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.

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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.