h all the senses fully roused and running peak, mere seconds
h all the senses fully roused and running peak, mere seconds
Let’s Talk About Flex Gene Cooper Goes Full Circle Interview and Photos by Ryan A. Smith
>>Gene Cooper shapes a pig prototype in 2009, step #1 toward his flex resurgence.
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>>Speed Hulls, tail ends in progress.
>>Hand-done directional wet sand finish.
>>Shelby Creagh, pig shoot in Sri Lanka. [Keren Katz] >>Max speed starts up front.
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>>Boar charge. Alex Knost. [Cooper]
If you see something too much it wears you down. It’s like: ‘Play Freedbird!’ You have to do it one more time. And I’m not down on it; I’m just done with it. Ryan: How long have you been shaping? Gene: I started shaping seriously in ’74. I worked at my first surf shop in ’74 and started as a sander and polisher, and then I started to do everything in the shop. It was California Foam in The Valley.
Since 1979. You became well known over a decade ago for your color work and shaping a lot of really different and varied surfboard models. How many models were you making at the peak of all that?
But, now, the abstract color work is a lot more prevalent in the industry, saturated.
Who was doing pig stuff that you noticed when you made your early versions? When I started making the “Black Board,” there were a lot of new pigs floating around, so it’s not like I brought them back in any way; but what I did do, I think, is plugged into the original design a little more and, in my case, brought back a feeling that was pretty much lost. If you use new materials on that style of board, it’s kind of corky, so I was looking for something that rode like an old balsa board and had that great springy feeling and felt alive. So I played around with some really heavy foam and old school glass jobs that are light and came up with the Flex Pig. Even riding the prototype for the first time, I didn’t know if it was going to work, but it’s been great. Everyone that has one now seems to like it. (Laughs.) How did you find the right stringerless blank?
How long have you been in Ventura, California?
Maybe 12 models, four and five of them were pretty popular that I did a lot. I didn’t start “Cooperfish” until 1990, and that label was just to only do old style stuff and really stick to it. The color came in around ’92. I was just doing standard color work before that, and then I started doing the abstract stuff because the only place you ever saw it was on the old boards. Not all boards had the color work in the ’60s, but there were some around. I started to go in that direction because nobody did it and I always liked the stuff.
pig! Make me a pig!” I finally did it, then I shaped mine and got hooked on it.
>>Gene talks flow and flex.
something very simple. It’s what I like. I’ve gone full circle on that. If you see something too much it wears you down. At least that’s what it’s done to me. It’s like: “Play ‘Freebird’!” You have to do it one more time. And I’m not down on it; I’m just done with it. So, you’ve taken those two board designs from your youth and made them your present and future focus?
The way I’ve always been is, if everyone’s doing it then I don’t want to do it. I want to do something different. It’s hard to be different nowadays because everybody’s different today. But I just lose my taste when something gets really popular. Like a great song that they play over and over on the radio – pretty soon it loses its charm. I just want to do something new all the time.
I make the [stringerless] “Flex Pig,” a late-’50s pig design. That particular model, I don’t really want to have an updated version of it. I don’t want to put a concave in it and add tail rocker and do all the stuff to it; I want to make it pretty true to the era ’cause they really do work fine. I grew up surfing on those. The design was done when I started surfing, but there were plenty of pig boards around and we always had one. It’s a legitimate design with a great feeling.
So now you are focusing on shaping only two surfboard models and doing single colors?
You’ve been integral in that recent design resurgence, yes?
