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Article courtesy of PLB Vol 4, Num 2 circa 1999. 

THE COFFS HARBOUR AREA, ON the Mid North Coast of NSW, has remained pretty much off the surfing map, although this stretch of coast probably has more headlands and bays, per kilometre, than anywhere along the East Coast of Australia. In the 60km between Woolgoolga in the north and Urunga in the south, the Great Dividing Range extends close to the ocean and actually reaches the water at McCauleys Headland - home of the Big Banana. This results in a varied coastline and an abundance of rock shelves, beach breaks, creek mouths and back beaches. It's rarely dead flat, and in anything bar a howling easterly, there will be surfable waves somewhere. But, unlike its neighbours, Angourie and Crescent, Coffs Harbour lacks a big name break, so most surfers drive right on by - which suits the locals just fine.

Bill Tolhurst is Coffs Harbour born and bred, and one of its favourite sons, but like the area itself, has somehow sidestepped media attention. That's not to say he isn't well known. Many longtime surfers can regale you with "Tolhurst" stories, and Billy has quietly forged a reputation as one of Australia's most gifted surfer/shapers.

 

There was a time about 15 years ago when Billy Tolhurst handed out some stickers and half-a-dozen T-shirts.

It shocked his mates: "Hello, he's gone commercial on us!" This was a major foray into marketing for Billy who has never been too concerned with the promotional aspects of the surfboard building business.

Ever since he first picked up a planer back in high school, Tolhurst has been busy pursuing his obsession for honing the performance of surfboards: any length, short and mid, but particularly the modern longboard. Billy is the perfect test pilot for his own ideas. He rips, and it seems like he always has. I was a couple of years ahead of Tolhurst at Coffs Harbour Jetty High School. When he was a grommet, he was "Billy The Kid" - a bloody hot surfer!

Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, the whole Mid North Coast was a bit of a hot-bed. The 'country soul' migration was under way, so as well as the hardcore locals, there were plenty of dedicated surfers from Newcastle and Sydney living back in the "bananas'.

Right from the time he was in first form, Billy was a stand-out in any line-up; the pick of the bunch. To give some idea of the level at which he surfed, he beat Michael Peterson in barreling righthanders at Trapdoors, circa '71, when the much vaunted Kirra Boardriders came down for an inter-club comp with Coffs.

Of course every school has its hotties, but not many go on to be lifetime surfer/shapers, and precious few have the natural curiosity, talent and dedication of Tolhurst. By fourth form, Bill was already a pretty accomplished shaper, and while the rest of us schoolies were collecting stickers, he had his own label. He'd also made boards with John Blanch. 'Blanchy' was an extroverted and talented local who, by 1969. had moved on to shape for Gordon Woods and Dale in Brookvale.

When ex-pat Californian guru surfer/shaper Bob Cooper set up a surf shop and factory 100m from the school gate, Billy moved in. He worked with Cooper on and off for years, and has built boards under various labels since then - Country Woods, Michael Saggus, Mike Davis Designs, Summercloud (with Ronnie Goddard), Les Purcell, Prana (with Brett Munro), T&C and Bear. However, he's mostly worked under his own name from his factory just south of Coffs.

With his shaping, it's more like years of tuning and of R&D, than a quest for the next sensational break through. He often takes a bag of fins and a tape measure down to the water's edge, and every couple of waves he's back on the beach, measuring and marking and moving things around. This degree of dedication earns some serious cred, and you'll rarely see a fellow shaper walk past a new Billy'" without checking it out to see what he's up to.

When I mentioned to Bob Cooper that I was doing an interview with Bill, his first words were: "Oh, Billy, he's a thinker! He's an idea man, always thinking through and testing theories and he's an incredible longboarder."

Bob also repeated a comment I've heard so many times: "It's about time Tolhurst was profiled."

There are no airs or bullshit about Billy. His somewhat gruff exterior masks a keen intelligence and belies his easy going nature. He's one of seven children. The Tolhursts are a pretty well-known family in the Coffs district. His parents ran an earth moving business and Bill has done some time as a heavy machinery and dozer operator. He also managed to get through college and qualify as a surveyor, although I don't think he's ever done much of that.

He's a fisherman - salt and freshwater. He's got the well-used Landrover, camping gear and a shed full of Alveys, Daiwas, lures (and fins). He also digs "The Blues', follows St George (when they're winning), and is dedicated to his family, his lovely wife and best friend, Debbie, and their three charming little daughters, Chelsea, Ashley and Bonnie. (He has named four longboard models after them- the DT, CT, AT, and BT.)

