Honolulu Surf Museum :: Board Details

Tom Blake 'Hawaiian Hollows' Model

Plenty of surfers embraced Tom Blakes hollow boards as wave riding tools, both in Hawaii and on the U.S. mainland. But Blake was not finished tinkering when he earned his first patent in 1932 and his contributions to surfboard innovation continued throughout the decade. Even as he licensed out his hollow board designs to firms like the Thomas Rogers Company, the Robert Mitchell Manufacturing Company, the Los Angeles Ladder Company and the Catalina Equipment Company, Blake came up with a series of boards in various sizes and shapes for racing, lifeguard rescue boards and, of course, for surfing. In general, the surfboards could be distinguished from the paddleboards by their wide square tails. They ranged in size from 10 to 14 feet and weighed mostly around 45 to 55 pounds. Some of them, like the one displayed here, customized with the inscription NaluHawaiian for wavefeatured a semi-rounded rail that would have made it somewhat easier to turn and more forgiving of minor lapses in balance by the surfer. Its interesting that Blake was also the first person to use a stabilizing fin on a surfboard, an innovation that would make a huge difference in making boards more maneuverable. But despite his 1935 introduction of the idea and offering a fin as an option on both factoryproduced boards and in the do-it-yourself kits that were available, fins didnt catch on with most surfers until the years following WW II. Shaper: Tom Blake Length: 13 feet 10 inches Width: 23 inches Year Manufactured: Mid 1930's Construction: Mahogany Notes: Surfboard Photos: Surfing Heritage Foundation All of Blakes hollow boards featured what at first glance might look like a metal badge or emblem with the makers company name. In fact, this feature is the seat of a screw-in brass plug, because no matter how wellmade and maintained with varnish, the hollow boards were notoriously leaky and had to be taken ashore to be drained after every 20 or 30 minutes of use.

http://www.honolulusurfmuseum.com/board.html?pid=297[4/21/2012 10:50:50 AM]

Honolulu Surf Museum :: Board Details

Tom Blake Paddleboard

Other than the great Hawaiian waterman Duke Kahanamoku, no other surfer did as much to help the sport grow and develop in the first half of the 20th century than Wisconsin-born Thomas Edward Blake, inventor of the hollow paddleboard and surfboard. Kahanamoku, of course, is universally acknowledged as the father of modern surfing and by an amazing coincidence the two men met in 1920 at a cinema in Detroit after a screening about the recently-held Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium, where Kahanamoku had earned two gold medals. Kahanamoku encouraged Blake to move to Los Angeles to pursue his own career as a competitive swimmer and that connection led Blake to come to Waikiki for the first time in 1924 where he developed a serious interest in wave riding and paddleboard racing. For the next several years Blake split his time between California and Hawaii. There, in 1926, Blake got the idea that boards would perform better if only they were not as heavy as the solid wooden planks many of them 100 - 150 lbsthat were being surfed and raced at the time. He first tackled the problem by drilling hundreds of holes into a 15-foot, four-inch thick board, and sealing it with a thin sheet of wood veneer, reducing its weight by 30 percent. Back in California in 1928 Blake won the inaugural Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships on another version of the same concept. The ultimate solution came to Blake after hed been shown around the Douglas aircraft factory where fellow surfer Gerard Vultee worked as a designer. Seeing how aircraft wings were made gave Blake the idea of hollow boards built around a ribbed, wood frame and covered with sheets of mahogany or marine-quality plywood, screwed, glued and clamped into place and waterproofed with varnish. In 1932 Blake was awarded U.S. Patent 1872230 for his water sled concept, and this board is a classic example of a square-railed paddleboard design. Waikiki Surfing from Tom Blakes Time

Shaper: Tom Blake Length: 11-8 Width: 23 Year Manufactured: Mid 1930s Construction: Marine Plywood - Unknown Wood Notes: Surfboard Photos: Surfing Heritage Foundation

http://www.honolulusurfmuseum.com/board.html?pid=296[4/21/2012 10:55:22 AM]

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http://www.honolulusurfmuseum.com/featured_boards.html[4/21/2012 11:11:06 AM]

Honolulu Surf Museum :: Featured Boards

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http://www.honolulusurfmuseum.com/featured_boards.html[4/21/2012 11:11:06 AM]