We had Alex Knost drop by last week. Dynamic visit. He rocked in with his favourite shorty of the moment… a 1971 San Juan shaped by my very good friend John Blanch. When Blanchy married a Coff's chick and moved closer to his other love… the snow… I took over his job in January 1972. This board was Blanchy's usual very tidy, very spot-on shape, with classy rocker and rails. Very balanced for the era, or for any era. Blanchy was a real natural.

The board he brought into Bill's glassing room caused a stir. Billy came over and checked it, identifying it as his glass job. Our glosser/fin installer Mal 'Buggo' Bugden piped up from the sidelines "I wet rubbed that board before glossing. I used to pop around after school and do all the wet rubs."

Bill pointed out the incredibly fine resin pin line. "That's a JT pin line for sure". JT, or John Thomas was the best resin pin liner in the land, and was a great friend until he passed away from cancer ten years ago. John also owned San Juan a couple of years after this sweet board was made.

Al surfed it at Noosa the way it deserved to be ridden… par excellence. It's so cool to see great timeless designs being appreciated again. Just a truly classy performer.

Bob

March always brings a huge host of talent to the Aussie East coast for the Noosa Festival of Surfing. This year the event also hosted the Vans Joel Tudor Duct Tape Invitational event and this bought out even more top-end log riders than usual. The surfing was amazing and a lot of the competitors are hanging out in Oz and road-tripping down to Sydney. We were luck to have the crew drop by the factory on their way south. 

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L to R Ben Wallace, Jared Mell, Joel Tudor, Billy McLean, Matt Chojnacki, Nathan Strom, Bob, Troy Elmore, Sverre Strom and George Trimm 

Photo: Ben Harper

Big thanks to local photographer Ming Nomchong for these photos of Wispy at the Pass a few weeks back. That's a 9'6" Noserider he's styling on.

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Got a great clip through this week of Wispy out riding his new Tracker and jamming on his guitar. Wisp says;

"Kurt and I did a trip to South Wall (Ballina) to go shoot some clips. We needed some music and we didn't want to go with the usual sort of stuff so we asked Colin "Fingers Malone" O'Reilly to come help us out. We sat down and watched the footage and this is what we came up with. It was recorded on an iphone, I played acustic bass and Fingers did the rest on a synth and one of those half coconut things with the little steel pegs (Don't know what they're called haha)" - classic. 

Its a nice clip with a unique soundtrack so please enjoy! Many thanks to Kurt Henson for allowing us to post his video.

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Well what a break - a solid 2 weeks of sunshine, swell and waves in the bay, amazing! Yes you get summer crowds but it doesn't matter when you have a quality E swell that delivers waves all the way from Broken Head to Belongil! Anyways, it was a good time but now we're back on the grind in the factory. All the best to all our friends, customers and suppliers for 2013 - lets make it a good'n!

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Wategos lining up nicely on the weekend.

Couple of photos today courtesy of Byron based photographer Kurt Henson. The Scooter and the Tracker got a run in a local single-fin event recently, with team-rider Wispy and film-maker Taylor Steele giving them a decent run, picking up a few little barrels.

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Bob and I had the pleasure of hanging out with Jack Coleman in June this year at Deus Temple while Bob was finishing a limited edition McTavish/Deus Trackers. He was shooting footage for his new film called Temple

Jack shoots in old school super 8mm film video camera, no fancy digital setup for this guy! The results are analogue, nostalgic, grainy and gritty. There is just something great about that analogue film setup that digital can never replace. 

If you're in Byron on Thursday 29 November, come along to the premiere! 

Check out the trailer to the film;

Ben H 

Got a nice email from Chris from Sydney this week with some feedback on his board. Chris went through the full handshape process with Bob and had a great time up here at the factory.

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