Tombstone

I am often asked: “Can you make me a board that does this and this AND this?" This is exactly how the Tombstone came to be.

A long time ago, I got this request: Can you make me a shorter board for the Cliffs that paddles like a fish and turns like a shortboard? My first thought, I have no fuckin clue! But I’m sure we can work it out. Seeing as how I’d never let this guy down before, we came to an agreement. He gave me a deposit and time to work through the solution. I started digging through templates and threw some ideas at him. Shortly after, I pieced together this old school Steve lis fish and a modern shortboard outline, with a unique hip squash that I had enjoyed on a few previous shapes. I grabbed a 6'5" A and threw it on the racks. First, I mowed a ton of foam off the bottom center of the blank. Then, I refoiled the blank to be truly even in thickness throughout, while leaving a ton of foam in the rails. After dreaming up a high performance single to triple concave bottom with a liberal amount of vee in the tail, I moved onto the deck. I ended up settling with a pretty flat deck contour and foiled a performance nose and tail into the board – but not too much, again this was predominantly a fish concept so I couldn’t have a shortboard nose and tail really, right???

I decided the rails were going to be medium thickness and boxy, relative to the volume of the board. I wanted it to be good for Cliffs and mushy waves around the area, including some spots in northern Baja that get good in the winter but work when it's small. So, keeping all the aspects of that Cliffs mentality should mean things would work out. I wanted this to be a good design for older guys who needed paddle power and surf good too- hence the high performance bottom.

As for the back half of the board, the round squash, the subtle hip, and the generally soft curve/straight outline just somehow melded all together. It looked FULL and somewhat maneuverable, at the same time. (Again, this was the first one I had shaped. What you see today is the culmination of several years and iterations of this design.) At this point, the board was 6'4" and had quite a bit of mass; but something was hidden in there.

I don’t remember the guy’s exact words about the board, but I know he had fun on it and feedback was positive. Ultimately, we moved on to other boards I was shaping him. As fate would have it, I actually got the board back on a trade and rode it at Donuts. I found it was the easiest paddling, most stable, relaxed fishy shape I had ever felt! It glided across flat sections at the end of the wave so effortlessly, and that not-so-rounded squash just turned on a dime. I think that particular board made its way around the used circuit in San Diego, especially OB, several times.

Ever since I started shaping in 2003, I was mildly obsessed with fin placement. At the time, I had so many ideas and strictly applied them to my goals and the purpose of my designs. I truly believe there aren't any perfect, by-the-book fin placement numbers. We all use guidelines to get us going in our effort to achieve our design goals.

I really hadn't surfed many quads at the time and after some deliberation, we decided to make this design a five fin setup. At the time in the early 2000s, five fins were catching on but not extremely common, but I still wanted to throw it in the mix.

Something about the quad I rode deep in Baja, at the time, was that I just felt like it was slow to react. It got into waves well, it felt smooth-ish, and it had good drive allowing it to make sections. However, I had to push it a little with my front foot and, overall, it just felt slow. I had ridden thrusters my entire life, owned a twin fin and, of course, surfed twinzers for a few years, but quads were kind of foreign to me.

I don't know how I dreamed this up, but I decided to push the front fins forward a bit from my thruster layouts. I struggled a bit deciding how far up or back to set the rear quads, but decided on placing them a bit forward of the trailer fin. I thought long and hard about why that quad in Baja was so weird feeling.

I eventually decided that I felt the water flow off the front set was being locked into a tracky pattern because of where the rear fins were set in relation to the rail – it just wouldn't let the board release when you wanted it to. So, I crammed them in toward the trailer fin and something just looked right. The tow and camber came relatively easy afterwards and something just looked right about it. Today, 18 years later, I shape these boards the same way.

The only aspects of the board I change is how pronounced the hip is and the overall thickness. The thickness comes in two varieties: performance or FULL. The performance version, which is what ultimately suited my surfing, has plenty of paddle, turns smoothly, and grovels with the best of this type of shape. The nose and tail are designed to handle some late drops, and running it as a thruster only helps that out. There's a nice, crisp little mini flip in the entry rocker that breaks up the predictable personality of this board, and the perfect tail thickness and hip are just good on top of good!

Running it as a quad made all the sense in the world to me once I felt the drastic improvement in looseness, smoothness, and turning radius. Additionally, it doesn’t seem to give up any stability for slower days. This shape can make small summer days completely different, and if the wave lines up, you can even throw the tail out! If you run it as a quad, it can be thrown around easily and picks up and goes right down the line gaining speed after each lip attack, if you maintain pressure on your front foot.