Thursday, June 09, 2016
Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Two Wheels and A Single-Fin: An Interview With Forrest Minchinton
Forrest Minchinton is not a surfboard shaper. That is to say rather that he never intended on becoming a surfboard shaper, on following in the footsteps of Mike Minchinton- the man who has spent the last three decades as Robert August’s head shaper and the last twenty-four years as his father. It was however exactly this aversion to a life in the shaping bay that led Forrest to pursue other, generally less worn paths which would eventually bring him back to the craft. In the last few months, the Huntington Beach native has taken up multiple residencies in Bali and Japan for shaping and, of all things, riding motorcycles. It was indeed his lifelong connection with dirt-biking that eventually led Forrest to hooking up with some old friends at Deus Ex Machina, a lifestyle brand specializing in motorcycle and surfing culture with flagship locations everywhere from L.A., to Bali, to Sydney, to even Milan. Through his recent adventures with Deus, Forrest has had the opportunity to work with some world class surfers and shapers to help define his own unique style and aesthetic of surfboards- a style that could have only been born from the kind of experience that comes from opening up your world to whatever paths may rise up to meet you. In Forrest’s case these paths were often well off the beaten track and covered in dirt, mud, and of course, foam dust.
We caught up with Forrest in his newly built shaping room a little while back to talk about his latest mini-film feature Dust and how his recent forays into the jungles and deserts of the world have led him to starting his own surfboard brand.
-Joey Estrada
FOAM E-Z: How did you originally get hooked up with the crew from Deus Ex Machina, was it more through your background in surfing or your background in riding motorcycles?
FORREST MINCHINTON:
I actually got hooked up with them through Dustin Humphrey, who’s an old
friend, and I just went over there originally to hangout because all of my
friends had been going over to Bali on surf trips. So he invited me out and
offered me a place to stay, so I just went and while I was there I ended up
shaping a board and they gave me a bike to ride and it kind of just took off
from there. That was on my first trip when I went in October, and so after that
I’ve been back once more last month and I’m going again in June.
FeZ: Were you doing similar sort of work in Japan as you were doing in Bali?
 |
| On the wave hunt in Bali |
Forrest: Yeah, so once I got hooked up
with Dustin they brought me on board as a sort of ‘brand-ambassador’ and I got
to take part in a big film that they’re making called South To Sian, so I did some riding in that. So I went to Japan for
the premier for that movie and they asked me to shape some boards while I was
there so I did some of that, did a little bit of riding, some surfing and yeah.
FeZ: Would you say you’re generally spending more
time surfing or more time riding when you’re out on these trips, or is it a
pretty even mix?
Forrest: Really every day I would
wake up at dawn, go surf with the boys, and then come back and shape until
two-thirty or three in the afternoon and then we would head to the track, and
that was like the daily routine. So it was like the perfect balance every day
of work, surf, and moto. It was hectic but it was fun.
FeZ: We’re just going to assume that given who your dad is you’ve been surfing your whole life, how long have you been riding motorcycles?
 |
| Forrest getting some advice from his father |
Forrest: It’s funny, everyone always says that like “oh you
must have always surfed so how’d you get into motorcycles?,” but actually my
dad is just as into motorcycles as he is into surfing, and always has been. My
grandfather, his dad, was full on 100% biker, so growing it was really fifty-fifty.
I honestly wanted nothing to do with surfing really. When I was I really young
I was into it, but it wasn’t until I was like twelve that I got really into
surfing again where I was going every day. But before that it was 100%
motorcycles.
FeZ: Has shaping always been in the picture for you or is that something you grew into wanting to do?
Forrest: I
grew up in the Spanners Factory back in the day, it was like my daycare. I
pretty much went there every day after school and me and my buddies would make
little boards out of rail-chunks and stuff, but I never wanted to be a shaper.
