My first shaping hero – Chris ‘CJ’ Jones – part 02 (of 5)
My first shaping hero – Chris ‘CJ’ Jones – part 02
by Sam Bleakley
When (in the 1990s), as a young
aspiring professional surfer, I first started to hang around CJ’s shaping and
glassing bays (where I started my surfing search for the perfect longboard) at
his ramshackle ‘factory’ in Newquay, I was always amazed at how he adapted to
the mess around him. CJ’s shaping bay was always sneaker-treads deep in foam
dust while his glassing area was lumpy from hardened drips. A closer look
revealed hundreds of small, unswept fibreglass and resin lumps. If you picked
one up it looked like a hairy creature from another planet.
“No matter how hard you try”, said
CJ, “you’ll always have little shreds of fiberglass coming loose when you cut a
sheet, and you’ll always drip a little of the hot resin mix as it goes off.”
The loose, sticky bits get caught on your sneakers’ soles along with a layer of
foam dust, forming a weird kind of microclimate. After a while, you just get
used to this as an everyday work hazard. It’s just like butchers stinking of
meat. At least the fruity smell of resin is pleasant.
Too pleasant in fact – a kind of
heady drug for surfboard shapers. It’s not unusual for shapers to say that they
are addicted to the acid-drop smell of resin poured onto pristine sheets of
fibreglass laid over a perfectly clean, hand-shaped white foam blank. The resin
mix is bubbling, on the point of flame, and is poured ‘hot’ onto the glass.
There’s no time to lose before the mix ‘goes off’ or hardens. The glasser has
laid the sheet of fibreglass over the shaped blank and has trimmed the edges
down with a huge pair of scissors, just like a tailor cutting cloth, or a
sailmaker. The mix is prepared – in CJ’s glassing bay like an alchemical
laboratory, in old buckets coated with hardened resin – and is just about to go
off, or is getting hot. The smell is delicious. Old time glassers teach novices
to make sure that the mix is not too volatile – otherwise it can burst into
flame – by eye; but their secret is to judge this by smell.
The hot mix is then carefully poured
over the fiberglass sheet and gently combed into the fiberglass weave. Too much
resin and the finish is already lumpy. Too little and the glass weave is not
permeated. The mix is allowed to go off and the board is turned and the same
operation is repeated. The trick of the trade – again, just like a tailor or
sailmaker – is to get the overlap of fiberglass sheet neat along the rails of
the board, with no bulges or visible blips. Colour mixes in the resin are often
added. When everything has ‘gone off’ – the resin has completely permeated the
weave of the fiberglass and hardened – the board can be polished to a perfect
finish.
CJ talked to me of ‘rail to rail’
surfing – one edge biting into the wave face, the other intermittently in and
out of the water, until a radical turn causes the ‘trailing’ rail to suddenly
be the ‘lead’ rail, ploughing into the wave face and catching. If overdone, the
surfer will ‘catch an edge’ (or ‘catch a rail’), where the board stalls or tips
and the rider is thrown in a wipeout - no problem on a gentle wave, but
critical on a big day where the wipeout will hold you under to the point of
your lungs bursting as your beautifully crafted surfboard is snapped like a
stick. But CJ taught me that the rail
shape also matters for the noseride, different shapes producing different
levels of water resistance that help the back of a longboard to stay in the
curl, allowing the rider to stay on the nose.
Experimenting with sponsored
longboards from CJ I wanted the rail shape to really help with noseriding. But
first of all, I needed to work out how the hell noseriding can actually happen.
“Your fin creates drag,” said CJ.
“What about the tail?”
“That helps as well. It needs to be
pressed down by the wave, fitting the curl.”
“Acting like counterweight?”
“Yeah. It lets your body weight be
pushed up. At the same time, water gathering underneath the board can cushion
the nose.”
“So to hang ten the board must
literally be sucked into the wave.”
“That’s where the rail shape matters
– sucking the board to the wave.”