Bill enjoys surf chat in general and design talk in particular, but he's not precious about this stuff. He'll share and swap theories with anyone. Despite his quest for the perfect board, he still loves surfing for the same reasons the rest of us do: for fun, for the challenge and to get out into nature. He also enjoys a laugh, and he's kinda dry, but when the discussion turns to the subtleties of surfing and of surfboards, the wheels kick in, and as Cooper says: "He's somewhere else."

Tolhurst is measured with his answers and articulate, but he can also be blunt and opinionated. He takes a back-hander at some of longboarding's sacred cows such as full-noses, drop-knees and what he sees as 'soft option' surfing, but he sure has paid some dues in the water and in the shaping bay. Just in materials alone, Tolhurst has put his money where his mouth is.

JB: Three of the guys l spoke to while gathering information on Tolhurst are ex-pat Californian surfer/shapers.

Bob Cooper first met Bill in 63, Mike Davis in 70, and both worked with him for extended prods during the 1970s. They've surfed with him and watched him in the water countless times, and both have vivid memories of his surfing exploits over the past 30 years. Tom Wegener, on the other hand, has never seen Bill surf, but / watched Tom checking out my brand new Tolhurst on the beach one morning, so I asked him what he thought. He turned around kind of wide-eyed, and said: "That is the best performance' longboard I have ever seen, anywhere! Who is this guy?"

Bob Cooper on Bill Tolhurst

He'd come down after school, still in his uniform, and he'd shape until midnight, then he'd go home and want to come back and shape some more before school. Billy was probably the first kid I met when I moved to Coffs and started to make boards there. He was kind of on my doorstep when I opened up.

I really liked his enthusiasm. I'd turn around and there he'd be in my shaping room, this kid with long curly hair, and he'd go: "Okay, I think we should try this." He was kind of dragging me along, but that was okay because I was new to the town and he was a part of the town, and everybody knows him and he knew everybody! He had some really good ideas, so I let him flow even though my background was much more extensive than his.

And I was a foreigner, a 'Yank', and you can't come boldly flashing credentials. Everyone in a town like that goes - "So what." He was a good bridge, a real help and I appreciated that.

He reminded me of Wayne Lynch, not particularly commanding upfront, but real intense, especially about boards. He'd want to talk about 'em, and to go to this, and to try that - all kinds of things.

He was extremely involved like a hot grommet is, but at the same time, not content with the glamour or possibilities of professional surfing. It never really interested him. His focus was on making boards and making them better, not as seeing it as a venue for him. So, it was a different feeling with a young person who had that sort of mindset - who wasn't bothered about his place in the hierarchical line-up, as long as he was going faster and turning sharper. That was the satisfaction for him. He was very contained.

Billy didn't really do all the stupid kid stuff, he was never a big party guy, he was always somewhere else, in his head, out there.

He'd make a board in a day and go out and ride it the next morning, He was so hot to try it out, and I'd go down to see if what we had talked about was going to work for him. He'd come in from the water and just blurt out all this stuff!

I don't think I was that influential with Bill. I didn't feel that he worked for me, I felt that I had the toys that he needed so that he could answer questions. Where do you get to try all this out, all the things that were boiling around in his head? I would let him do that, I don't think I ever tried to put anything on him like: "This is the Cooper trip here, you're employed and our boards are supposed to look like this." He just enjoyed hanging around the shop and it was a really good trade-off to have him there.

His shaping Was always very good, and he was basically self-taught, I was disappointed when he worked for other guys, but that was my problem, he had a perfect right to do whatever he wanted, But from a business perspective, I could see his influence going from my product to someone else's. Usually surfing is very factional. Like in Coffs, if you worked for Summercloud you hated Cooper, if you worked for Prana you hated Summercloud and Cooper, and vice versa. He wouldn't buy any of that. He wanted different input and it fed his natural interest, and he never was the sidekick. He'd come breezing in and tell you he'd shaped a really interesting board "over there". "Come and have a look at it. "You'd kinda go: "I don't go over there" (laughter), but he never thought about it.