I’ve gone back to basics. I grew up riding clear, fine-sanded boards, [Greg] Liddles, a lot of hulls, longboards, stuff that wasn’t flashy. Personally, although I had a few flashy boards, and I would make them, I usually had a clear one or
Yes and no. There’ve been a lot of people doing pigs recently, and they got onboard before I got back onboard with it. I hooked up with Mike Black, and he’s very single-minded about the pig and was after me to make him one: “Make me a
I often had a stringerless board through the ’70s, and it was all about flex. So I was an advocate of it before I started the Flex Pigs. What happened was, I had an old Velzy/Jacobs balsa pig, and it had a certain feeling. I was in Fiberglass Hawaii looking at their tow [board] foam and a light bulb came one. I thought, ‘Shoot, this is kind of the same density, and how about no stringer so it flexes, maybe it will be strong enough to make a longboard.’ So I used that and went with double six-ounce flat weave, like the Liddles are glassed with, and Isophthalic resin, which I’ve used a lot. Iso is just stronger, super strong super stuff; it’s ugly as can be and a pain to work with, but I know it’s strong. No stringers, the double weave, and Isophthalic resin spell flex. But the problem with flex is you can get broken boards a lot, before these. These turned out to be very durable and strong and, so far, knock on wood, we haven’t broken anything. The other advantage is we don’t get heel dents or anything like that – it’s solid. The glass job isn’t heavy; it’s all core weight. You’ve heard it before, “If you glass a pillow with anything, it’s going to give, but if you glass something hard with light glass you’re better off.” It’s always a goal to find that balance. You said it’s “tow foam,” like for tow-in surfboards? Tow-in foam, from U.S. Blanks. They developed it, actually. Well, originally, there were balsa tow boards. Then, with foam, what they were doing was trying to get more and more glass on those things. I am not a tow expert, but then they started doing about six layers of cloth, but that still has a lot of air in it, and the foam’s still the same. I believe the reason they went to this tow foam, the really heavy foam, is to get the board in the water so it wasn’t bouncing around. And think about what you want when you ride a log: You want something that doesn’t bounce around. It was a natural fit. Anyway, I was sitting there looking at this blank, thinking, ‘Why not make it out of this?’
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You have to take it out and see how it goes; you need trial and error. If you think you’re going down the right road, try it. That’s where I’m at. Were they making 10-foot tow blanks at that point? No! (Laughs.) I went with my hat in my hand to U.S. Blanks, asking for them to make that for me. The first Flex Pig we made was out of an 11’3” blank, to make a 9’7” board, because I didn’t want to bend it and then shape it and then bend it back, or do I glass it? I didn’t want to ever bend it; I wanted it natural, because I believe if you bend it when you glass it then it will want to find it’s old rocker again at some point. To keep it true, I had to take my rocker out of a longer blank, in the middle of it, basically. And there isn’t a problem with core strength, like on other blanks that are softer in the middle or something. This stuff is packed tight; it’s the same from one end to the other with no difference in density or in consistency. Have the Flex Pig blanks changed since that first one? No, no. Well, I went to down to a 10’8” blank. I make those pigs up to 9’7”. I think, if I make them too big, they’ll become heavy boats. I want them to be kind of nimble. A pig, originally, was a performance board of the 1950s. They came off Malibu Chips with the real straight back, and when Velzy put the hip back there it was like, “Hey, here’s a performance board.” And if you watch how the old ones surfed, there were some guys that were really performing. They were the hot-dog boards. The Flex Pigs should be sort of like big, clunky racecars! (Laughs.) What about your flex glassing technique, has anything changed since that first prototype? No. First one. I think we nailed it; everything came together. What happened was, when Mike and I originally got together, when you were here, we just used standard materials and Mike wanted certain stuff on the Black Board. The whole time we were doing it, though, I was looking at the rocker and everything wasn’t coming together for me. Basically, I just have to close myself into a room with a blank and shape a board; I can’t have outside influences, because then you get two guys’ ideas which come out to one real bad idea, a real bad result. I just have to be very single-minded and must focus on what I’m doing and make it, then go, “Here, do you like this?” That worked out a lot better. Mike liked the first one, but I didn’t.
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>>Hippy curves.
