Michael Machemer: You mentioned going to art school?
John Belik: Yeah. I started drawing in elementary school, earned an A.A. from San Diego City College and a B.A. in fine arts from San Diego State University. The art thing really ties into the shaping. I’ve always been an observer and had an eye for lines. Shaping is an extension of that, like sculpture but functional.

Are you still painting?
Not a lot but I’ve been wanting to paint more. Been doing a lot of digital stuff lately, photography with photoshop, changing things around. I’ll do funny things too, like taking that big wave Laird was on and putting my cat on it. I’ve gotten into a couple shows and sell art here and there.

When did you start surfing?
Growing up in San Diego I first started bodysurfing. We also had those rafts you could rent that were blown up really hard. This was back around 1961. I wasn’t into the surf scene then.

How old were you?
Ten years old. Even though we lived inland they showed all the surf movies at the Hoover High school auditorium near my house. A lot of good surfers came from the district. I got to see the Endless Summer when Bruce Brown brought it around with a tape recorded soundtrack playing as he narrated live; way before it was a finished commercial product. That got me all stoked on surfing but I didn’t get a surfboard because I didn’t have the money. I remember reading surfing magazines for a couple years before I even rode a surfboard. Then just before summer of 1964 I got my first board.

What kind of board was it?
It was a refurbished Olympic that was 8’11, had five stringers and must’ve weighed forty pounds. It had an old skeg on it, almost a keel fin kind of thing. It wasn’t a very good board but it got you in the water. After trying to stand up on those rafts, the first wave I caught on a surfboard was easy to standup on which was cool. But it’s funny; I used to get made fun all the time with that 8’11”. Everyone would go, ‘Uh, that’s a kneeboard.’ So my next board had to be over 9 feet. In 1965 I got a 9'4 Dewey Weber Performer. I had a friend who had a 10’0” Lance Carson but most people were in the 9’2” – 9’6” range. People would gauge how far they could walk on the board. Everyone had their favorite length and it wasn’t for paddling or float but how many steps it took to get to nose. Too long and you fell short, too short and you’d run off the end.

But getting back to being a kid, I didn’t get to surf very much. Living inland it was hard to get rides to the beach and in the winter, forget about it there weren’t any wetsuits. In 1966, I got a wetsuit vest and remember surfing at Ocean Beach when they were building the pier and the world contest was going on. I didn’t even go down and watch. All I wanted to do was surf, surf, surf. I remember seeing some run-off from the contest. David Nuuihiwa was the god of longboard surfing and of course Nat Young. He changed everything.

Back then surf shops had lockers where you could leave your boards and ride a bike to the beach. So I got to surf a lot and then once you get to high school you hook up with friends who have cars and surf different spots. Larry Gephart and Mike Thornton went to the same high school but were a few years older. There’s a guy a few years older than Gephart named Don Furber who was a really hot local surfer.

When did you start shaping?
The history really ties into the shaping. I had the Dewey Weber Performer and then shortboarding started happening. I saw pictures in the magazines and thought, ‘Wow, that looks cool,’ because we rode skateboards and knew how to turn. I remember seeing the movie Evolution with Nat Young and Wayne Lynch. They were showing it for free at this surf shop and we kept going back and watching it. Those guys taught everyone how to go backside, they taught everyone to how to ride a shortboard! After that we tried to ride our longboards like shortboards. Then in 1967, I got my first shortboard. A round pin Challenger micro vee shaped by this guy here on Maui named Neal Norris who was actually in San Diego at the time. The magazines were all saying to work your way down, go 8’6” then 8’0” but everyone I knew said ‘No, go all the way.’ So I went from a 9’4” right to a 7’4”. That was like a dream. There was no transition problem at all except paddling was more of a hassle. You could turn it like a skateboard and do figure eight cutbacks or come around on the tail and bank it. But it wouldn’t trim worth a darn! Really slow trimming. You’d have to climb and drop like crazy.

Unfortunately, that was also the same time drugs started. I remember checking the waves one day and we came back and our boards were gone. Before the drug thing happened in ’67 you could leave your stuff on the beach. You’d leave your pants and money on the beach and nobody would touch it. There really wasn’t much petty theft crime. Luckily I had money to buy another because the board was insured.

Insured?
At that time your car insurance covered things stolen out of it, either that or household insurance. Something covered it and I got another board. But you really didn’t even think of that stuff and then boom, the drug thing.

