Ken Guns

I went to the surf shop today to buy some wax and while I was there I scanned the board racks and counted the boards. Including the fishes and logs 20% of the boards in the racks were big wave boards. I'm pretty confident in saying that most surfers don't need a 7ft + gun for every fifth surf they have. Thinking about it I realized that even I have 2 contemporary, high performance big wave boards and only only 2 contemporary, high performance short boards.
Why is half my modern quiver made for waves over 6ft (AU), double overhead (US)?
I've come up with a couple of reasons.
1) Big wave boards are built tough.
Therefore they last a long time.
2) They don't get used that much.
I can count the number of times I've ridden my big boards in the last few years on one hand. Thunders -Mentawis, Lurline Bay - Sydney, Ben Buckler - Sydney, Maroubra - Sydney, Outside corner, Uluwatu - Bali.



3) The are nice things to own.
They are nice to touch and hold under your arm. They are elegant pieces of applied art and engineering with a no bullshit sense of purpose built into them.

Which brings me to today's board in question, my Ken Bradshaw 7'2 single fly, 3 fin pin tail gun that I suspect was one Ken's personal big wave boards, because the depressions in the deck belong to a natural footer, Ken was sponsored by Sundeck from 79 to 86 and it has his name on it.
Its a beautiful thing to touch, holding it feels like revving a well tuned V8 or loading a double barrel shot gun.
Now I'm waiting for La Jolla cove and Swarmi's to do their thing so I can get her wet.










Ken is an amazing character in his own right, as revealed here in this Vanity Fair article from February 2011 by William Langewiesche and in his biography on Surfline.



I have achieved my aim of acquiring 2 matching Ken guns. One Bolt, one KB.
Now all I need is a beard and an Aloha shirt.

1973 Ken Bradshaw shaped Lightning Bolt single fin pin tail.

Ken Bradshaw

I have decided to define my collection as a 'Modern Era Collection'. That means it needs to be book ended by a classic 70's Hawaiian bulit Lighting Bolt single fin at one end and a Simon Anderson shaped Energy Thruster at the other end. I am following John Melius's definition of the begining of modern era as portrayed in his movie Big Wednesday when (the real) Gerry Lopez put (fictional) Matt Johnson to shame with him inovative hot dogging and deep tube riding on his newly developed Lightning Bolt template. I end the modern era in 1981 with the invention of the Thruster and the following wave of uniformity that swept the industry with white 3 fin boards emblazoned with oversized logos that strangled the art of surfing for the next 25 years.
The problem was I didn't own an Hawaian built Lighting bolt single fin although I do have a hand full of beat up thrusters.
So I set to work finding an early Bolt in my price range (under $300) which was'nt easy cause a lot of them are fetching over $3000 these days.

I found and bought this board a while ago from Criag's list in LA but could not get it home. It had been waiting patiently, many months in fact, at my good friend Mark's house before I could get it on a plane.
I post these photo now as part celebration of our unification and as the first part of the 'before and after' shots because as you can see, she is going to need a lot of love to get her back in shape.

When I finally got her home this week the thing that struck me about this board was how serious and how scary it is. It is 7'0" and heavy. Heavy with the weight of a glass job built for getting down the face of some heavy, hollow waves. A glass job layered on knowing that it was gonna be taking some serious beatings over some shawllow Hawaiian reefs. It is thick. Thick for paddling into some ledging barrels as early as possible. The tail is so narrow, like a water ski. And the fin is thick, thicker than my thumb cause a bit of drag is not important where this board is from. But what is worse, scarier, is its cracked around the base. Cracked thru an inch of glass. It makes me shiver thinking about how fast you'd be going and how shallow the rocks were when this thing was cracked.