lately. But the Flex Pigs are starting to get a little hold there, which is kinda cool. Working with the Flex Pig seems to have lent itself toward adding the flex pattern into some of your other designs, yes? Yes, I want to see what happens. It’s kind of in process now. Originally, I was making the pigs with the huge, ’50s-style fin, and guys started to ask about pigs with raked fins or different things, but I was kind of blowing them off. Then I softened on it and went, “OK, maybe let me try out a Greenough fin.” The board is still not a Magic Sam or anything; it’s still a pig from the ’50s. So, now, I can make them with raked fins, it’s a choice. The raked fin has to move up, of course, and a big-ass fin has to be right on the tail. You can’t put that forward. Now I’m working with my “Malibu Foil” model with these materials, making a “Flex Foil,” but we have to test it. We just finished the first one and it looks really good. Another guy wants a noserider with flex, after he really liked his Flex Pig. And I’m a little bit reluctant about the noserider part because you have the flex with the concave and have a dynamic there that may be too much slow down. Or it may just be insane and super fun. A lot of people, like on Swaylocks.com or somewhere, they want to see tests. But you can’t test this shit, you take it and surf it – that’s where the test tank is! The test is not scientific; we have the biggest test tank in the world right there. You cannot test every component, like weight, momentum. There’re too many components in a surfboard to be able to put it in some laboratory setting and figure out how it’s gonna go. You have to take it out and see how it goes; you need trial and error. If you think you’re going down the right road, try it. That’s where I’m at.
The Flex Pig is really only a couple years old?
You grew up riding Liddle hulls and make your own, the Cooperfish Speed Hull.
I made the first one in December of 2009, so they’re not even a couple years old yet. People are riding them and getting hooked. I’ve found that the Flex Pig is like a day off – it’s just a lot of fun.
It was a long time, I didn’t want to make hulls. People were bugging me for hulls. I made the “Comet” back in the ’90s, which was a mini log. It was a mini “Hornet.”
Flex Pigs seem to be the bulk of what you are making right now. That’s purely by design, and, luckily, pigs are kind of popular right now. And you have some guys beating the drum really hard, and people are following the whole thing through blogs because it’s fun to watch. You said they are now being sent all over the states, Japan, Europe… Oh, yeah, they’re going everywhere. A guy in South Africa asked for a shipping quote and how long it would take to make one. I’ve never shipped a board to South Africa, and some guy wants a Flex Pig? There’re a lot of shapers between here and there in both directions. (Laughs.) A lot of Australia, too. And, now, Japan. I never thought pigs in Japan would ever take off because they tend to go for more compact stuff
Greenough fin? No, it was a Comet fin, a lot like an old G&S high-performance from way back. And people wanted it to be hull, which was really funny, because you can see that it was not. That was one of my most successful models. I ended the model when me and the team riders kind of split up and I felt that the board has run its course. But people wanted it to be a hull, and it wasn’t, and I didn’t want to make hulls. [Greg] Liddle makes hulls, I feel he is The Man, I didn’t want to get into his territory at all. I’d just buy one from him. So, anyway, I was playing with guns, and old-style guns are basically hulls. We made the C2 Gun, which had a certain configuration with concave in the back and a little bevel, hard edge in the tail, and I started making the C2s into hulls, where it’s short and had more of a hull template. They worked really well because they could handle waves, bigger waves than a conventional hull. I called them Speed Hulls. The first guy that
>>Rack o’ rocker jigs.
>>Hog motor.
>>Tuning the first Black Board. >>Gene, morning Speed Hull go-out. [Cooper Archive]
>>Gene eyes his swine.
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>>Hot-dog posture. Shelby. [Katz]
>>Gene, 1973, on a self-made stringerless. {Cooper Archive]
>>Alex, dangling piggies. [Cooper]
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>>Board trade. (L to R) Mike Black, Nolan Hall, Alex, Brian Michler, Miles Cooper, Eric Walden. [Cooper]
It could be a cool little board that is half alaia half hull, something that gets down in the water and just does some crazy stuff, gets on the rail.
had one said, “This board’s so fast I can’t believe it!” And I made one for myself and he was right – it’s fast and a lot of fun.
they would delam and then they’d be bending, and you’d be trying to figure out how to ride the board while it was flexing too much. Then you’d have to pretty much chuck it; it was over. But, that was with those materials, the lighter materials. With these Flex Pigs, these things are solid, solid as a rock, and they kind of weigh the same. It’s interesting.