Any particular drug?
No, just the ‘Summer of Love’ thing that happened in California with all these people doing drugs, stoned and wanting free money. That’s when the crime started. First couple of winters we had no wetsuits but we’d have a fire on the beach and everyone would stand around to get warm and then run out and surf. Get all blue and come and stand around the fire again. If you wanted to go to the store you’d leave your board on the beach, walk to the store, come back and go surfing. You could leave your money wrapped up in towel and no one would touch it. It was kind of shocking when boards started getting stolen and you constantly had to be watching your stuff.

Did this change the vibe in the water?
No, not immediately. But what was cool was when I first started surfing people would honk and wave at each other. The magazines would tell you about all these neat little spots, letting everyone know. It was all open. But you had the king guys at each break, the older guy who was the enforcer but it was civil. There also weren’t any leashes and
that made a huge difference.

An equalizer…
Yeah, if you can’t surf you get tired of swimming in, especially when you didn’t have a wetsuit. Plus the water is fifty-eight degrees and that gets old quickly. That’s why knee-paddling was so important. To stay out of the water because lots of days there’d be no wind and it’d be sunny, just the water was cold. Can’t do that now [Laughs].

But in terms of shaping, in the late 60’s the boards were changing very fast, every other month there’d be a new model. Then in La Jolla a guy named Mitch opened up a surfboard supplies place. That’s actually why there were so many shapers from San Diego. He’s the first guy who made surfboard building supplies available. People would come down from as far as Santa Cruz to get stuff to make boards. That’s where I got my first blank to make my first board, a 7’2” diamond tail gunny shape. It just so happened, that the surf got giant that winter and it was the board to have. This was 1969, and I’ve been making experimental boards since. I didn’t want to be a production shaper, didn’t want to shape ten boards a day.

After the gunny board which worked really well, we went through this funky phase down at Sunset Cliffs. They were called ‘Bunker boards.’ Bunker Spreckels was from the Point Loma/Sunset Cliffs area and was a huge influence. There are a lot of things in San Diego called Spreckels. The thickest point of these boards was on the tail block, like 1” up and they’d be anywhere from 4” to 5” thick and would taper toward the nose. The templates were teardrop and had almost fish-like fin as a tail fin, but you could put boxes in or regular fins if you wanted. These were edge boards with real sharp edges and down rails but they were thick so you could make them short. I went from 7’2” to 6’0” to a 5’6” Bunker board.

People made foot wells too. There was this one Bunker board I saw, not by Bunker himself but it had a lever to push the fin up into the board so you could do a better 360. The Bunker thing was like a year or so but some people may have been doing it longer. You have to realize at the time people weren’t going down that short, nothing under seven feet and we were on 5’6”’s. I wouldn’t recommend them though.

But a big part of the experimental thing was that you could make a surfboard for $25. It was really cheap even then and you’d just be making boards. Some guys would make experimental boards and after riding them, destroy them. It was a really bizarre period. Ricky Ryan and Skip Frye were cutting fins down to see how small a fin you could go and they’d gone to finger fins, which was how people were doing 360’s. This started in like ‘67 or ‘68.

After the Bunker Board it went to these single fins that were kind of eggy, but shorter than the early egg shapes. They were way more versatile but still under six feet long. A lot of the influence there I’m sure was from Wayne Lynch. This is getting into 1970, 1971...around the time of world contest in Johanna. Nat and Wayne rode them in the mid five foot range in Australia. Then the twin fin came out the first time, the one that Rolf Aurness came out with, a big squaretail.

Bing?
Yeah, Bing. I had a couple friends who had them but I was never impressed. Big square tails with fins right on the corners. I only saw one guy who had one that worked well; he had small fins that were double-foiled. There was a period where I was surfing Trestles a lot, and one day was out at Cottons and saw Corky Carroll ripping on a 1-plus-2 system like we have now, a bigger single fin with two side biters. He was like, ‘My friend just put these on and they work so good.’ It looked awesome because it had the same shape as the single fin and on a troughy wave you can spin out. On a hollow wave you’d dig in and spin out on the flats. You want to let loose in the troughy waves. I went home, made two little side biter fins and put them on. That’s another thing, in those days we had to make everything. A little while later you could buy pre-made fins though. So that’s why you’d make experimental stuff. I remember trying that and the board worked unreal. I made a shorter one too, a 5’5” round tail with side bite fins. That board was phenomenal, ahead of it’s time. You could carve a 360 on it.

What size fin?
The fins weren’t that big, a 7” one that was real narrow and raked back, with a narrow base. Something you don’t really see much now. When Dick Brewer came out with fins they worked well in Hawaii but weren’t good for cutting back in California. The narrower, spiky Greenough type fins were better. We had a set of 8” fins that we thought worked better at 7”. The side biters were little half moons with a 3” base and about 2” deep.