Bill is just incredible on a longboard, and the only time l've heard the shadow of an ego come up, is how he is rated in contests. That ticks him off. I was at a Byron contest at Wategos. It was one of the few longboard contests held at the that time. Billy just smoked - and he got a third or some-thing. He was doing stuff ... well, I was just blown away! I had seen surfing at that level before with that degree of difficulty, so I knew how hard it was to do, but the popular guy won, and I'm going, "What am I? Am I prejudiced?" It's not that it's a fix or anything, but I can remember good surfers watching Phil Edwards and not understanding just how classy he was, and I wonder, what do you see, if you can't see that? The wave positioning and finesse, very, very unique.

But if you're in the business, which Bill is, when you say, "Public, here I am," and it's how you make your living and you have a family to support, you have to be serious about publicity and that's being denied him, and that would bother him. Like, "Why is it not now coming my way?"

So with Bill there is a tinge of a whinge. Maybe it's just the way he looks at things. Call it a skeptical undercurrent. He is intensely blase; you'll never catch him postulating. He can also be the mumbler, and can be very entrenched in what he feels works and what doesn't. But I'm just as entrenched as Billy, and I'm sure other shapers are too.

Billy came from a big family, he had a lot of respect for his father and mother, and his marriage, and his kids are paramount. He has a good head there. 

Mike Davis On Bill Tolhurst

In 1970, I'd been in Australia for two days, lobbed at Coffs Harbour and hooked up with Cooper. The first morning he took us surfing at McCauley's. We pulled up, just as the sun was cracking the horizon. The surf was back-lit, all gray and stormy. It was six, maybe eight-foot, chunky, thick waves, when this Falcon station Wagon comes screeching into the parking lot, this little kid jumps out. Cooper says to me: "Ah, that's Billy, wait 'till you see this kid surf!" You've heard it all before; everywhere I've been in the world, everyone's got a kid in the neighbourhood, and sure they're good for their age, but. Anyway, Billy said "G'day" and paddled out just as this set came.

It's thick, threatening and still building. He paddled over into the peak as it's wedging on this shallow sandbank outside. He wheeled around and free-fell into it, the lip was mean, two or three feet thick. It was burying him. I said: "Your kid is going to get killed Cooper." But, the kid broke out of the whitewater at the bottom, got the board totally up on edge, drove it around the whitewater, and then squirted up into the pocket, got tubed, then spins the thing down into another really forceful bottom turn, then wound it out on to the shoulder. It was a dredging, nasty wave and nobody anywhere could have done any more to it. I don't care who they were! So much drive, the whole act. I was floored! His board was 5'9" and 19" wide. It had pinched rails and had a really hard edge with the speed bead around the tail; it was a really advanced board for the time, and he'd made it himself.

My mate, Danny and I had brought some state-of-the-art Yaters over; the first generation of low-railers. Guys in Australia had seen one or two, but they were a couple of rough, early, unrefined ones. Yet, when Billy came out of the water, he laid his board down and there it all was. It was like, "Where did it come from?"

Nobody had taught him.

I had recently watched it happen in Hawaii. Kaniapuni was using similar boards at Sunset, and earlier that winter, Gerry Lopez and those guy's had started Lightning Bolt. They'd made the big discovery that you thin the tail down, so refined that it just accommodated the fin box. Billy had it, yet none of this stuff had been in surfing magazines. That really stunned me about Billy. After school, he came around to visit, and this school kid knew as much about surfboards as anyone l'd ever seen. He had the terms, and he had innate understanding of what happens with water.

Several years later Billy came to work for me in Kiama for a couple of two-year stretches during the early and mid-70s. He was the consummate craftsman. I just turned him loose in the factory. I wasn't doing big volume then, only 10 a week. Billy would make five or six boards a week, shape, glass, double-sided tints with deck inserts and pin lines. When air brushing arrived, he was really good at that, too! If there was a new material, you showed him once, two days later, he's showing you a better way of doing it. He had a very organised way of thinking, a methodology if you like.

He brought me customers, and he took them with him when he left, that's how it works, Some of those guys are still with him, and they re now 45 years old, or more,

He was an out-of-the-box surfer. He'd surf for three hours and rip the bag out of it, Nobody would see it and he'd go home happy. I love his power and timing, and he carries a lot of speed through everything, ricochets off everything,

He'd go out at big 'Boneyard' and spin out eight times in a row, just get bashed, but he'd be back at the factory in the afternoon trying to find a way to make the board do what he wanted it to do in that position on the wave, That's what Billy was all about, and still is.

He hasn't always endeared himself to everyone in the industry, Sometimes Billy leads with his chin, He calls a spade a spade, and can have a boneheaded way of doing things, but I respect him for that. Bill's vision is not about trophies or reputation; in the end, it's the pride he takes in having been there first, There's a saying: "The scouts collect the arrows, the soldiers collect the real estate," Billy's definitely a scout, He's one of those really innovative guys.

