CJSolo

Connor Lyon at home.

photo: t.Revor Gordon

Ocean Tables

Best mid week trip ever. I'm claiming it now. Connor, Jason and I split town for an impromptu Spoon delivery and board swap between some shops down south...and the final nail in the coffin, to hang out with Lightner for a bit...

We hit the road and went southward, through miles of beautiful sprawl.

Found Kyle on a sunny afternoon and went to the food store...where we found a new friend kickin' it on the sidewalk.

Lightner made us the most outrageous family style meal and watched The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun and Morning of the Earth...Dave Allee and Cam Oden joined us as well as KL's fantastic roommate. We all had plenty of food and it was the bomb. We were all more than impressed...

Then he put hand soap in the dishwasher and things got heavy.

We crashed to My Eyes Won't Dry 2 and woke up at the buttcrack of dawn to luck into some standup tubing combo swell a few miles from the pad. We only had one pair of fins and one handplane for the three of us so we rotated and proceeded to get unending tubes through the morning.

It was a ridiculous two days, and by far the raddest of short trips I've ever embarked upon...Big ups to the man in the shadows, Kyle Lightner...

Night Sesh

Feels Like Floating.

Clockwise from top: 5'1 Asymmetrichull, 5'6 Flextail Kneelo, 5'3 Gullet

Red

5'1 - ish

(photo: Maddie J.)

Trevor wanted to embark on a new project together a couple weeks back so we took a stab at something fun...T wanted to keep it super short and round, so we started with that and mashed 3 or 4 of my templates down into a 5'1" EPS/Epoxy nug that's got some seriously cool stuff going on.

The toe side is 21 1/2" wide and is a velosim template with a fully hulled out bottom and domed deck. The heel side is 19 3/4" and 2 1/2" thick, velosim deck and bottom shape, meshed into a narrowed velosim nose template and a t.rev tail section that sweeps across to the toe side, leaving a whooole lot of curve to carve off of (and sidebite). The center fin is cheated an inch to the toe side to spread the heel side fin cluster and move the fin closer to the inside to keep it from slipping on those most radical of sections.

Feedback is good, watching Trevor surf it is another thing...all kinds of ridiculous stuff. A full on hull bottom turn into a 360 snap off the lip is not getting boring to watch.

By The By...

I happen to have a stock-pile of stock-boards right now, if you have something in particular that you're looking for send me an email and I may just have something for you!

5'6 velosim v.2, 7'6 vampire, 6'6 hullibut, 5'5 velosim w/geppy glassons, 7' pintail hull, 6'7 stage III flextail, 8'6 transitionhull, 9' d.Bowls...etc etc etc!!!

FSpoon

4'11 FlexSpoon v.2 for Cheyne down south; C took this shot the night after picking it up from me in malibu...pretty f*in schweet!

Vision

When I got into hulls I knew I found my love within surfing, it just fealt right on the shaping racks, in my arms, and in the water was a whole new realm of possiblities. I loved the idea and the application and feel so much I knew it would keep my head busy for a long time.

I never wanted to change hulls or the ideals or style, they are perfect. I just set out on a course to find out what else I can infuse with the same theories and foils to appease my curiosity for the shape.

What ended up happening was one board that has spawned nearly every hull model that I list on my website, and it the base point for most boards that are put together on the spot for fun. The board is question, and pictured below, is 6'5" x 23" x 2 7/8" if I remember correctly. It was based off of a Greenough template with a slightly pulled in nose and tail with a very slight hip at the back foot/front of the fin. It was fully hulled out, with thin rails and a very hard edge and down rail in the tail for some release.

(OG #1)

After surfing that board for a full winter, I decided the second version should be more pulled in, a little longer, and have more freedom off the back foot; so the Fishull was born.

(Fishull #1)

I kept the hip, hard edge, slightly down pinched rails, low rocker, hulled out with a single to double concave from the front foot through the tail. Essentially what I was doing was building my own kind of transitional hulls with modern tweaks for more release and response if you crank one off the back foot. That 6'7" has been my goto board for the last two years now if I don't know what the conditions are gonna be doing.

This small thread of evolution within my own experience will, i'm sure, shape the future of what I do.

Here is a new 6'3 Fishull that'll be kicking around the shop and the local points as a demo board for the winter:

Loving the curves on this one as it haunts me in the shop before the waves come again.....

Flex My Tail

Here we've got a 5'0 flextail fishy kneeboard project, nearing completion as of yesterday...This one is rather fun looking and is one of a buttload of interesting boards floating around the shop; it's prime visit/view time for some goodness...

Speaking of goodness, enjoy the new header!