Similar to a widow-maker setup?
Yeah, to what people are calling widow-makers now, was happening then. You could do things on a wave and could carve where everyone else was spinning out. People would be like ‘What are you riding?’ But they didn’t take off because, well for one thing, Mike Hynson made a statement in the magazines saying that people who had three fins were using training wheels. ‘You gotta learn edge control!’ A lot of people agreed with Hynson, so it became like you were cheating if you used those little side bites so they died. It was one of the best designs to come out but never took off. People thought it was gimmicky or that you didn’t know what you were doing if you needed them. It’s always been that way you know? At first people thought using a fin was cheating, ‘Oh what, you can’t surf without one?’ Surfers are kind of conservative that way.

At the same time these egg shapes were taking off, wide tail single fins that you still see around now. Kneeboarding was also really big at that time and you know Greenough’s influence. A lot of people kneeboarded, they didn’t have boogieboards back then. Swallowtails had come out as an alternative to the wide round tail single fins which were spinning out. The swallowtail had better hold and was more versatile. Steve Lis made a kneeboard like this. They liked the twin fin, a lot of kneeboards were twin fins or single fins and they all had wide tails, so Steve put a swallow tail on it and keel fins. I remember seeing them in the 70’s long before stand up fish but I heard he was doing it earlier than that. The kneeboarders had the fishes at least a year before the stand up surfers. This is 1970; but they may have had them as far back as ’69. I’m not sure. Definitely ‘70, then in 71 is when Jeff Ching started borrowing Stevie’s boards and stand up surfing them and just ripping.

You always here that story of Jeff Ching riding that Lis…
Jeff was a guy from Oahu who was going to school at San Diego State. Just a really good, talented surfer. A regular foot. There was a crew of people who always surfed this break at Cliffs called New Break. That was the high performance place at the time for shortboarding, probably the most advanced place in the world. There was a period for about two to three years when people were traveling through who knew Bunker, although he wasn’t there, they knew about the spot. Well known surfers like Reno Abellira. They’d see fishes, take them back home and do their own thing with them.

On the subject of traveling surfers, what was the fish thing with Rick Rasmussen?
In 1972 he took a board back after the World Contest, a 5’5” twin keel shaped for Rick Murphy. I’m sure I met Raz but don’t really remember. He took the board back to the east coast and rumor was they started templating it.

What designs have you’ve been working with lately?
I just try different types of bottoms, channels, concaves, bevels, v-tails, v the whole way, Pollard bottoms…

Pollard bottoms?
Jim Pollard, an Australian shaper. He made the board that Col Smith won the Pipeline contest on. An unusual shape with a crinkled potato chip bottom. Ruffled channels are interesting. I made another board out of a one pound Styrofoam blank sandwiched between wood veneer, kind of like windsurfer construction. The only thing is, the boards are stiff that way, but in small waves I don’t know if stiff is necessarily bad. It works and you get a light board. It’s kind of expensive and maybe not a good idea commercially but it’s just interesting. Lots of twin fins, four fins and thrusters with heavy double concave coming off the tail which gets them more drivey. Also been making a twin fin style shape and a fish style shape, both of which are quads. I’ve been riding a 5’7” quad in Hawaii lately and never thought I’d have fun on it here but it’s been a small winter. That picture you sent, the waves were better in New York on that day than here. You guys had better waves than Hawaii!

What about twin keel fish?
I haven’t used keel fins since Australia. I found that they do certain things really well but have limitations on vertical surfing. You go out on the flats more and kind of go up the face and get up high in the wave. I know how to make them work but then I found with four fins you have the drive of the keel but can go vertical. You cluster them so it’s like a keel fin but the water flow is so much more efficient. The whole problem with a keel fin is that you can’t get a good foil on it. The length of the fin is so long that if you foil it out to where it’s a proper foil it’d be slower because it’s too thick a chord and if you do it too thin it can cavitate. Just too many problems, but if you have two smaller fins and can get a better foil on each and if you put them together you get the same area as the keel. As far as drive, you have two fins with superior foil yet they’re thinner and go through the water faster. As the waves get juicier the more you need the double foil. And if the waves are gutless you can get away with flat, single foil. You can push of that flat squirt but it’s not efficient for the fin, it’s just something to push off of. Once you’re going at high speeds the double foil is better or something in between like 60/40 or 80/20.

