones - part 01 (of 5)
by Sam Bleakley
Chris ‘CJ’ Jones’
surfboard shaping room was part of a ramshackle complex of damp old Cornish
buildings with rickety iron railings, granite steps, slate roofs and a cracked
concrete yard full of weeds and cigarette butts. Bits of paper blew around and
a door rattled, slightly off its hinges. This is where the first longboards
that spoke to me were made. In contrast to their surrounds, they were sleek,
shiny, colourful, beautiful craft aching to be touched and given a run out in
perfect surf. CJ had spent a million hours here hunched over blanks shaping thousands of surfboards of the highest quality in a work
environment that barely scraped through health and safety regulations, but was
impregnated with surfing history.
The odour of
green-tinted resin immediately turned into a taste in the roof of my mouth. It
reminded me of boiled pear drop sweets with just a hint of pineapple. It can be
addictive, but rots your lungs. Inside was covered in foam dust and shreds of
fibreglass, some hardened with resin into lumps. CJ lit his roll-up
with a smooth, well-practiced arc from pocket to lips, snapping the lighter and
inhaling heavily. There was a faint smell of lighter fuel and then a heavy
tobacco haze. The first coils of smoke were blown from his nostrils like a
dragon at combat. His foe was an unwieldy and ugly blank - produced from industrially ‘blown’ polyurethane foam. The
threads of tobacco glowed as he moved smoothly up and down the shaping bay,
shaving sections off the surfboard blank with a power tool, regularly bending
on his knees and eyeing down the length of the blank with a knowing look that
expertly took in angles, grains and curves. CJ was an avid craftsman,
constantly checking the contours to see bumps and ‘dead spots’ (that will cause
the board to slow down); to shape in continuous flow from nose to tail,
imagining how the board will be surfed; ensuring in turn that the deck is flat
and that the rails, where the deck and bottom meet, are perfectly foiled.
This was the board I planned to ride
in the upcoming European Longboard Championships. CJ was a European Champion, a
veteran of the 1960s and 1970s scene, and now one of the most experienced
shapers in Europe, building surfboards with tools that seemed to fit his hands
as readymades. He had lived and breathed surfing and surfboards since he was a
kid, growing up in Newquay, the ‘California’ of Cornwall, and ‘Surf City UK’.
Once, surfboards were an extension of CJ’s personality. Now, CJ was an extension
of his surfboards, as their toxic substances had entered through every pore of
his skin and shaped his mortality, his tobacco habit merely adding to the
disruption of those pesky telomeres that genetically determine our lifespans.
Surfboards over time had shaped his
psyche too, talking back to him – partly in the design and partly in their
owners’ tales of flow, torque, noserides, tuberides, late take-offs, tuck-ins,
stalls and over-the-falls wipeouts. Every aspect of surfing has a rich, and hip,
vocabulary, a language of style penned by boards on the faces of waves and left
as a trace in the surfer’s story - necessarily hyped up - for surfing is
embodied rhetoric, a dance and an animal display.
Scattered around the room were
massive tins of highly volatile and flammable resin. One spark from the
cigarette and the whole factory would go up in flames. But CJ was the dragon
and this was his lair. He knew the risks, but he knew his terrain down to every
blob of hardened resin on the floor, now covered in foam dust.
“Factory hasn’t burned down yet,” he
said out of the side of his mouth.
The fag went out. He pulled the
lighter from his top pocket and sparked up again. A deep inhale, another
coordinated nostril blow, the smoke curling away.
“Look at this beauty” said CJ,
nodding towards the blank with a wink. “I need to take about an eighth of an
inch off the concave under the nose and flow it into the bottom shape. What
d’ya think, Sam?”
“Yeah, sounds good, CJ.”
On the underside of the board, the concave
gives a little lift on a noseride, and I could see myself standing bolt upright
at the tip of the board, hanging ten, in the ultimate test of balance, smoking
brine, high on saltwater, the new CJ, heir to the throne. Apply weight,
remaining weightless: the Zen paradox of noseriding. Some things are about
intensity and quality, not longevity. The moment will be so packed it will seem
to expand and happen in slow motion – the experience you also get in the tube.
I will feel like a hot coal in a rainstorm – a short and spectacular Charlie
Parker saxophone solo. I will hear
hoots from the crowd on the beach - a cheer of respect.
Will an eighth of an inch really
make any difference?
CJ thought so, and I thought so too.
I trusted his expertise, he was king
of the lair and I was still a raw teenager learning from a previous European
Champion.
Virgin silver rolls of fibreglass
hung on the walls of the glassing bay next door, like rough Rizla rolling papers for Cornish giants.
These will be used later to ‘glass’ the board – the fibreglass cut into sheets
and wrapped around the polyurethane blank, then carefully soaked in highly
pungent, flammable resin, already a hot mix on the point of eruption, that is
expertly stroked up and down the board to get an even surface eventually
hardening to form the exterior over the foam core, protecting against seawater. At this point, CJ is going to add
a green colour tint to the already faintly green-tinted resin, still smoking,
mumbling “factory hasn’t burned down yet.” CJ was an accident waiting to
happen. ‘Health and Safety’ was an alien notion.