Tom Wegner On Bill Tolhurst

His boards are such a breath of fresh air, because there are some totally different design concepts to anything I've ever seen anybody use. They obviously work, they have balance, look good, with clean lines from beginning to end, but also so different that the guy who makes that couldn't be influenced by the shops. Shop shapers make boards that will sell, and then there are guys who are really into surfing and make boards that ride good.

From a shaper's perspective, the rocker is totally different, so that means at some stage he had to make a new rocker template and send it to Burford's or what-ever. So, a new design that is that different takes so much working around, and you know that if somebody does something like that, it is not a mistake. And then having the tail shaped the way it is, the bottom comes up at the tip, it's a complete break from anything since 1967. It has to do with riding through the wave instead of planing on top. Those rails are designed to flow through the water, they're not 100 percent planing rails at all. It's almost coming at making a longboard from the old style and then putting in new design concepts. The double concave is not new at all, but the rocker is flat as anything through the middle. But, mixing the edge going back to the side fins and then disappearing and simultaneously having an edge appear towards the top of the board around the tail, is totally new, totally his, and I've never seen anything like it before. And the board rips -immediate acceleration down the line.

I haven't met him, but I phoned him up because I was so impressed that somebody was doing something a little bit differently, or even a lot different.

Progressive longboarding especially has been pretty stagnant since 1987 basically. Most boards are no different to what they were then.

I'm not copying it, but I sure am influenced by it. I'm going to call it the Tolhurst Double Rail Concept. It's totally original, and I'm going to experiment with it.

He's innovative, and when you look at a board that he's made, you know that he can surf, and that he is frustrated with different parts of a board. If you make boards like that, you can't be happy with the way standard boards are right now. I mean, you want a board that will turn and noseride in the pocket, not out on the shoulder someplace. Apparently, he has been refining these concepts for years. Other shapers can really appreciate the amount of effort and thought that he has invested in that.

PLB INTERVIEW – JB

 You started making boards with John Blanch in what ... '67?

Oh, probably, we were shaping under his dad's house. We found a receipt recently when we cleaned up my shed, and it was for stuff I'd bought off Bennett's in 1968, so I must have been building boards for myself by then. This was after trackers, and foils, and there were plastic machines, everything happened so quickly, no-one can remember how quickly. By '71, boards were like they are now, more or less. But I hadn't been doing it long when Cooper arrived, I'd probably made a dozen or maybe twenty boards.

How did you meet Bob?

He first turned up at McCauley's one afternoon, and everyone went: "Oh there's O'Neill." Remember those ads in the mags where he was on the label of a bottle? Then it clicked that it must be that Cooper guy.

I went real close to him on a wave, I said sorry, and he said:

"Hey that's alright, I knew you weren't gonna hit me." I felt pretty good. That night he called round home. There he was at our sliding door, and he wanted to rent our shed to build boards, but it was full up. He mentioned I should come and do some work with him, but I can't afford to pay you (laughter). Well great, but of course I said yes.

I was about 15, so Bob could probably tell you more about that, it's something we've never talked about since. But if guys wanted a board off me they paid a $5 or $10 shaping fee on top.

Cooper had worked at Morey's and in big factories in the States, also in Brookvale, so it must have been a pretty interesting influence for a country grommet?

Yeah, it was really good for me, because I learnt a lot there. He knew how to glass and those sorts of things. He would take Trevor Newman and me to contests in Sydney. Bob was friends with Midget, so we'd stay at Midget's house and I'd get to check out his factory, which was amazing. A big production factory ... the proper stuff. You couldn't get those opportunities around here. 

Everything around Coffs was done in banana packing sheds.

Yeah, little... like mine is now (laughter).. but then again, guys have walked into mine and said: "Geez that's a good factory" so there must be people out there still shaping in packing sheds!

Did you learn much about shaping off Bob?

I often wonder about this. I was with him, in a couple of different stints up until I was about 22. Those are your impressionable years; people consolidate themselves. We were making such radical boards then, everybody was, with radical changes. Hard to believe now, everything was so different, you'd make a 6'2" one week and a 7'6” the next, (or) maybe the next day, just to see what they'd do, and he encouraged this - which was great. So in those ways he'd been more of an influence than anybody. I guess that what I'd learnt off Blanchy was what he'd learnt off Lenny Dibben a few months before, and that was how to use tools and the techniques. But shaping wise, I don't think I've consciously set out to learn anything off anybody. It's something that just happens.

