SURFERMAG.COM INTERVIEW: Mike Hynson

SURFERMAG.COM: Classic. You were using some of their own tactics, using camouflage to hide out from the military.

MICHAEL HYNSON: (Laughing) Yea, playing and beating them at their own game! But yea as far as shaping goes, that first board got me into it but the way I was introduced into the business end was when I was riding my bike one afternoon down these alley’s of P.B. [Pacific Beach, San Diego] and I came across this garage and Larry Gordon and Floyd Smith were in there and they had a blank on 2X4’s. They were laying this fiberglass rope down the middle of it as a stringer. So I stopped and turned around, and I knew Floyd from school and the beach, and I started talking to them but I was stunned. I knew the process of making boards because I had already made one, but I couldn’t understand how they were going to get this fiberglass rope built into the board, how they were going to get it down so it would be practical. And I said to myself “if this is the way they make boards, this is just ridiculous.” But I didn’t criticize them, I knew they were in the business and they had a good idea about what they were doing, so I just sort of hung around and watched them and I left laughing a little bit at the end of the day. But as time went on, I started to help out over there with those guys and I just got involved and it came naturally to me, making surfboards. I worked over there, and used their facilities and equipment, and learned what it was all about. So it kind of started from there actually. But before that, I also used to hang around [Mike] Diffenderfer, Pat Curren, Allan Nelson, and those guys, and they were all working out of this place in Bird Rock, so when I went into Gordon & Smith I had a pretty good idea about the process.

SURFERMAG.COM: What about Phil Edwards? Did he have an influence on your shaping career?

MICHAEL HYNSON: Well, Phil had an influence on me with everything he did. I mean he was he was the master, you know. We used to call him “The Way’ole Kid” because he used to wear Levi cutoffs as trunks. But, when I started surfing and getting interested in it, and realized that I was going to do it for awhile, I immediately took it upon myself to find out who everybody was and learn everything I could about it. I just wanted to find out who the top guns were so I found out pretty quickly who Phil Edwards was. And I made a point to hang around guys like that. It almost was the sort of thing where they couldn’t get rid of me. I figured out how to do stuff like sweeping up or cleaning up out back just so I could hang around.

SURFERMAG.COM: What sort of boards were you making in your earlier years when you were working with Gordon & Smith?

MICHAEL HYNSON: Years of just planks. I guess you guys would call them “slabs” (laughs). Just regular longboards, nothing innovative at all. The only thing innovative I guess was the fact that we were transitioning into using foam instead of balsa wood.

SURFERMAG.COM: You became rather well know, and had a very popular model of board that you made known as the “tri-stringer red fin”. What about the “red fins”, how did that model come about?

MICHAEL HYNSON: Well, that all came about when the magazines or someone came up with the idea of signature models, and each big surfboard company kind of took it upon themselves to take their best surfer or shaper and have them make a model board. It was probably almost a gimmick to a certain degree in the beginning, but what made the “red fin” so famous was, at the time, all my shaping associates and friends were all the hot guys and I got Gordon to sponsor us all. So, for a minimal cost, I could get boards to all my friends. We became sort of like “The Red Fin Gang”. There would be this big group of guys going down to the beach and getting out of the car and we all had the same looking type board, and we were all good enough and well qualified enough to make a display out there. It became tough not to get noticed.