Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Johnny Ha's not Knapping when it comes to his fish




Got this email via Hawaii from NY's Johnny Knapp:

"whats going on? i just wanted to pass this onto you. It is a fish that was shaped last summer by Pete Fallon out of the east moriches area. Pete is a great craftsmen and prefers to shape out of an old shed in his backyard. He doesn't advertise and doesn't have boards in shops. I have been working with him sometime and enjoy his boards a lot. this particular fish is one that i worked very closely on with him. its 5'9 x 20 1/2 x 2 1/14. there are many unique characteristics about this board which give it a special ride. i wanted to make it a blend of a classic design but brought up to date. its construction is out of eps epoxy which makes it very strong and light. to stay proper we kept the classic 10.5 swallow tail. i wanted to go with the keel design and use modern materiasl instead of a wooden version. however, we pushed the fins farther back towards the tail to stiffen up the ride and give it more drive. this allows the board to be surfed more aggressively than most fishes and can hold in larger surf without skipping a beat. the deck is rather flat with full rail and an edge that runs continuous from nose to tail. a feature i like all my boards to have. for the width we bumped up the wide point close to 6 inches up front of center then pulled in the nose at the last inches of the board to get rid of surface area and swing weight. it gives the board tremendous glide and fantastic paddling ability. nothing else more to say than i love this board and have gotten some great rides on it and pushed it in conditions when most would be grabbing their thrusters. keep up the great post and see ya at the beach. " Thanks for the pictures and the description of the board- so cool to hear people working with shapers on how they want to tweek the platform. I'd love to see Pete shape a board in his shed- true backyard shapers amaze me. Check Johnny's blog www.posseonbway.blogspot.com

Still looking for more fishy photos and unique fish to post up- drop me an email brullj@gmail.com

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