Are you making your own fins?
I’m mostly using fin box fins and reshaping them. I really like using fin boxes. I read that fin boxes brought back the four fin. In California I’m using Lokbox, which I really like but in Hawaii I used Red X. I like the Red X box. It’s super strong for Hawaii but it’s a pain in the ass to get fins here. Coming from windsurfing, the strongest fin box is a Tunnel box and they use it on slalom boards where fins can be as deep 30 inches. A regular box will fold right over but a Tunnel box can hold it. Tunnel box goes through the deck as I-beam construction, something holding the box at the top and something holding the box at the bottom. It’s your strongest construction as far as the amount of fin box needed for strength. It’s lighter because you don’t need as much box since it’s connected to the bottom and the deck. The problem with going through the deck is that most people don’t like having a hole there plus the deck can collapse around the box. Even FCS if it’s put in correctly, connects with the deck. I don’t have FCS but know a lot of people here who use it. They have this little scooper that connects it all the way to the deck with the resin. The thing is, people are lazy and they just put the plug in and leave it so it just pops out. The whole thing is about the I-beam construction connecting the bottom to the deck.

What kind of blanks are you using?
Whatever you can get, lately it’s been US foam. I like the Marco Foam, an American company. They make a really nice blank that’s strong and light but it’s hard to get in Hawaii. It’s Styrofoam that’s two pound. You have to use epoxy but it’s worth it because the board’s automatically a pound lighter and just as strong. I’ve just been having trouble getting it though.

You do your own glassing?
Yeah, I send other people’s stuff out but a lot of times I’ll glass my own boards so they’re done in a couple days. Otherwise, I use Gott glassing here and Diamond on the mainland. I’d never really liked glassing other people’s boards, it’s just not fun but everyone should build a surfboard at some point in their life just to know how much work it really is. It’s so much nicer to shape and have it glassed, turn it in and then forget about it. The blanks are so good now that you can really make a board that works. It’s just getting that, trying to build that magic board. That’s what the goal is.

What are your thoughts on computer shaping?
I think it’s great. That’s the main reason I’m doing Shimbawa because you have that option. All the prototypes are done by hand. I’ll shape one for Sean (Mattison) and see what he thinks, get his feedback and then listen to other people to where you get a lot of different feedback and not just one person’s. And when you get something that everyone likes you scan it into the computer and have something that will go for most people. I can pay someone else to sand the bumps off because the shape is there and I can keep experimenting. You know, a lot of shapers really had to pay their dues. Guys like Rusty and Mike Eaton would have to crank boards out just to make their money. I mean, they’d do finished boards in half an hour or something which is really fast. So they want to keep boards at a constant shape and just do refinements. You don’t want to jump around too much because it will throw things off. Don’t want to put out any turkeys. That’s an advantage of experimenting, you’re going to put out a few turkeys on your own to see how far you can go in one direction. These aren’t boards you sell to the public, but if you don’t put out any turkeys and don’t push the limits you don’t know how far you can go or what does what. The extremes really tell you what does what and then you can refine it back to where it’s all around. You should always ask the question any time you do something more complicated “Is this actually better than something that’s simpler?” Quite often you go back to what’s simple because it works just as good. It has to be an improvement.

Can you give an example?
Remember the bottom that the Willis Bros did that looked like golf balls? That golf ball bottom works. Angulo who shapes windsurfboards over here on Maui was using that bottom too and it works. But does it work better than just a concave bottom? Not really. It’s a hell of a lot more efficient to make a concave than to put all those little golf ball shapes in there. It works but it’s just too much work for production. A lot of work for very little difference. You can get the same exact results another way. So why not go the way that’s more efficient? But you know, you have to try those things. I made a six fin board that’s unreal, just magic. Like a four fin with a bigger front fin, smaller back and canard fins in front of the big fins. Little fins that direct water, like what a twinzer has. But if you get good enough fins you can drop it down to a four fin. That board was magic at Maalaea but by playing with fins you can get the same result with a four fin or pretty close to it. The reason I did it was because my four fin was amping out at Pipa in bigger waves. But I knew from windsurfing that if you put a canard on it really cleans up the water flow and the board suddenly is real positive. That amp out gets eliminated. It’s like having tire tread, every bit of pressure you put into the turn pushes you forward.

Michael Machemer is a New York surfer, writer, photographer, curator and a frequent contributor to Newyorksurf.com. Michael can be reached at eataknish@newyorksurf.com

All photos courtesy of John Belik and Sean Mattison.

For more information on Shimbawa, please visit www.shimbawa.com