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Surfing Surfing Tutorials Buying your first surfboard
Surfing Surfing Tutorials Buying your first surfboard Surfing Surfing Tutorials Buying your first surfboard 
| Buying your first surfboard |
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| Written by azpunkazme | ||||||||
| Sunday, 29 June 2008 | ||||||||
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If you look on the underside of the board you may notice small indentations. These are called pressure dings and are to be expected on almost any second hand custom board. Ordinarily they are nothing to worry about, use your own judgement and ask the seller, if you feel you’re being fed a line; hot foot it outta there! Check around any stickers or deck grip that has been added, sometimes this is done to cover up shark bites, jaunts of cliffs and hefty impacts! Also check the fins, if the fins are non removable i.e. non FCS check for cracking around the base where the fin meets the board. If you see evidence of cracking, avoid like the plague as fin replacement is a costly business. Also check around the leash plug for evidence of cracking, as with the fins, avoid damaged leash plugs. Your best bet when buying second hand is to go to a custom shaper rather than a retailer, many surfers part exchange their old boards with the shaper when getting a new custom build. The shaper ideally would like you to purchase a new board one day, so there is mores chance he is gonna play nice and hook you up with a decent board from the start. FoamiesJust like you had at the surf school, A 100ft plank of foam! These are great for learning with and many people have caught their very first green face on one of these monsters. But, in terms of progression there is only so far you can go with one of these beasties before you will be looking at buying a custom board. You can pick brand new foamies for around £100 on eBay! Pop outsA pop out board looks much like a custom board to the untrained eye, but it has a few differences. Pop-outs are mass produced or ‘popped out’ using a mould that replicates the same shape over and over. Pop outs are extremely hard wearing and durable but this does come at a price. They are extremely heavy and are absolutely solid, if one hits you in the surf, you are going to know about it! The weight of the pop out makes it difficult to recommend to smaller surfers who may find the board difficult to cope with in all but the smallest of waves. For larger surfers the pop out shouldn’t really represent too much of a problem.
The top brands for pop outs are NSP, BIC and South Point. New pop outs cost somewhere in the range of £100-£300 and can be picked up second hand for around £50 - £150. As always shop around and ask questions. ExtrasIf you’re buying a surfboard it is always a good idea to see how much you can get thrown in free for cash! You will need a leash, deck grip, wax, a board bag etc… no harm in being cheeky and seeing what you can get for nothing, it’s almost expected and most suppliers will happily let you have at least a free leash and some wax to get you up and running. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites         Comments (2)
Surfer Joe
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| Hi there :) good article... very helpful and explains the basics of buying a surf board in an understandable way. |
| Hey, no problem Joe! I hope you found it useful. |
As with the foamies, there is only so much you can do with a pop out and you would not be advised to take it out in hefty surf, Duck diving on pop outs can also be problematic to all but the weightiest of surfers. However the average beginner usually does not need to duck dive, but there will come a time when you want to give it a try and you will struggle with a pop out.
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