surfresearch.com.au     history : greenough

george greenough
1966 - 1969

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From context, the implication is that in mid-1967 Brewer was committed to this significant reduction in length: "For some reason, all of this innovation led to Brewer being relieved of his command at Bing.
Gary Chapman had purchased a reject blank and carried it over to Bing's factory where Brewer shaped it into an 8-foot 6-inch mini-gun.
"Bing fired me the next day," Brewer told Kampion."
- Marcus: Surfboard (2007) page 160.

It would appear that Brewer's dismissal was in fact at least twelve months later.
Initially employed in May 1967, Bing Surfboards were still promoting Dick Brewer's Pipeliner model in July 1968.
- Bing Surfboards Advertisement, Surfer Magazine July 1968.
Reproduced in Holmes: Bing Surfboards (2008) page 97.

Tom at the Classic Bing Surfboards web site post several images of a Bing Pipeliner and notes:

Chuck Linnen's original California Pipeliner Gun.
Dick Brewer shaped three Pipeliner Guns when he visited the Hermosa shop in the summer of 1967, for team riders David Nuuhiwa and Chuck Linnen and Grant Reynolds (Bing's glasser).
Unlike the other Pipeliner Guns, which were made in Hawaii by Brewer in 1966-67, these three were made for riding big surf in California.
This one is 10'7"!

The images include a "a photo right out of Bings order book" that indicates that Linnen's board ("#7986") was ordered and/or shaped on  "8-3-67", that is 3rd August 1967.
- Classic Bing Surfboards
http://www.classicbingsurfboards.com/mid60sbings.html

Even accounting for the board being "made for riding big surf in California", the extreme length hardly illustrates Brewer's recollection, above, that "the mini-gun was happening in the spring of '67".

Gerry Lopez supports that story with his own recollection: "I think it was in late
'67," he told Drew Kampion.
"Brewer had just moved over to Maui from the North Shore and was shaping in Lahaina.
Reno Abellira and I each took a blank over  there to get our boards made by him.
Reno got his shaped first, but before he could shape mine, Nat and Greenough and McTavish and Ted Spencer and a couple of other Aussies showed up with those wide-tailed, vee-bottom boards.
They wanted to go ride em at Honolua Bay, but there wasn't any surf there.
John P Thurston had a surf shop at the Cannery in Lahaina where all the boards were glassed, and they came there, and we met em, and Brewer and McTavish kind of bullshitted for a long time.
So the next day we go back to do my board - I think wanted like a 9 foot 8-inch, which was considered a shorter board then - and Bewer just takes the saw and cuts a foot of the blank, and it's 8 feet 6 inches, and he tells me, 'That's how big a board you're getting. "
Holmes: Bing Surfboards (2008) page 164, quoting  Drew Kampion in The Surfer's Journal, unspecified.

McTavish is a charismatic character when you get him going.
As I drank in what he was saying, I felt the life coming back, I wanted to shape one of these little machines and go surfing. Bob explained how the vee bottom in the tail sat the back of the board in the water, allowing it to roll up onto one side and carve an arc. My first thought was that these boards would have all the action in the rear end; they were really only turners and I wasn't sure that was such a good thing because it struck me that nose-riding had been thrown completely out the window. I thought the concave noses were a feeble attempt to get the boards to nose-ride but they just wouldn't do it like the old boards did. For the first time in my surfing career lightness had become a factor; everyone was building their boards out of stringerless blanks to keep the weight down.

I asked Denny Keyo if I could use Bob's shaping bay and, for the first time in six months, I shaped a new board. It was 8 feet long by 23 inches wide and like McTavish's had a 12-inch pod across the tail with a 4-inch vee.
The stringerless blank was really hard to hold while shaping and I had to use a brick to keep it in one place.
The thickness of those Plastic Machines also made them appear strange, as they held the thickness of the centre right through to the tail.
And I soon found that glassing them was a nightmare.
The idea was to get the board as light as possible, so a thin skin had to be put on the bottom to hold the curve, then a couple, of layers on the deck to give it some strength and rigidity.
I took the new board out in a 3-footer inside Narrabeen "Alley" to test it and thought I'd never get used to the feel, it was so weird.
After an hour of practise, and a few long swims to the beach, I began to get the feel of the vee and found how interesting the pocket-riding type of surfing could be."
-Young: Nat's Nat (1998) page 162.

1968 Butterfly fin by Scott Dillon: " Happiest surfboarder anywhere is Dr. Bob Spence.  The 'Doc' has a board which he swears is the complete answer. 'Nat' has ridden it ...'Kenno' has ridden it, many others have too, and everyone agrees there is something really different and interesting about this board.  Scott Dillon designed and built it and this is a pretty radical unit.  Top plan shape is modified 'stubby,' though not quite so wide in the tail, bottom rear is convex, vee rails are straight though swept up at front end, but, the real punch line is the fins ... yes, I said fins (plural).  Both skegs are joined at the base and then project out-ward and upward, gull wing style.  The whole unit is very gracefully constructed and, according to 'Doc,' gives unbelievable stability and ease of manoeuvrability. ..the unit is just over 8 feet long." Surfing World  Volume 10 Number 4,  March-April 1968, page 43.

