Template of a shaper: Hap Jacobs builds his last board
Editor’s note: the following story originally appeared in Easy Reader in April, 2019. Hap Jacobs has shaped his last surfboard. The board is a clear glassed, 9-foot, single fin Performance model, with a redwood stringer down the middle and red pin stripes wrapping the rails. Jacobs never made showy surfboards. Nor, despite his legendary status, did he ever want to be the center of attention. He returned to his Cypress Avenue shaping bay for a photo with his last shaped board only at the insistence of friends, and former team riders. Hap Jacobs at Haleiwa, Hawaii. Photo by Leroy Grannis Jacobs was the Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame inductee when it was inaugurated in 2003. And he was the last to shape boards from among the great Golden Age of Surfing shapers, and fellow Hermosa Beach 2003 inductees Greg Noll, Dewey Weber, Bing Copland, and Dale Velzy. Greg Noll, and Bing Copeland closed their Pacific Coast Highway surf shops, and their Cypress Avenue factories in the early 1970s, at the onset of the short board revolution. Weber and Velzy made the transition from longboard to shortboard shapers. But Weber died in 1993 and Velzy in 2005. Like Noll and Copeland, Jacobs stopped…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com