I always told myself “oh, I’ll never do that, I want to get a real job,” so I
did really good in school and then when I turned eighteen and I kinda realized,
fuck school (laughs). I was enjoying not having to be tied down to a
nine-to-five kind of thing. I was trying to make money to keep riding
basically, so I started doing ding-repair here at Aloha Glassing. And it just went
from people I knew coming in and saying “oh shape me a board,” so I would shape
them a board and next thing I know I’m shaping another one for my next buddy.
It really snowballed a little bit from there.
FeZ: You had a pretty nasty injury recently
breaking your back while riding, how did that happen and how did that affect
your surfing/riding/ shaping?
Forrest: Yeah
I broke my back in 2014, I was on a dirt bike as part of a video campaign for
PacSun, and we were shooting it out in some sand dunes and I just overshot a
jump. I had been hitting it all day too like a thousand times and I just went a
little bigger on one run, and I don’t know what it was but I just went too big
and landed on the flats. I broke my back, broke my knee, had a partial tear on
my rotator cuff, broke my hand, and had a concussion. I really fucked myself. I
was in a wheel chair for like three months.
 |
| The single-fin was made for the barrel |
FeZ: Surfing and riding on the surface seem like two completely different sports, is there something that connects them for you or do you approach them independently as two completely different activities?
Forrest:
They’re way different on the surface but they’re exactly the same in that when
you’re surfing and having a good session you get that flow, you know, that
feeling where everything is just clicking and you’re not really thinking about
anything outside of what’s happening in that moment, and that translates over
to riding. Where really just all you can think about is what’s directly in
front of you. Also with surfing and riding, this sounds cliché, but you have to
pick your lines. It’s pretty much about speed, power, and flow like how surfing
is. You have to pick a line and maintain your speed and keep your flow, it’s
totally the same in that way. Even though they’re two separate things, you get
that feeling from it, that same adrenaline rush or euphoria, or whatever it is.
For one
thing dirt is stationary whereas the water is moving, but instead of milking a
wave for speed it’s more about bike control on your terrain, even though its
stationary. I think the actions of what you do are polar opposites, as far as
the muscles you use and the movements you make, but the feelings you get are
the same. For me at least.
FeZ: Were you approaching the way you were shaping your boards differently when you were in Bali than you would, say here in Huntington? How while you were in Japan?
Forrest: Well
for one, with all of the boards I make I always have the person in mind-
whether it’s for a custom order where I’m trying to keep in mind that person
and what they want, or if it’s for a shop geared towards the clientele that
shops there and what they would want out of a board.
So going
there and coming from here, especially Orange County where what everyone wants
seems to be (at least with the people I shape for) more performance based. They want like a high performance shortboard
or a high performance groveler beach-break board, and then we’re going there
where obviously the waves are a little bit better. So I definitely approached
it differently in that they’re geared more for a different type of wave. Also
the surfers I was shaping boards for had a different approach to waves in
general. It kind of changed my outlook, shaping with guys like Harrison [Roach]
and Matt [Cuddihy]. They were riding more- I guess you would call them-
‘alternative’ boards, or boards that were more of a throwback to older design
elements.
Coming back
I think I have more desire to make boards like that, like boards more… I hate
to say ‘retro’ because we’re not making boards like they were made before, but
we’re trying to take the good things from older style boards. There’re a lot of
elements of old design that got passed over because people were moving onto the
next thing. Like a single-fin works really good in the barrel, with a long
pin-tail and a fuller nose, it actually works really good. Harrison will catch
huge waves and get really barreled, if not more barreled than some of the guys
that are on shorter boards because he’s going so fast and can take off so
early. So I don’t know, I think I changed my outlook on what can be done on
those styles of boards.
FeZ: Who are some of your favorite surfer or shapers you’ve worked with or shaped for so far? Have any of them had a major impact on the way you go about building boards?
Forrest:
Obviously my number one influence, mentor, and inspiration for everything would
be my dad- if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in. Another
guy, as far as the old school guys go, would be Mark Martinson, he’s a big
influence. Not only in the boards he made since I was around him directly when
I was growing up and watching him shape and how he shapes boards (which was a
lot different than my dad in how he approaches it), but also because he was a
really good surfer. He’s always been one of my favorites, at one point in time
he was the best surfer in the world, being on the cover of magazines and just
killin’ it, and he also shaped really well.