What about if you see something interesting in someone else's boards?

Design wise you have to think about what you want the board to do, and then you put things in to get there, like where you put your concaves and edges, rolls - whatever, and the combinations. Every other shaper might have the same idea and do it different ways to get their own satisfactory level. There is no particular design that is good or bad, it's just the way you head off to achieve the end. When I've been forced by someone ordering a board to try and do it a different way, I haven't necessarily liked the results.

Like being asked to copy a board?

I refuse to copy boards, and I don't ride anyone else's boards, in case I find something I like and then I'm all mixed up (laugh-ter). Done that, and been led off on dead-ends. Then I've gotta go back and start again.

And your aim with the modern mal is to get it to do everything - turn, trim and noseride?

Well, that's what you try to do. If you can get them to do all that, then you're laughing. Then maybe you can start to make them do other things, it's just little steps at a time. I've been lucky 'cause I've fluked on a few things, probably because I started early and have done plenty of fiddling around. And being in Coffs I was a bit isolated, so I just did what I wanted to do. And, there were no other longboarders around.

I remember you making a couple of 'modern' mals in the 70s, when short-boards were in full swing.

Yeah, I just wanted one for those little waves. I guess it was after the first twin fins... and I missed noseriding. But the first one really came about through an accident. I got a hit in the neck in solid surf at Boambee and lost the use of my right arm for a while. was 19 ... so it must have been '72. I had a lot of trouble getting up one-handed. So I was running around borrowing guns off people, trying to get more flotation. Mark Williams knew where there was a mint condition Gary Birdsall under a house - so we went and got her and we stripped her (incredulous laughter). I've told Gary this, too. I met him once and asked him about his boards and he said: "Yeah, there were only a couple made with the seagulls," and I said: "Yeah, well I cut one of them up!" Anyway, I made this thing out of it, not a lot different to what I do now, tucked under edge on the nose, soft, high rails in the tail, a real good noseriding board, with a big single fin Greenough. I took it with me on a holiday to Byron in May of '73, and The Pass was perfect every day, but under waist high. The shortboards were struggling, but I was out there just having a ball. By the end of the 10 days, guys were dragging out old plastic machines and bits and pieces

- whatever they could find.

Longboards just disappeared in Australia. I'm sure the Californians and Hawaiians went back to them before we did.

Yeah, well some of them never left them really. I made a couple more at Cooper's around 1972, we didn't have a sticker on them, but on Chris Horne's board we wrote: "Hang Ten whenever you can." Right up on the nose.

I'd like to come back to noseriding, but let's stay in the past for a bit. You put on a seniors' comp at Boambee, shortboards with a mal section, and that was the first time I'd seen a gathering of modern longboards. Well, there were half a dozen anyway. That was a couple of years before Malfunction and the others kicked off, wasn't it?

Yeah, I didn't know how many longboards would turn up. I thought some of the Queensland guys had 'em, but didn't know. I'd seen Ronnie Blewitt at Fraser Island with one, Jason was only a little kid, ... they were making them in Byron. So Ronnie came, and a couple from the Gold Coast, and Frank Latta brought one, Steve Butterworth ripped on his, Jeff McCoy came. David Treloar and Ronnie Goddard borrowed one of mine. Those boards just created so much fun, Baddy remembers it. Guys were just

saying: "I'll have a go at that!"

Thrusters had just come out so it was '81 or '82.

DEBBIE: (while walking past) It was '82.

'82 it is. Greg Hill gave us some Vuarnet sunnies, Butterworth gave us some wetsuits, my dad and I made the trophies and the surf club gave us a venue. It was the first time we ever used the system of judging two heats before you surf. The idea of the comp was just to give the older guys a weekend at the beach, to get 'em back in the water. Everyone who surfed got a good prize, too, so quite a few things were pioneered at that contest.

With your own surfing Bill, you have always seemed to attack the wave. You get in and drive the board.