In short, in very basic terms, what elements absolutely need to be there for a board to be considered a “hull”? If you look back, the first hulls were planing hulls by Bob Simmons, and look at his original boards as your basic outline for what’s going to be a hull. They have a little flare up in the nose, they are real flat coming out the back; it doesn’t have any tail rocker to speak of. It has a moderate kick to it in the front, but the rails are very high a couple feet back – one foot to two feet back – the rails are super high, and, so, a lot of that rocker, a lot of that kick, is absorbed in the actual hull of the board. If you look at the stringer rocker, it’s completely different from the rail rocker because the rail rocker is straighter. Basically, that’s what a hull is. It’s the hull underneath it. The rail lines – high in the front dropped low in the back – the way it cuts through the board. It’s almost like you know what a hull is when you see it, if you look at Liddles and Simmons boards. My little Speed Hull, I use a lot more components on those from what Simmons used and didn’t draw from Liddle, as much. I went back a little further and drew more from Simmons. It might sound odd because, if you look at the Mini-Simmons [design], it’s not anything like this; the MiniSimmons, for the most part, does not have the original hull underneath like the Simmons had. You said make it short, that’s not short, but there’re no short answers. But the components are rocker, rail configuration, and volume, like any board, basically, but they have a unique design. Go to the California Surf Museum or the Surfing Heritage Foundation and take a look at one. Have you been playing with flex in the Speed Hulls? Not yet. I am just going to take my rocker off and start playing with that a little bit. I’m going to change the glassing schedule, drop the glassing schedule. If you look at the Speed Hull and the Flex Pig, they have the exact same glassing schedule, no difference – it’s a light glass job. But, when I go to the flex tests I am going to use just one layer of six-ounce glass weave and maybe a four cap over it, keep the weight down as much as possible. It’s going to be weightier than you’re used to on those boards, but it could be a cool
You said there was always a flex board around when you were growing up. Who was doing that type of stuff?
>>Gene Gene, flex machine.
little board that is half alaia half hull, something that gets down in the water and just does some crazy stuff, gets on the rail. It’s just something that I have to try. You don’t know what’s going to happen, you may paddle it and it doesn’t go anywhere; it may just be totally bad. But I’m going to try it. Because the density of the tow foam makes it sit deeper? Yeah, it’s going to sit deeper in the water. The thing is, it may sit deeper in the water and just be insane, like I said. We’ll see. When you paddle it, it may be more like swimming than paddling. Who knows? Do you ever bounce ideas off your contemporaries or mentors that are doing flex stuff? No. I see some flex stuff, it’s starting to get popular again. I see some little flickers right now. Liddle was always into flex, but I couldn’t get a stringerless board out of him. He would say, “No, I can’t sell you a stringerless board, it will break. I just make ’em for myself and for [Steve] Krajewski or whatever.” So we’d just make them. We’d use Iso resin with flat weave cloth, all the stuff, and eventually they would get to the point where
With us, everything was Greg Liddle. We didn’t have really wide vision. We liked riding old boards and Liddles, and we were just making stuff like that, and mixing and matching and doing some crazy stuff. That was back in the early-’70s and through the ’70s. Before that, I’ve had Farrelly vee bottoms that flexed. They didn’t really flex that much, but they were stringerless vee bottoms. And then there was the G&S Farrelly, and that thing had no stringer. But I don’t know if those really had much flex to them, they were glassed pretty heavy. The ones that flexed the most were like what Liddle was doing for himself, we were making some like that. The Flex Pig, Speed Hulls, foils and noseriders – do you have anything else flexy that is jogging around inside your head? Yeah, well, basically, I’ve broken it down into two things: the boards I take orders on, and the boards I feel like making because sometimes I just want to do something like that. All the boards I sell to people I take orders for are Flex Pigs and Speed Hulls, and then we’re testing all those new things, right? Then we have a little museum show here, tonight, in Ventura, and I made a little art board for that. For Sacred Craft, I’ll make some really cool boards for that, maybe some neat guns and stuff like that, and pigs. But those are more art boards and stuff, and I’ll sell them off after I make them, but I don’t want to do orders like that anymore because I want to get in here and do what I want. The [Cooperfish] calendar project got me started on that, because I made 15 boards for that project and there were no rules. I could just make whatever I wanted, and that’s what I want to do from now on – have fun with it and play around. But as far as making boards for a customer and for riding boards, stuff I want to ride, we’re in this Flex Pig thing right now and this hull thing right now, and they’re crossing over a little bit.
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