I think
nowadays I wouldn’t necessarily say anyone famous, but one of my best friends
from here, Billy Hopkins, he’s for sure one of my favorite surfers. I’ve spent the most time working with him
directly on boards, you know, I would surf with him every day. I’d make him a
board and then we would go out and ride it and I would see how his approach was
to it to get genuine feedback. I love just love watching him surf, I grew up
surfing with him. I would also say my younger brother Malakai, he’s another one
who really works for it and is just one of my favorite surfers.
Harrison
Roach is another good friend, I just love that you can throw him on any board
and he’ll go out there and make it look good. He can actually shape really well
too, and most people don’t know that, and I respect that. There aren’t many
guys out there that can surf really well and shape a decent board as well.
 |
| Riding through Lombok |
FeZ: What can you tell us about the upcoming Deus Dust Project film?
 |
| Forrest's home shaping bay in HB |
So long
story short, Dustin saw it and said we should invite him to Bali. I was
planning to go over there to shape and do some racing and they were like “since
you’re shaping you should just have Billy come over we’ll just document it.” So
that’s kind of how the project just came about, it was sort of the brand
introducing me.
So we
brought Billy over, and while we were there we didn’t necessarily have a set
plan, it was more like just go do what we do and we’ll document it. And then it
turned out that Harrison ended up coming over so we did a couple collaborations
with him on boards. We also did some for Billy, and for Matt Cuddihy who’s a
really good longboarder from Noosa. We came up with the name because we were
just laughing all the time about how I was always dusty. I would wake and go
shape and be dusty, go to the track and get dusty, and they were just making
fun of me calling it the Dust Project.
It’s just a
short film, only about ten minutes, just talking a little about who I am and
what I do with those guys. It was kind of an afterthought honestly.
FeZ: Will the movie feature your guys’ dirtbike/pool session?
Forrest:
(laughs) I don’t know, that was on my last day and we woke up and that pool is
actually a bar in Bali and in the afternoon it opens and they have all the boys
come and skate the pool and it’s just a full-on raging bar. I mean anyone can
skate it, but it always just gets ruled by the same guys. My friends are the
ones that own the bar and we started talking about it and they were like “oh
you should put the dirt bike in there!,” like joking and I was like “yeah,
let’s do it!.” (laughs) So it was like three in the afternoon and we just
started drinking some beers and three or four dudes just dropped the bike in
there and we just started ripping it around, like doing tow-ins and stuff.
Yeah, that was really fun. Check out Forrest's work in the mini documentary Dust here:
Monday, May 02, 2016
Boardroom 2016 Icons of Foam: Gerry Lopez
Throughout the course of surfing history certain surfers have become synonymous with certain aspects of the sport, be it with a certain kind of board, a style of surfing, or in the case of Gerry Lopez, a location. Lopez rose to international notoriety in the seventies for his cool and elegant surfing in waves of serious consequence, most notably at the reefs of Hawaii’s famed Pipeline. The calm focus that Lopez was able to achieve in situations that would keep many surfers on the beach was due in part to the confidence that comes from knowing you’re riding the right equipment for the waves at hand, in this case, equipment that he himself had helped design. Gerry and his iconic Lightning Bolt Surfboards played a huge role in the shortboard revolution that was happening in that era and helped to establish a radical new style of surfing and its accompanying aesthetic. Over the next few decades he helped lay the groundwork for what we consider modern high performance surfing while influencing several generations of surfers and shapers. It comes as no surprise that Lopez will be joining the ranks of such influential shapers as Rusty Preisendorfer, Dick Brewer, and Ben Aipa among others to be honored in this years Icons of Foam shape-off for his contributions to the surfing world. Six shapers (Ryan Burch, Ryan Lovelace, Roger Hinds, Pat Rawson, Ron House, and Ward Coffey) have been chosen by Lopez himself to attempt to recreate one of his classic Lightning Bolt boards, so we sat down to talk with the Mr. Pipeline himself about The Boardroom show, surfboard design, and his insights on the past, present, and future of surfing that could only come from a lifetime spent in the water and in the shaping room.