Well, we all choose how we want to surf, and it's all about fun, but you can only surf 'cruisy' for so

long, we've been through that and I've been riding mals for a long time, and you want to hit the lip sometimes. The best thing for me before a contest is to get on a shortboard and get it out of my system, 'cause I've had comments, especially off Sput, that I don't noseride. I've said: "But I can, I'm a good noserider." He says: "But you don't." Now l've started to take notice of it, but you've got to surf how you want to, not how others think you should.

lan Bell is an exciting noserider, 'cause he goes really, really fast. Duane Desoto and Josh Constable are a couple more that readily come to mind, most of the pros I guess. But people can lose sight of a thing we grew up with, and it's still in the contest criteria - good surfing is deemed - to be the surfer riding the closest to the curl at speed with control, on the biggest wave. Now I think you can scrap the biggest wave business. That's silly, because if a wave is bigger you can naturally do more with it. Take wave size out, and you're getting down to modern surfing which started in '66 at Oceanside with Nat (Young). They called it total involvement for want of a better term, but I think it still applies. It's surfing close to the curl, and if you watch guys noseriding out on the shoulder, mate, I wouldn't give you jack for that. That's why I tend to favour narrower noses, because they let you noseride in where it's steep. And probably the best noseriding I've seen was Nat at the '85 Malfunction on a borrowed board. Nobody knows if Nat is noseriding or not because they can't see his feet or the board or anything.

And he noserides on the bottom of the wave face which you don't see so much anymore. Everyone sits it up on a pad and then drops 'em over.

Yeah, well to me it's 'surfing' on the nose when you're down the face. And what you do, too, is .. you don't walk up and down your board - you pull the board back under you and you push the board back out. Watch Nat, he does it better than anyone. He'll put himself in the critical part of the wave and he never leaves there unless it's to do a cutback. All the time he's moving the board back and forth under him, so the nose will go out when he's on the tail and then he'll pull it back with his feet.

Plenty of guys can set up a stall, run up the nose, and if you're high enough, and the nose is wide enough, and the board's flat enough, and the bend's in the middle, it'll drag and it won't accelerate and you can stay up there for ages, but it's really no different to a headstand to me ... you've got to be in the 'cranky bit'.

And a narrower nose has an advantage in there?

Well, a big full one can become quite a handful on a steep face.

You would have been about 13 in '66, 15 in '68, so you would have had a few years on mals before the revolution?

Yeah, I used to borrow a 10-footer, and then my parents bought me a 9'7" Dale for 25 quid, and that was the end of football. I actually made a board when I was nine or 10, out of a solid piece of white beech. It was about eight-feet long, and I put two fins on it. Don't ask me why. We used to wheel it down to Coffs creek on a billy-cart, and then float it down to the North Wall, but I got sick of dragging it around and left it in the sandhills. That was the last I saw of that. We then progressed to surf-o-planes and coolites.

Remember the era around 'The Hot Generation'? That was just before boards went short, and longboards were getting more tuned, and Nat, McTavish, and Russell Hughes were doing some pretty progressive longboarding.

That's a great movie, and some great surfing! If you are going to do a stall, you gotta' get the old Golden Breed movie and have a look at Jackie Baxter. He sits the board on the tail block, stands it right on end. Now that's a stall! You don't see that much anymore either. A cutback can either be a stall or a 'drivey' direction change, but you're basically putting yourself back there, wasting a bit of time. But since '66, turns more or less took the place of stalls, so to me it's important to have a manoeuvrable surfboard so you can put it where you want, and it'll stay there, 'cause that's another important part.

I'm a bit in the dark when it comes to design theory, like just what makes a board extra manoeuvrable or gives it other properties. For starters, shapers often talk about drag and release - please explain.

I like to base everything on a ball and a door. You can get on a door and you can ride it - it's got edges, and you can set an edge and it'll go along and release all the time. If you throw a big beach ball out in the waves it won't reach the bottom of a face, it'll be spinning around, it'll come in as long as it's in the curl, but it's dragging and is always going up. So if you think of these two things, you can work a happy medium - flats and edges release and rounds hang on. So you decide, I want some release here, some drag there. 

Then you've got to find the combination.

Well, it's pretty easy if you think of commonsense, and a shaper should be able to surf at a good enough standard to understand what is going through a guy's head when he has a problem. There are a lot of different ways you can solve the same problem. It's a matter of which shaper you go to as to how he'll go about it. If it's not too radical a solve, you can get it without affecting the way the rest of the board goes.

What about tri-fins versus singles?

Singles don't go from one turn to the other as well as a three-fin does. The front fins lead you into the next turn. When you do, let's say, a forehand turn, your front fin closest to the wall is pointing against you. It's already pointing the other way, so it makes it easy to release and to roll over on to the other one. But with three fins you should be aware that on a flat wave in undisturbed water, they are all going different directions, therefore, you don't trim for very long.

