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I've hooked up with a new paipo shaper on the East Coast USA, Austin Saunders of Austin Surfboards. Austin specializes in shaping classic longboards, but will custom shape boards of all types. His shop also does a fair amount of contract glassing and will do ding repairs and restorations.

While dropping off a couple of paipo boards for ding repairs a few months ago we started talking story about board building materials he uses, surf travel and more, along with his father, who mostly rides a bodyboard these days. So I asked him if he'd like to give a shot at shaping me a paipo, basically cloning my current board as it is getting rather dinged and beat-up from travels and my general clumsiness. He jumped at the idea and said he'd probably build one for his father, too.

My jaw dropped yesterday when swinging by Austin's shop to pick up my board. On the various shaping/glassing racks were 5 additional paipos! He not only built one for his Dad and himself, but one for his glasser. And, another customer in for some unrelated board work saw these boards, mentioned he had a couple of blanks and could Austin build him a couple.

No camera on-hand so I shot a pic with my cell phone cam. Austin tells me he take pictures and post them on his web site. I shot a couple of quick pics of my new board last night that you can find here:
http://www.rodndtube.com/paipo/Paipo-07ODVII.shtml

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rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i

Nels · Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:46 am Post subject:

It shouldn't go without saying...absolutely beautiful!

rodndtube · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:28 am Post subject:

Austin just finished building a paipo for his dad, modeled after my new Orange Disk VII, but with a tad more thickness.

Small image here:

See larger image here:
http://www.rodndtube.com/paipo/Paipo-07ODVII.shtml#Daddy_Austins_Paipo
_________________
rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i

MeatyBarrels · Joined: 06 Feb 2007 Posts: Location: California, San Diego

Man those are some really nice looking boards! what's the ballpark price to get one shaped?
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tumak · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:22 pm Post subject:

Those look classically gorgeous, Rod.

There's also some movement down here in Melbourne; a man and his girlfriend saw my wife and me paipoboarding a few weeks back and are having our own Tom Neilson - a master shaper - shape two just like my blue 4'10" fish. Finally!... someone new to paipo with!

Isn't it exciting? Looks like a new direction for some Virginia Beach surfers... yea!

TSaunders · Joined: 06 Aug 2007 Posts: Location: Virginia

Austin finished his personal Paipo. Quite a bit larger and it has a little different rail set up. Let us know what you think.
Troy

rodndtube · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:00 am Post subject:

Another nice Austin paipo!

It's hard to make out the dimensions so please post them with the pics if you can - thickness, max width, width of the pod (tail), length. It does seem a bit thicker. Most notable is the difference in the rail transition. Reminds me of some of the retro late-60s/70s type shapes.

Austin will probably need to swap out the side bites as those appear a bit humongous. Suggest popping in some Turbo Tunnel Side Bites (they're plastic so no super rugged on the reefs) or custom make some in the 1.75" to 2.5" range. Over 3.5" really start to catch and dig.

Is Rich the Glasser's board completed? Have you guys had a chance to go riding yet?
_________________
rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i

bgreen · Joined: 20 Feb 2004 Posts: Location: Qld. Oz

It would be interesting to see the dimensions and I agree that it does have more than a passing resemblance to surfboard design from times gone by.

How do these boards ride?

Bob

TSaunders · Joined: 06 Aug 2007 Posts: Location: Virginia

Dims are 4'4" X 21 1/2 X 3. Since we are definitely neophytes at riding paipos I am sure we broke many of the rules of looking cool when you ride your paipo but I will give you our reaction. I first had to figure out how to ride mine. Wasn't quite sure how to approach and our first attempts were without kick fins. We kind of surfed it like a boogie board. I know most you probably cringed when I said that. I had to learn that to ride it properly you had to push the paipo underneath you to really see its affects both paipos worked really well. Once on top they flew down the waves. With kick fins we could get into the waves really early and skipped down the line. As Rod said we found out the Austin's paipo had too much fin so we just pulled the center fin and only used the side bytes. It worked a lot better. We worried that Austin's paipo rail contour might push water but he wanted to try something different. The transition was so sloped that it worked really well. It didn't push water at all. We traded off back and forth I think I actually liked Austin's paipo a little better than mine. It might just have been the thickness and length that I liked but we both push 300 lbs so I'm not really sure. I would love for someone that actually knows what they are doing to borrow our paipos for a while and tell us what you think. Let me know if anyone wants to take me up on the offer.
Sincerely,
Troy

Nels · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:36 pm Post subject:

rodndtube · Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 8:06 pm Post subject:

Dropped a friend's fish board off at Austin's shop for a delam repair and the first thing he did was haul be over to his van and show me his paipo. It goes everywhere with him. He has ridden it several times and is winging it designwise since paipo forms are all new to him and it has been years since he has ridden a bodyboard. He tells me there is NO comparison. He also mentioned having a grin after all his rides. There's a little paipo stoke goin' on down in VaBeach!

Come to find out, both he and his dad (Tsaunders) have been riding their boards without fins (flippers) and have thought maybe they needed larger, thicker, wider boards. Nyet, not yet. Try out some flippers and you'll see a big difference, ditto some paddling gloves.

We're hoping that Austin and company can get down to Hatteras on GuidoPalooza Sunday so we can try out their 3 slightly different paipos and the large collection of flippers that will be on hand that they can try.
_________________
rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i

tumak · Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 8:52 am Post subject:

No question paipo is da kine. We're finally starting to get tropical swellage here in FL now, and yesterday late afternoon I went to the Canaveral Jetties. I was out there virtually alone dropping into peak after peak after peak. At one point I'd ridden in on about my 7000th wave of the afternoon, walking back out with 5' balsa under my arm and I said to the illusive self, "It doesn't get better than this!"

Saunders, regardless of how it looks, it is the way that is truly cool.

rodndtube · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 2:35 pm Post subject:

Picked up a ding repair on a buddies fish board and Austin mentioned that one of our clan from Mechanicsville, Va, stopped by his shop yesterday and talked some paipo. This sounds familiar, but I can't put my finger on who this might be. Any clues out there?
_________________
rodNDtube
"Prone to ride"
I love my papa li`ili`i

rodndtube · Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 1:21 pm Post subject:

TSaunders · Joined: 06 Aug 2007 Posts: Location: Virginia

A couple more paipo's from our factory:

Paipo for a forum member

No home yet.

Troy

http://www.austinsurfboards.com