- Joey Estrada
FOAM E-Z: When did you
first find out you were going to be honored for this years Boardroom Show, what
was your reaction to that?
Gerry
Lopez: I was down here in January working with Robby Naish at the HanoHano
Race, the first event of the stand-up paddleboard season. Rob Machado and I were surfing in
front of his house at Cardiff Reef and ran into Scott [Bass, creator of the Boardroom Show] in the parking lot, and
he asked me if I could come to the show this year. I came one year when he had
it up in Ventura and I came I think the year before that when they had it in
Del Mar, just briefly, and so I said ‘well I don’t know…’ And he said he wanted
to do the Icons of Foam thing, and I said ‘I don’t know, I don’t know…’ And he
just kept pressing me, so it was kind of hard to say no to him so finally I
said o.k. [laughs].
FOAM E-Z: Sounds pretty informal.
Gerry
Lopez: Yeah kinda like most surfer things, so… here we are [laughs].
FOAM E-Z: How did you go about choosing the six shapers for the
shape off to replicate one of your classic boards?
Gerry
Lopez: Well that was really easy, I just thought about all these guys
that I’ve shaped with and some of the young guys I’ve seen and when he [Scott
Bass] said ‘Who do you want?,’ I just reeled the names off. The only guy who we
couldn’t get a hold of was Tom Eberly so I said ‘Well what about Rawson? See if he
wants to do it.’ And Pat said he would.
F-EZ: No doubt they all jumped on the opportunity. It seems like your choices cover several
generations of shapers, was this the intent?
Gerry
Lopez: Yeah I feel like we’ve really covered a lot of ground here. Ron
House and I used to build boards together, you know back in the late sixties
and all through the seventies. And Ward, he was younger, but he was always that
shaper who I really admired his work and his surfing. And Roger, I’ve known him forever, and he
was the returning winner*. With the Two Ryan’s I’ve always really liked the
work they do and the stuff that happens on those boards that they make. So
that’s what I suggested to Scott and he said that sounded good to him so I said
‘Okay then.’
F-EZ: How often do you find yourself shaping boards these days?
Gerry
Lopez: Oh, well I mean as much as possible. You know, the shop is about
ten minutes from my house, and my son is very interested in shaping so, yeah I
spend a lot of time down there. I don’t produce a great deal, but I’m in there
a lot.
F-EZ: You spend a majority of your time living in Oregon now, what is your shaping set up like there? Is it pretty similar to what you would have somewhere else, say in Hawaii or California for instance, or is it something much different?
Gerry
Lopez: No, I mean yeah my shop's in Bend, but you know, I’ve set up a
lot of surfboard factories in my time and they’re pretty easy to do so it's pretty much like all the rest.
F-EZ: You’ve got it down to a science now eh?
Gerry
Lopez: [Laughs] Yeah I guess... it’s a nice little set-up though.
F-EZ: Has the change of climate affected your processes much?
Gerry
Lopez: The resin actually works really good up there, the air’s really
dry. I mean it’s cold so you have to heat it, but in some ways it’s easier to
work with the resin and the foam there than it was in Hawaii.
F-EZ: Has your knowledge from shaping surfboards affected how you approach shaping stand-up paddle boards, or has what you’ve learned from shaping SUP’s affected the way you approach shaping surfboards at all?
Gerry
Lopez: No, I mean the stand-up boards are just big surfboards. That’s
all a standup board is.
F-EZ: It seems like the level of interest in events like The Boardroom show and surfboard shaping /design in general continues to grow every year. Would you say that the shaping community is more open and willing to share some of it’s secrets and processes to the average surfer who is just curious or looking to learn shape their own boards now than was in previous decades?