Follow Your Nose

Herbie says going left is good for your health every now and then........I guess he has a point.

get it?

a point?

'cause he's pointing....left...

...classic Herbie.

Visits

Alex Swanson shot some really nice photos while I shaped a new asym. board for myself and the useage of many other folks...

Trevor has been shredding one that we made a few weeks ago, this one will be a bit bigger; T's being 5'1" at the longest point.

Perfecting the 24 Hour Road Trip

First do some work to relive whatever guilty residue you may acquire from a thoroughly un-planned wednesday afternoon,

a 5' kneeboard will do the trick:

Then, keep your eyes on the horizon and find some waves..........................this is key.

Get at least one set wave, relax with your friends on the beach, and finish your evening with some fooding.

Then go see your outrageous friend's debut show at a seedy back alley, upstairs, UBER hip club and proceed to jam the F*CK out:

Sleep, or walk around Hollywood blvd. 'till the wee hours of the night.

In the morning, take Herbie to meet a new friend named Brutus who weighs in at around 120lbs...Yah thats 10 Herbies:

Eat something healthy, and enjoy the drive back home.............

ps- Don't mention Jason's issue with crumbs, it might give him a complex.

FIIIIIIIINZ!

I took Connor and Jason up to the True Ames fin headquarters and we came back with some goodies...That wood one is 75% bamboo (vs. fiberglass), vacuum bag laminated and weighs in at less than half of a regular fin.

Surfed it a few times now and am blown away with the smoothness of it; not a snapping flex at all in the 4a template like the glass ones but a flowing swooping flex that made me get back into a serious groove to keep the power on...very very very cool fin!!!

Filos

Its funny knowing how vastly different today is from just a year and a half ago, we all FEEL the same, right?

But everything, all the 'details' of life that orbit around the center (you), are a million miles from where you were before...I know I'm doing right because the feeling is the same every day, and the details grow and breathe around me and my visions of what's going on.

As long as your decisions are made from strength and not fear, somethingsomethingsomething......go surfing.

photos by:

1st: me (KL 'fro deep in trim)

2nd: Morgan Maassen (KL and I, shred sesh at the pre-warehouse house)

3rd: Kyle Lightner (me at work)

Seasons of Strange

I wonder how many hundreds of times I've done the walk...It's almost a sacred passage now, from the shaping room to the resin filled mine that is the glass shop...

Trays for Tubes

Connor Lyon...Project.ing.

7'Whun"

Daniel's got a spiffy new hullibut thats 7'1" x 22 3/4" x 2 7/8" and dressed in a fiiiiiiine key lime-ish green...super jealous of this one:

Dubs

Two from the past couple of days; one for Connor's brother Spencer, and then one that I shaped as a stocker but I'm falling deeply in love with it...

The second is a full on 6'11 1/2" hullibut with a triplane-hulled to single concave bottom; the difference on this one being that the planes aren't all flat surfaces but slightly curved, so it's three hulled surfaces...if that makes sense. a little bit techincally difficult to shape but far more hull-feel for good points than a regular triplane.

Daniella

Some silly little sandbars forming this week...this one was PUMPING all afternoon.

and now it's only a matter of time. Now equipped with a new vantage point, we are positioned for success this year...again.

and again.

and again.

Daniella

Your friendly neighborhood surfboard construction workers.

Sneaking

Another quick sneak peak at Trevor and my new project...

T and I got to sneak out of the shop for a bit monday for a little under the radar session down the road; very VERY pleased with the results so far, it's gonna be an interesting winter!

Beaming

Beamer and I have been planning a board for him for a couple months now and after switching back and forth a few times on shape and general desires, I decided to have him come down for a weekend from the bay area and hang out while I built his board start to finish in the 24 hr window of time we both had to work with...

I shaped it in the evening (4'11" x 21" x 2 1/2" velosim), then woke up bright and early the next morning to meet him and Jason out at the boatyard; It was a solid task but not impossible; the board being full tint top and bottom with glass-on fins made the challenge even more tempting. A clear sanded board is no problem for that kind of time frame if you've got nothing else going on but this made me feel pretty accomplished by the end of the day, PLUS, we ate some dank pizza.

Beaut.

Nick Cook, pulling in on the most well-used hullibut to date...Brandon DiPierri shot this sometime last winter, it's a new favorite!

Herbiez

Custom edge/velo spoon about 90% through it's journey to being seaworthy...

Know It Will

Got to hang out with KL a bunch today while he's in town shooting a little assignment; he was in town with Kassia Meador, Harrison Roach, and a few other rip-shredders...we all got to hang and surf everyone's favorite point for a while and play in the sun. It was a super fun group to surf with for the day!!!!