pig on the farm.

this little piggy went "wee- wee -weeee" all the way home! here is your pig on a farm. bing copeland sent this to me via surfapig@live.com:Hi Mike,Here's a couple of shots of my friend "Dickens" Bing Pig. Shot on his farm.Bing

AWESOME!!!

bing 2680

Steve H gave me his old bing pig. I have been working this board over. It has been a journey of sorts. Steve bequeathed her unto me since he knew I was (more than likely) the only person on the planet that would honor this board.by honor this board, i mean specifically... fix her up and ride her. the fix her up bit has been WAY THE FUCK more than I bargained for. J. Hall of daly bread was holding on to her for a while. when i picked her up, she was a filthy hole-y mess. i didn't even dare put her under my arm. i kind of just held her away from me, and walked her to my van awkwardly. i peeled the wax off and was encouraged. i started sanding her and became discouraged. i had to grind and fill. then when sanding the filling to prep for laminating, i would find more problems. the nose and tail were so hammered with different densities of past ding repair...it has been next to impossible to regain any symmetry. there was chunks of wood embedded in some of the ding repair. , bondo, foam, Jah knows what. I have been working on this board for about 3 weeks (on the weekends and on some weekdays after work). my wife loathes the board. yesterday after sanding a spot and exposing another problem, i almost threw my sander, and the board out in the street...i am not the violent reactionary. this board is challenging my patience. it is wonderfully beautiful when an old pile of work teaches you a life lesson.

i contacted Bing Copeland about the board. He sent me the birth certificate. I asked him about the type of fin it should have (this board's original fin is long gone or ..if the fin on it was the original fin... it has been "modified"). He sent me a picture of the type of fin a board with this serial number should have. I wrote Matt and Margaret over at Bing and asked for a fin. Adam (over at Bing) is helping out! The surfing community is lucky to have such organization.

I will post up pics eventually.

bing copeland speaks on the pig.

here is the bit from BING COPELAND. (the MB are my initials , i transcribed a conversation i had with Bing)

MB

I was saying something about that simmons board at the surfing heritage and you were saying.

Bing Copeland:

During the early 50's, mid fifties say ..Matt Kivlin and Joe Quigg were building boards. They started making a board that worked better for Mailbu. that became the Malibu chip. It had the wide point forward. So then when Velzy started building boards he was using that same template type shape. He was building them with the wide point forward. In fact in 1955 when I went to Hawaii that was what I was riding. It was a good thing because a wide point forward worked better in Hawaii better than it did at the beach. Then Velzy was messing around and just took the template and turned it around. He put the wide point back and made the nose a little narrow. And that is how the pig came about.

MB

I thought that someone said that putting the wide point back was an accident.

Bing Copeland

That some glasser put the fin on the wrong side.

MB

yeah.

Bing Copeland

I'm glad that happened. No..He did it on purpose to make the board surf better on beach breaks. Because that is where he lived. A beach break. So..that is what you shape the board for.

MB

ok

BC

so when I came back from 2 years in the coast guard in 1957, he had the pig boards. I bought one of them in '58 and we went back to New Zealand. Well we sailed to Hawaii and we sailed to New Zealand with the pig boards.

MB

yeah and that is that shot.i am honored by that. thank you for sharing that with me. Marc Andreini is working with me on this article and he is inconsistent with what you say about it. About how the wide point moved back.

BC

well a lot of it is ...when you go back that far...50, 60 years...you take 2 or 3 guys that were at the same place at the same time and you are going to get different stories from every single one of them.

MB

that is exactly why I am trying to get this done. I want ot figure it out. I want to get it out there.

BC

i might tell you one thing some one else might tell you another. i am telling you what I know. what my memory tells me. Velzy did it, he did it deliberately. Maybe someone did it before Velzy. I don't know. Velzy made it popular.

MB

right. there is no disputing that.the pigs that you shaped...were they even refered to as "pigs"? the name wasn't even associated. it was just ..."here is a surfboard".

BC

velzy didn't call it a pig.

MB

but he did eventually atribute that name to them.

BC

yes he did. I really don't know when it happened , but he did eventually attribute that name to them.

MB

back to New Zealand. didn't you guys shape over there?

BC

we did. we copied the velzy.

=================================================

below is bing's email interview:

1) what design elements cause a surfboard to be referred to as a "pig"? The basic element of the original "Pig" shape was the wide point being pulled back of center and having a narrower nose.

2) Why did the surfboard transition from a "malibu chip" into a surfboard that has the design elements associated with the word pig? The so called "Malibu chip" was first designed by Matt Kivlin and Joe Quigg who both surfed at the point waves of Malibu. Velzy made many balsa Malibu style boards from around 1951 till 1957 when he decided a better board for the beach breaks we were riding would be to turn the template around making the wide point aft of center which would make the board easier to turn. It really opened the door to so called "Hot Dog" surfing.

3) What came directly after the pig and why did it? I think that the wide point aft really influnced most surfboards up until the Noseriding era in the mid 60's. And still lots of board designs like the "step deck's" mostly had modified pig style shapes all in the attempt to lighten the nose and improve turning.

slide magazine and SURF A PIG!!!

i have some photos that i will be posting up between now and late may/early june (that is when the 10 page article hits!!!) these photos and what not are what is left out of the slide article. I can't express how honored I was to get a chance to discuss board design and functionality to so many influential surfers and craftsmen. communication sure is easy with stuff like the internet , cell phones, and events like sacred craft. bing copeland made this "pig" logo from one of his BING logos and sent it to me a while back. bing sent me the other photos as well. surfing was different back when the two older photos were taken. the yellow velzy pig Bing is holding is the board he took to new zealand. he said it was an emotional experience to be around the board again. the bing book is a great buy. they approached surfing different back then.

the bing pig!!

my friend steve hadley has this unreal OG bing pig, eventually hopefully one day it will be in my quiver. its taking a pit stop at Jason Hall's place. NICE!!!

steve wrote me:

"the bing piggy is with Jason Hall(daily bread) in yer OC..."

PIG SLIDE!!!

Bing to Pig!

Bing Copeland sent me this via surfapig@live.com:
"Hi Mike,Guess I don't have enough to do. Messing around with photo shop I changed BING into a PIG. Thought you might enjoy it. Bing" If I had the creativity or the balls I might have thought to do that. THANK YOU BING!! NICE ONE!!
I am so honored to know the people I know. At times I feel like a kid in a candy store. The planet being the candy store.

BING PIG cut BACK!!

This sequence lets you see all the curve Matt put into this board.

Bing Reunites with his old Balsa Pig!

Here is a photo of Bing Copeland re-uniting last November with his Velzy balsa pig from 1957.  He got to hold it again after 50 years last November in Piha New Zealand.  Really an emotional moment.  And a once in a life time experience.

Bing

thanks to longboard.net