Gerry
Lopez: Well in a nutshell, first of all there aren’t any secrets
[laughs]. Everything that’s being done now had been done before. Definitely Bob
Simmons has done most of it before anyone, shape and construction-wise. Secondly it's really not that hard to build a surfboard. If I can do it anyone can
do it, and you know once someone does build their own board, whether they just
shape a board or go through the whole process and glass it as well, they figure
that out in a hurry. Then they also experience the satisfaction and everything
else that comes with taking that board that they made out in the water and
riding it and seeing that it actually surfs pretty damn good. From that point
forward it’s just they want to do it again and do it better. And I don’t think
that that’s changed, going back to the ancient Hawaiians, even though maybe it
was a little more...eh, it wasn’t as easy to do back then.
But I think
the steps are the same, as far as going surfing, liking it, wanting to get
better at it, and getting to a level where you’re pretty good at it, but not
being able to go beyond a level that the shape of your surfboard kept you at.
So you either get a better board or build yourself a better board and in that
way you advance your surfing skills. And so if you build a board yourself at
least you’re understanding the design of the board. Like I said, I don’t think
that has changed since the very beginning of surfing.
F-EZ: Would you say that having knowledge of surfboard design and the shaping/glassing process has the ability to improve a person’s actual surfing ability? If so, in what ways?
Gerry
Lopez: I think so. I think when you understand things better you get a
clearer picture of how it’s supposed to work.
F-EZ: Briefly, what do you think are the some of the most progressive as well as most detrimental trends in surfboard design happening right now?
Gerry
Lopez: Well I think it all helps in one way or another, just that some
things help more than others. I think that there is really a lot of people
interested in what was done in the past more now than ever before. At one point
everybody was looking ahead and didn’t maybe grasp the concept that it’s all
been done before, but maybe in the wrong combination of design features and
factors. So putting them together in a different way might have a different
outcome, and you really see almost as much experimentation in shape now as you
saw when the boards first went short in the late sixties. The understanding
that comes by seeing guys like Ryan Burch or Craig Anderson, or these guys that
are riding these boards that are really not considered mainstream-type designs
and are riding the hell out of them in like heavy-duty kinds of waves, or any
kinds of waves, really making them work like you wish you could surf. Like Rob
[Machado], he’s been riding boards here that are way off the grid for a
long time and really riding them well. And you look at the board and you go
‘wow, I didn’t think you could do that on that board.’ I think that and I’ve
been surfing boards for, shit, almost sixty years. And I thought I knew some
stuff about it, and the more time goes on I realize more and more that I hardly
know anything.
F-EZ: Especially now with the internet as a factor, it’s not even
just about what you’ve personally experimented with, there’s also everything
you can see or read about that other people all over the world are
experimenting with, which you can take and apply to your own shapes and
designs.
Gerry
Lopez: And that’s being done especially now because there’re way more
surfers, on a greater scale than it was when the first short-boards started
coming out and no one knew what they were supposed to look like, but everyone
knew what they were supposed to work like. They were just supposed to work
better than the boards we had before [laughs].
F-EZ: You’ve said that one should not try to ride the smallest board they possibly can ride, rather they should aim to ride the biggest board they can that will allow them to do what they want to do, why is this an important rule to keep in mind?
Gerry Lopez: Well
I saw a trend back in the eighties, where everybody was trying to ride a board
like Kelly was riding, and I tried it too. Potato chip boards are really narrow
with a lot of rocker, and I couldn’t catch any waves on it. And I realized
right then that I was kidding myself- that I wasn’t as quick or lively, or as
good as Kelly or Rob were. I needed more surfboard and I think that I’m more of
what most surfers are like, I'm an average surfer, and someone like Rob or Kelly or any of the top
guys are the cream floating on the top. Generally speaking, what they ride is
probably way more advanced than what most people could ever figure out how to
ride. So I think it’s better for the mainstream to pull back a little and just
catch the wave before you figure out how you’re going to ride it because you
can’t ride it until you catch it. A bigger surfboard is going to allow that to
happen way easier than one that’s way too small.