So, obviously, this is where a single has an advantage in trimming?

Yes, but oddly enough, some of the best trimmers and noseriders l've ridden were twin fins, very fast on the nose, because the stringer can run parallel to the wall. Something we forgot about with twinnies was even though we thought we were going from turn to turn, we were actually trimming a little bit in between to let the other fin get in and get set, while the other released. That can make a twin-fin mal behave a little bit odd. That's why the tri-fin is so good. You always have the back tin as a moderator.

Obviously, it depends on the size of the back fin as to whether it surfs more like a single or twinny.

Do you make many single fins?

Yeah, all my boards I set up with combinations so that you can ride them from a single through to a twin fin with a tiny stabilizer, with any combination in between. Like if you want this centre fin, okay, you ride it with this side fin. Too many people just get ... three fins please. I've got places where I reckon the back fin has to go. Move it from there and it won't go as good. There are places where they actually get really hard to paddle.

I wonder how many boards have been thrown away, especially shortboards with fixed fins, because the back fin was in the wrong place in relation to the sides, or vice versa. O'Fish'L and FCS have a big enough range, and combined with a standard 10-inch tail box, it is the best set up for any surfboard. You can adjust the back one until it's right, and change the sizes of the sides, and you can always find something that suits. Don't get bogged down on the: "This is what I have in my boards and that's it," because it just doesn't happen.

A bit of a tangent here, Billy, but I remember one time you were going to try swapping the front fins around so that the curve was on the inside and the flat side of the fin was closest to the rail, because it would be like the inside of the hulls of a powered-catamaran. Did you try it?

Yes, and it did some strange things that. there was no advantage to it, because the thing with a cat is they are made for going straight ahead with two in the water and that's what it did - trimmed straight ahead well. But in the turning there was something 'funny', and I found out why when I fell on my shortboard one day and snapped the front fin out. I went back to the car, and all I had was a back fin, tapered on both sides, so, I whacked that in. It would come off the bottom, fly up the face, but it didn't want to release off the top. The inside of the fin wouldn't release because it was round. It was the beach ball instead of the door.

Hey, I did a really interesting experiment the other day, wondering if all this stuff you shape into the middle of the bottom of a board was a lot of rot.

Double concaves and all that?

All that stuff, the vees and everything. So I rough shaped a board, and ran a crayon round the edge when I'd got the bottom pretty right, and then made it ruler-edge straight (across) so the rail and stringer rockers were exactly the same. The board went pretty good. Actually, really good. It paddled great and it loved full waves. Unbelievable - a really good noserider, but you had to be careful when it got hollow 'cause it would slide right off the face. Too much release.

It was done as a 'prove a point' to myself exercise, rather than anything else. Basically, you were surfing the fins rather than the bottom of the board when you were turning, which was a good feeling in itself. But who needs it? I made a shortboard the same. It's great backhand, but I hate it forehand. Don't know why that is.

Maybe it's just because I prefer lefts on a shortboard.

Let's talk about shortboards.

I don't differentiate between the two. I don't think it's worth heading that way. It's all surfing, and the boards are just vehicles really. Say you break a longboard down into fifths - front fifth on a 9'2" is 22", that's noseriding - hanging five or ten. The next two-fifths are forward trim, and control, then you've got. the back two-fifths - one where your front foot goes, and the other is your back foot. I think, if you draw lines on your board you'd find it was pretty right. You push with your back foot and the front one leads it through. On a shortboard you take out the nose, and the trim and forward trim become one, 'cause you might only ever move slightly forward if you're pulling up into a barrel and you have three-fifths. If you leave out noseriding, there really is little difference.

Some years ago I was showing a guy the difference in the rocker between a shortboard and the mal, down where you stand and drive them. I put the templates together, also the mini mal, and they were all identical. I didn't know. I'd never done it. I went: "Well look at that!" I was like 'Foghorn Leghorn', "Well blow me down!" (laughter) I'd arrived at all those rockers independently over 15 or 20 years, and they were all exactly the same in the engine room.

You've been making boards since school, Billy, you must find it rewarding?

Not financially! But, if someone comes to the factory and tells you they love their board and they are having a ball on it, well, that is gratifying. I don't care what level they surf at, but at the same time it's good to get feedback and input from people I class as good surfers.