Following the 1968 World Contest in Puerto Rico riding his Weber Ski design, Nat Young, like many shapers, began to experiment with the low rail:
"Naturally Ted, Wayne and I had been looking very carefully at all the other competitors' boards.
David Nuuhiwa, Joey Cabell and Reno Abellira had really different rails on their boards, one I'd never seen before: hard, low in profile, and running the entire length of the board from nose to tail.
After all these years and after questioning many surfers, I've still no real understanding of who first discovered that important ingredient -the origins of the low rail are still a mystery."
-Young: Nat's Nat (1998) page 187.

Subsequently he had two gun boards built or the Hawaiian winter of 1968-1969:
"My two Weber guns were there waiting for me with Randy Rarick and as I lifted them from the nose and looked down the curves, I could see that (Weber's top shaper, Harold) Iggy had done a great job.
They had the traditional Hawaiian big-wave board outlines and the hard low rail popular at the time - lying there all ready to go, the boards looked like a pair of racehorses.
Both were finished identically with a big Weber sun sticker on the deck, but the best thing about them was that they had fins that had been fibreglassed on; fins I'd sanded myself in California last summer."
-Young: Nat's Nat (1998) page 202.
Young placed 5th in the final of that season's Duke Kahanamoku Contest and certainly made an impression on the magazine photographers, a Ron Stoner photograph of a slashing cutback at Sunset Beach used for Surfer magazine's (possibly) first fold out cover (Volume 10 Number 3 July 1969).

Surfing World Volume 11 Number 2 1969

Six leading Australian surfers select their favorite performers:

David Treloar on John Otton, Butch Cooney, Peter Cornish, Midget Farrelly, Alan Spargo, Bruce Channon.

Bruce Channon on Wayne Lynch, Keith Paull, Richard Harvey, Midget Farrelly, Peter Cornish, Ian Goodacre.

Bernard Farrelly on George Downing, Bobby Brown, Keith Paull, John Connors, Joey Cabell, Wayne Lynch.

Mark Smith on Colin Hammond, Robert Melling, Gordon Merchant, Keith Paull, Robert Conneely, Judy Trimm.

Bob Evans on Midget Farrelly, Phil Edwards, Nat Young, Goerge Downing, Peter Drouyn.

The Sheer Delight Of Being Covered By The Curl – Kevin Platt

The two sides of… Leonardo da Kav. Lester Brien Richard Kavanaugh.

Suntex Catalina add Spirit of the Sun the ’69 look surfing trunk add centre spread

A comparison with George Greenough/Ron Realph! No Thanks. It starts Too Manny Arguments. John Russel. Talks about his abilities and influence, the stage 3 fin and spoons 3pages.

Mechanism Article and photo’s John Hogan.

Somethings happening…. Article Tim Murdoch. Talks about the changes in board shapes and what is happening in New Zealand particularly Wayne Parks.

48 pages

Keith Paull, Billy Hamilton and Mark Martinson, France, 1968. Photograph : MacGillivay-Freeman Surfing Magazine March 1984  Volume 20 Number 3 page 99. Note that the two American surfers have variations of the Australian wide tail Vee bottom, whereas Keith Paull had moved onto a round tail design.

Chis Brock, George Greenough, Dog, Garry Keyes and Bob McTavish. Wilderness factory,  Angourie - Byron Bay ?, 1969. Surfing World Magazine,  Volume 12, Number 5, 1969.

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BOOKS
1972 The Best of Tracks   (Vol. I) Editors : Falzon, Albert; Stewart, John; Grissim, John. :
Tracks Publishing Co Pty Ltd. P.O. Box 178 Avalon, NSW.
'Bob McTavish’s Personal History of Surfboard Design – Pods for Primates Parts 1' (pages 120 – 122).

1992 Stell, Marion K. :  Pam Burridge
Collins Angus & Robertson Publishers (Australia) Pty. Limited
A division of Harper Collins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Limited
25 Ryde Road, Pymble NSW 2073, Australia

1997 Warshaw, Matt : Surfriders – In Search of the Perfect Wave
Tehabi Books, Inc. Collins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022

1978 Warwick, Wayne A Guide to Surfriding in New Zealand Second Edition
Viking Sevenseas Ltd Wellington, New Zealand

1979 Young, Nat ; Photographs by McCausland, Bill: Nat Young’s Book of Surfing
A.H. & A.W. Reed Pty. Ltd. 53 Myroora Rd, Terry Hills, Sydney.

1983 Young, Nat with McGregor, Craig : The History 0f Surfing
Palm Beach Press,40 Palm Beach Road, Palm Beach NSW 2108 

1972  Surfing World. Volume 16 #4.  Bob Evans : 'remember the time when...' pages  30 to 35. 

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