Wanna know what the most important number in your
next custom is?
A few weeks back I ordered a custom
small-waver, a reboot of a model I’d gotten involved with
ten years earlier.
The design had changed with the prevailing winds of fashion, it
was thicker, flatter and wider, but I knew it would be a fast and
stable board and draw, roughly, the same hieroglyphics on a
wave.
Great shaper, good local construction. The sorcery hadn’t
changed. How could you lose?
For the first time in my life and following the route of common
belief, I chose a board via the magical volume number and not my
usual mix of length, width, thickness.
Yeah.
As I unpacked a board that my ballerina legs would never turn, I
was shown the folly of ordering a surfboard via how much foam is
contained within its boundaries and not by specifics.
Everything else, the curve, the outline, the foil, was
perfect.
But two sizes too big.
I was the skinny kid ordering a pair of 34″ jeans.
I had to call Jon Pyzel, who has shaped for the two-time world
champ John John Florence since he was five, ’cause I know surfers
swinging in and saying, ‘Gimme a thirty’ is a pet peeve.
Jon is also one of the most accessible shapers in the world.
Walk into his factory in
Waialua on the North Shore or hit him up on his Instagram account, which he
operates, and you’re going to talk, message, with Jon
himself.
He’s like Gabriel’s
shaper Johnny Cabianca. The pair are in the game to
make beautiful surfboards, not to wind up sitting behind a desk
commanding an apparel and hardware biz.
So I call Jon.
I told him what I did.
And that it made me think, why the volume thing anyway? Ain’t it
about trying to get a board that’s stable and paddles well.
Think: doesn’t rocker, for instance, affect stability and the
ability to paddle more than the amount of foam in a board?
And width?
Therefore, could a 27-litre board be more stable and paddle
better than a 30-litre board?
Talk to me Jonny.
“I hear it every day. I want this many litres in a board,” says
Jon. “What people don’t understand is that volume is simply the
amount of foam in a board. You can have a narrow and thick board
that is 30 litres and a thin, wide board that is 30 litres. And the
only reason we even know the volume is because of the computer
programs. No hand-shaper can tell
you what the volume of a board is unless they have a float
tank.
Jon says he tries to educate people on the importance of knowing
that volume isn’t the final say in the game.
“Rocker is one of the biggest factors in board paddling,” says
Jon. “And one huge thing that nobody thinks about with volume is
that it only has an effect on a board before it hits planing speed.
It’s like a big heavy boat going through water. Once it hits its
planing speed and the hull is on top of the water it frees up. It’s
no longer going through the water, it’s on top of the water. A
surfboard does the same thing.”
So when someone comes in to order a board, a Shadow, say, his newest
model, and they want a six-o, what Jon does is he asks
’em the width.
“It has a huge role in how a board performs,” he says. “They
know they want a six-o and they know how much foam they want in it,
but I ask ’em what width they prefer. You don’t just want to make a
board thicker and wider until you hit their ‘number.’ When someone
come to me, if I have their width and their length I can manoeuvre
from there.”
Jon points out the obvious, that a board you ride in crummy
waves is probably going to need more volume than a board you launch
in good surf.
“Sometime a step-up board might have less volume than a normal
shortboard,” he says, adding once you get to a certain size, it
becomes the opposite and you overcompensate with volume in rhino
chaser.
And, he says, adding an eighth of an inch to thickness is going
to have a bigger effect, volume-wise, than a similar increase in
width.
He tells people to think about a litre bottle of soda. Imagine
it’s foam. If you want to increase or decrease your volume by
200mls, or twenty percent of that bottle, well, it ain’t much at
all. You ain’t gonna feel it. John John might, but not you, not
me.
But, he says, tell ’em to get one of those gallon American soda
drink mega cups and you can appreciate what three or four litres
will do to your board.
Got it?
Know your width and length, have a rough idea of your volume but
don’t be afraid to swing a little, tell your shaper where you’re
gonna ride the thing and let ’em create their magic.
And it is magic.
“The joy in making surfboards comes from the people riding them
more than the award or the content win,” says Jon. “You have a kid
walk in and it’s the happiest thing you’ve ever seen. I like that
connection. I like to be a part of it. That never get old.”