I've had so many say how good my boards go, that I've developed some confidence in them. But I don't have many famous guys, because they get boards for nothing. I can't afford that because I'm not a retail outlet. Sean Hagar was a good one. He came up to me out of the blue and introduced himself and said he'd borrowed one of my boards and it went different to anything he'd ridden and that he loved it. I thought that was great. Josh Ferris has always wanted one, and I shaped him one recently under the Stewart label, but I haven't heard back from him yet. Maybe he hates it! (laughter) Hakman has bought quite a few, and he took a favourite to show Dick Brewer and told him what a good board it was. That was pretty cool.

Surfing is its own reward, and it's been good to me. There is absolutely nothing else like it. It's not just the wind rushing past or the feeling of sliding down a green wall; it's something you can do yourself, just the fact that if you want to just jump off the side, you can, and nobody is going to go crook at you. If you want to stand on your head or go back-wards, you can. You can even go left! (laughter) You can switch feet. There are no rules.

Except for competitions, they've got rules.

I love going to competitions, and catching up with everyone and checking things out. But, in the water, I really don't like to hassle. I mean you don't hassle at home. I surf a contest the same as I free surf, sometimes you get all the waves, sometimes you don't. If it happens to be in the final, well and good, and if it doesn't, well, it doesn't matter. I know if you come first you get all the publicity; no one ever thinks of second place. You may as well come last in the first heat. But .. is it that important? It's not to me. Amateurs should be for fun, there's no sheep station on it.

What do you think of the 50/50 judging, traditional and modern?

Why not forget about it and have good surfing as good surfing. If somebody surfs like a classic stylist and does it well, give them the points, and if someone wants to surf like a shortboarder, give them the points. It's difficult putting rules on something that has no rules. You're not playing footy or soccer, it's surfing, and that's why you do it. I hope young guys don't lose sight of that.

On the shortboard pro circuit, since the thruster became dominant, the judging criteria was drawn up to suit. Now, there may be no other better board, but are we gonna find out? That system has stifled board design. If you do 'this' you'll score points, if you don't do it, you won't get points - go play badminton or something. I'd like to see guys out there on twinnies, and mals and mid-lengths. Great surfing, but you won't fit the judging for a six-foot thruster.

The 'Pig-dog' is the biggest thing that's happened in years, an incredible manoeuvre, but if you want to get technical, you've got one hand on the rail.

So what?

The rules are you start scoring when your hands leave the rail and stop when your hands touch the rail. Do you give them half-points? (laughter) Well ...? It's an over the top example, but this is what I'm getting at.

Why not just throw the rules away and go: "Geez, that was great!"

I've had people say to me that I should learn to do drop-knee cut backs. I think: why would you want to do a drop-knee when you can already do a round house? Because it's a way to rack up points? No, you should get points for doing a cutback. You can do it on your head if you want to, but it's still only a cutback. Quite often a drop-knee is not a very effective one.

One time we were watching a guy do a long, drawn-out drop-knee out on a wall, and I remember you saying that they really should be doing a snap.

Yeah, it was one of those 'draggy-arsed' things that go on forever. A drop-knee evolved because you couldn't turn those old things. You'd bend your back leg and straighten it straight away, and that pushes the tail away and snaps the board around. I reckon anything other than that is a cutback with a bent leg. If you want to call it a drop-knee - you could call it a frangipani. Johnny Giles is one of the few guys I've seen who does them properly. Ray (Gleave) does one that looks really good, but it's not the one they used to do. It's a new thing. But, I see some and they look ridiculous because they just slow down.

But surfing is better now on mals than it was back before the shortboard arrived?

Oh yeah! Definitely! ... but in a different way, because, gee... there really was some nice stuff going on with those old heavy boards. But, today we know what good surfing is; back then it was evolving to this stage.

And in the future, Billy, I understand you've entered cyber-space. You've linked up with Bobby Brown, Wayne Deane and Steve Friedman to shape for the Golden Breed range to be marketed exclusively on the net?

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about that because all three of those guys I a dmire as surfers and as shapers. I'll still work under my own label and shape some for T&C and Bear, but the four of us have known each other for yonks, and whenever we meet, we end up talking surfboards, endlessly. So, it's great to be working closely with them.

When it comes to making good surfboards, though, it's not necessary to be a good designer, shaper and surfer, although I think it sure helps. But it is necessary to be all three to make changes ... and to relate to the design changes needed to do a job that is still only a thought. So, it's important if surfing is going to continue to evolve. I mean ... if you've got something you're happy with, you can't just keep making that 'cause there has got to be something more, hasn't there?

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