Tracks: The Wiz journey:
Wiz: In 1967 I began working at Bennett Surfboards under Dick Laycock gluing up and making fins. However, in 1969 I had aspirations to be a glasser, and I learnt at Shane Stedman’s factory. I would head over there at night after gluing up my fins and glass a couple. I eventually began glassing at Bennett before I moved up to Byron in 1974 and began working for Warren Cornish and Bob McTavish. I did do a 25-year stint in the bush at some point, but McTavish is the only place I’ve worked since and I’m quite proud of that.
Transition:
When skateboards began getting popular in 1975 Warren Cornish showed me a fibreglass skateboard and asked if I could make them. I said of course I could, but only better (laughs). Making those skateboards was basically the same process as making fins so I told Warren that we were making skateboards, we might as well make our own fins.
100% handmade?
Absolutely! From a roll of fibreglass and a pail of resin, all here in my little man-cave of disorganised chaos! I also make ns differently to everyone who makes fins today. It’s in the way I lay them up. If most people want a red fin they just use one colour and lay it up all at once. I do three lay ups of different colours over a number of days. That’s how I get my colour fades and shading. The aim for me is to have a bit more dimension. It’s also all about good quality. Anyone could lay up a fin as long as they’re diligent, but it has to be made by a person with a good heart. It’s never gonna be any good if it’s not made by a person with a good heart. That’s very important.
The name Wiz:
From the aforementioned Dick Laycock. When I was gluing up the ns back in those days, often I worked early in the morning because I was running behind like a young idiot. Winter was cold and I used to have these super hot mixes of resin going so they would cure faster and I could get the bloody things on the truck waiting out the front! Dick liked the comic strip The Wizard of Id, and he walked in one morning to smoke and crackling and super hot mixes going off everywhere, and said, “Oh, another of the Wiz’s brews!” And it just stuck!
Thongs and masking tape as protective footwear:
No! I’m in a pair of boots now (whispers down the phone) … we’ve got work cover now you see! At this very moment I have boots on. And mark my words, did I rail against the dying night on that, but I’m surviving the imposition of bureaucracy on that front.