Every curve throughout the board
shape, from the rails to the rocker to the bottom, affects the flow of water in
this suction process. Round rails, for example, suck water over the deck of the
board and, in turn, the weight of the water helps to counter balance the
noseride. Equally important is the way the curve through the bottom shape will
suck and stick the board to the wave once you reach a quick trim speed, holding
the longboard in place during the critical noseride.
We tried all manner of designs to aid the
nose ride. I would stand in the corner of the shaping bay, white dust snowing
over my feet, CJ mowing the foam with that particular planer tool that fitted
his hand. He shaped just as he surfed in his heyday – following the grain. The
shape of the board emerged just as the shape of the wave was intuited. He would
even cross step up and down the shaping bay. The attention to detail in the
stringer was masterful. Watching CJ work the stringer was my favourite part of
the shaping show.
“We’ll try a soft-railer (rounded
like a baseball bat), like we used to ride in the early to mid ‘60s,” suggested
CJ.
“It’s got to be a single fin, and
wide nose.”
“Overall it needs rounded rails,
flat rocker, except for lift in the tail and hips (wide point) towards the
tail.”
“The soft-railer noserides
beautifully in small surf,” I said to CJ on the next visit. “It seems to hold a
trim line, right across the wave.”
“Yeah. Basically, the soft railer gets
its speed from tensions pushing against the board from within the wave. The
wave wants to push the board towards the shore, while the deep nine inch single
fin fights the wave and holds the board in place.”
“OK. So this tension pushes the
soft-railer through the water and across the wave face.”
“That’s it. Having hips (wide
points) toward the tail makes the board ride more parallel to the wave, meaning
faster, longer noserides.”
“I suppose the flatter or straighter
the board, the more parallel it can ride.”
“And hips create more flotation and
volume, generating further tension with the big single fin and thus speed…”
“…as well as countering the suction
created by soft rails and tail lift.”
I felt like a saltwater scientist, learning
to noseride and trying to fool gravity. At the point of the noseride there is a
lot of energy contained within the wave. It’s at the point of splintering.
People fall off their bicycles when they start to think about how they maintain
balance. The same applies to surfing. Pride before a fall. ‘WIPEOUT!’ sing the
1960s Californian guitar band, The Surfaris, before the drums kick in,
pummelling, guitar reverberating.
The tail dynamics are also key to
noserides. CJ was right. As the soft-railer speeds up across the wave, the tail
sucks into the wave and the nose begins to lift up. Even while hanging ten the
board will accelerate and climb the wave.
“I’ll let you try this hard-railer I
made,” said CJ. “It’s more like the boards of the late ‘60s: thin rail edges
(known as ‘tucked’, or ‘down’ rails, depending on how ‘hard’ the angle is)
medium rocker and roll through the bottom.”
“How will it noseride compared to
the soft-railer?”
“Probably not as good. But here,
give it a try.”
It definitely turned a little better
than the soft-railer. Again, it was finding that balance between turning and
noseriding. The roll through the bottom of the board sucked it to the wave, the
knife-like, less buoyant rails easily cut into the wave, but still let water
suck over the rail. Most of the board was within the wave for stable noserides.
But the tail and fin would be hanging out of the back because the board was not
parallel with the wave, instead, pointing towards the shore. This seemed to be
its noseriding limitation.
“It just doesn’t suck to the wave or
ride as parallel as the soft-railer,” I told CJ.
“At least you’ve tried it.”
Standing on the cliff edge at
Gwenver, scanning from Land’s End to the south, all the way to Cape Cornwall to
the north, I ran my hands down the rail edges of my CJ, confirming the soft
outline, that hardened just in time close to the tail. My favourite. I had
rails figured. In general, a soft and rounded rail make the board slower but
easier to handle; a rail with an edge along the bottom increases boards speed but
makes it more difficult to turn; a thin and tapered rail promotes quick turns
but doesn’t carry momentum, and can make the board feel jittery and twitchy. There
was a deep swell running, a grinding sound. The sea was racing to deposit its
entire weight on the beach below in pulses. The sets were wrapping in cadence.
There was no one out.