Surfboards are both visual and
tactile. Making them is vitally embellished by smell. Surfboard glassers - who
cut, wrap and resin the fibreglass prior to it ‘going off’ or hardening, and
then being carefully sanded and polished like a fine piece of sculpture – put
up with the hazardous and harmful toxins they work with, that are eating away
at their lung linings and the skin of their hands, because these chemicals
smell so good. Resin fumes create a temporary high – just long enough to get
the job done once a rhythm is established. CJ (a shaper and a glasser) was
addicted to the penetrating pear-drop smell (with a hint of pineapple), despite
the associated death toll from cancers.
CJ did that dragon thing again, the
smoke curling away, the skin on his hands scaly from spots of resin and
fiberglass, his fingers stained with nicotine.
“Never used to smoke,” he said.
“Healthy as hell.” CJ’s other passion was rugby. “Played regularly until my
lungs began to give out a coarse crackle. It was give up rugby or give up
smoking. So I took up coaching rugby.” Surfing regularly too had faded far too
much from CJ’s life: “Too busy making boards to make a living. I only surf when
it’s really good.”
Resin fumes rising. CJ stoked up
another cigarette, the first reduced to a whisper in minutes.
A couple of local kids, peering into
the room, sneaked up close, excitable, with matted blonde hair and volcanic
acne. They were ‘groms’ (kids whose lives are dominated by surfing), taking in
every move of CJ, the master. “Wow. Hot shape. Look at that. It’s awesome.”
“Sam’s taking it down to Portugal
for the European Champs,” said CJ. The pressure was on.
CJ applied finishing touches to the
blank, constantly squatting and eyeing down the line of the rails of the board,
turning it over, eyeing again, making minor adjustments with fine sandpaper.
Eventually, he was satisfied.
“What do you think Sam? Isn’t she a
beauty? Wait ’til I’ve glassed her – you’ll be slavering.” And I did – I
slavered when I saw the finished board (a week later). I could have eaten it
whole. I couldn’t wait. I was high on anticipation.
“Wait a week more to let the board
cure properly, otherwise you’ll get dents in the deck.”
“Yeah, of course, CJ.”
Suddenly, this board was speaking to
me as a character I knew but not well enough, and needed to converse with more
deeply, right now. We loaded it on to my dad’s car’s roofrack, and sped home to
surf it. Bugger the dents.
I ran down the steep path from our family
home above Gwenver beach, the north end of Sennen, the westerly tip of
Cornwall, where the granite skirts the sea. The gorse was throwing out its
coconut and pineapple pungency with a top note of vanilla – a piña-colada halo.
I could also smell stirred seaweed, hints of sulphur, and tastes of raked salt.
But most of all, I carried the scent of curing resin, boiled sweets (and bugger
the dents). The water was deep green with white hair combed back by a stiff
offshore. It raced up the sand and sucked back. Then another Atlantic set wave
rose to its full height, pulling invisible threads and gathering as a dense
cloud of spray. The shorebreak was veined with milky turquoise, against which a
bobbing cormorant was a stark black punctuation mark. The bird briefly caught
my eye, and then dove. As I paddled out to the deepest take-off point, I struck
up a conversation with the board, running my hands along the rails, feeling the
contours, the curves, the smooth lines. It called out for a ride (bugger the
dents). I ducked under the next cracking wave, noting how cleanly the board cut
through the water. After the set passed, a big space opened up, and there was
calm.
I’m not a painter. But I see the shape of
moving water as a blank canvas to paint wailing blues singers and jazz players
against peeling waves. Translucent walls and transparent peaks make sense of
surfing’s marriage with music and the code that this unlocks. Surfers are wave
musicians, improvising against the orchestra of the grinding sea, concentrating
on intense, short solos and raucous codas.
Picking out a green-engined wave, I paddled
into position. Caught between gravity and levity, my fin bit, and I locked in,
compressed, let the board accelerate, and a sweet sound emerged. Not a hum, or
a vibration, but a long note held on circular breathing, tonally just right.
Now driving up the face I cut back in a big arc and, for a split second, was
hovering like a blue note that falls, ripe, from the bell of a trumpeter’s
horn, languishing. I saw the curtain falling ahead and cross-stepped quickly to
the front of the board, and, with five toes rolled over the nose, arched my
back as the curl nearly chased me down. I kicked out of the wave, poised on
this brilliant brand new CJ longboard, against this massive, shifting ocean
backdrop that stretches to the horizon. I half expected to see a school of
dolphins right behind me to cap the moment, but there was just openness, a
space between tracks, the lingering satisfaction of a wave ridden well on a
brand new shape (now with a few dents from the pressure of my feet). Here was a
moment of expressed colour and trapped light, elegantly compressed into a
single ride – the blank filled. I fully savoured the scene.