And you see
that, I mean surfing is a sport of tremendous and continual frustrations, I
think even for the really top guys, in lesser degrees of course. But if that’s
all it ends up being for guys of medium ability then how long is it gonna be
before they just go ‘screw-it, I’m not having any success, I’m gonna just go
play tennis or baseball or something.’? So yeah, with a little bit more foam
you can catch more waves and maybe learn a little bit more about riding because
then instead of missing all the waves, you’re actually getting some.
F-EZ: It seems like you and Grubby Clark are pretty close, did you ever help him design/test any of the blanks back in the Clark Foam days?
Gerry
Lopez: Oh yeah I'm pretty sure I used, at one time or another, all of them.
F-EZ: Were there any that you had a particular attachment to, maybe that you put more time, effort, or attention into refining?
Gerry
Lopez: Well I had a blank in 1980 that was one of the biggest selling
blanks that Clark Foam had just because that particular blank was a size (I
think it was 6’9, I can’t quite remember anymore) that was the size board that
everybody used. I mean you could get a lot of different sized boards out of
that blank. So it wasn’t really super specialized, but it was close enough to
shape and you could build a pretty strong surfboard out of it. When I built it for Clark I just made a blank that they didn't have, and one that I could use to shape the majority of the boards that I was riding at that time.
But all the
way through Clark Foam Grubby and I were very close, we experimented with a lot
of different stuff, you know. The tow-in high density blanks are another thing
that comes to mind. I told him we needed to make the boards heavier and
stronger, and trying to do it with stringers or fiberglass wasn’t the way to do
it because the weight distribution kinda went askew. So I asked him, can you do
it with the foam, so he made up some tow-in foam that he said were just about
solid resin. But the foam was capable, it was actually really easy to shape,
like all Clark Foam Blanks were, and it was really hard too. But still managed
to have enough flex to have that factor into the design as well.
F-EZ: Where did you turn to for blanks after Clark Foam closed its
doors in 2005? What sort of blanks and materials do you like to work with now?
Gerry
Lopez: Well U.S. Blanks, ‘cus that’s where everyone from Clark went
[laughs]. Yeah I still use P.U. [polyurethane] foam and polyester resin. We do epoxy
just because the paddle boards, SUP or prone, with polyurethane foam would just be too heavy,
so pretty much you have to do them with polystyrene [EPS foam]. But yeah, I
have a close relationship with U.S. Blanks, I think their service has just
carried on what Clark Foam had become at the end, and maybe even better now.
You can pretty much order what you want and get it pretty quick, the service at US Blanks is really outstanding.
F-EZ: Do you work with a CNC machine and shape design programs ever or do you stick strictly to hand shaping?
Gerry Lopez: Eh a little bit but not very much. Most of my
shaping is from scratch. You know, I’m old school. I can probably, if you
include the indexing of the blank, beat any shaping machine around with my
planer [laughs]. And for me that’s the best part of the shaping, the planer
work.
F-EZ: What sort of direction would you like to see surfing and surfboard design head next?
Gerry
Lopez: Well what I want doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going
to happen. I just enjoy watching what is happening, because like I said, I
think right now more is happening at the present than has almost ever happened
in any other time in my short history of surfing. You can build a surfboard for
any kind of wave and any level of surfer and make it so they can have fun on
it. I think that now more than ever guys that are building surfboards
understand that more clearly. That’s why you see such a wide variety of boards,
and also so many surfers.
F-EZ: Will shaping always be in the picture for you or do you intend to retire from it at some point?
Gerry
Lopez: Well why would I do that? [Laughs] I mean as long as I continue
to surf I’m always going to want to make my surfboards and all the boards for all
my friends and everyone else.
*Roger Hinds won the 2015 Icons of Foam shape-off honoring the work of Rusty Preisendorfer.
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