The Re-birth Of Nev
Words: Tim Baker / Photos: Russell Ord
The master surfboard designer’s decorated career comes full circle with a new range of ‘80s inspired models, a legendary collaboration and an innovative recycling program.
Nearly a year ago, Nev Hyman’s children told their father they’d never seen him shape a surfboard. This might sound strange for a man whose distinctive “Nev” logo graced the surfboards of many of our greatest surfers, from Shaun Tomson to Sunny Garcia, Nick Wood to Michael “Munga” Barry to Danny Wills.
But Nev’s now-adult children got their famously inventive father thinking. For the best part of three decades, Nev has been at the forefront of innovating, re-engineering and generally disrupting the surfboard industry as we know it. There was his early embrace of computer shaping and designing in the ‘90s, his bold launch of Firewire surfboards and offshore manufacturing in the 2000s. And in the past decade, Nev has been absorbed by his “Nevhouse” project, a low-cost housing system built out of recycled plastic
But the fact that his three children, Renee, 32, a former Australian junior surfing champion, Tara, 29, and Jayden, 23, had never seen him practice his craft didn’t sit right with him. Son Jayden convinced his dad to get back in the shaping bay and shape them a few boards, Nev stickered them up with some of his old logos, and was blown away by the response whenever he took them for a surf.
“Jayden dragged me down to a little shaping factory in Kirra, I was sweating like a pig but I loved every second,” says Nev. “I walked up the Point (at Burleigh) with a board I shaped for myself, and guys were going, ‘Nev, shape me a board,’ and I’d go, ‘No, no chance.’”
It was Jayden who pointed out to his dad, “Every time I’m with you someone says,‘Nev, I had one of your boards when I was a kid and it was the best board I ever had.’”
Eventually, Nev was convinced there might be a market for a few of his classic ’80s shapes, updated and refined with the latest design knowledge and manufacturing techniques. Despite re-kindling his love affair with the shaping Bay, Nev didn’t want to spend all his time in the blue room mowing foam. “I’m not stepping back into the shaping bay, I can use a CAD program better than I can hand shape a board,” he says
Former team rider and big wave charger Ryan Hipwood introduced Nev to the folks at the Surfboard Warehouse to propose a collaboration. Nev just needed to be assured that the boards would be manufactured to his exacting standards and a deal was struck. The result is a range of five retro/hybrid designs that Nev hopes will offer something fresh and functional for intermediate to elite surfers.
“The ’60s and ’70s has done its thing. Riding any craft became cool and that came from a resurgence of the longboards and hybrid fish and it’s awesome,” says Nev. “The ‘80s is the period where boards still had volume, they were flatter, you could get in early, they’re the hybrids of this period. Those ’60s or ’70s hybrids, you had to compromise your surfing, but the ’80s boards still allowed you to smash it the way you would now. I knew I could design a range of boards and that the average to above average to pro surfer could pick up a stocky and love it.”
The first board in the range Nev calls the Sub-moon Fish, with more rocker and more foil than a traditional fish, giving it a contemporary feel but still with the wave-catching ability and the capacity to make junky waves fun. “The board becomes more sensitive,it’s more foiled. It gets on rail really easy and when you want to bury the rail it will bury.”
Next is the Retro Rocket, a reprise of a hybrid design he shaped for team riders Danny Wills and Guy Walker in the late ‘80s, with a high-performance rocker but a fuller outline.
The third design is the Nevamind, a step-up model for serious waves inspired by Ryan “Hippo” Hipwood’s desire to paddle into slabby beasts like Shipsterns Bluff. It has a flatter entry and more thickness under the chest to get into bigger waves earlier.
Nev knew he wanted to make a straight up high-performance board in the range, similar to the contemporary shortboards he’s designed for Michel Bourez and Stu Kennedy in recent times, that combines all his accumulated surfboard wisdom in a sleek, modern design. “It’s a standard shortboard that I know goes insanely well,” he says.
Finally, there’s the Fun Shape, a term Nev says he coined originally for a user-friendly, beefed up design he came up with to allow his ageing mates, bigger blokes and average surfers to get more out of their surfing without succumbing to a mini-mal or longboard. “I used a 7’6” gun rocker, a mini-mal outline, pulled the nose in to about 13”, pulled the tail into about 14”, gave it a nice little round tail, this beautiful elliptical curve ... and they were foiled.
At the same time, Nev’s teamed up with his old mate and 1978 world champion, Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, to produce a range of boards for surfers “of a certain age” who don’’t want to get on a longboard. The Neva Surrender range.
“It’s a range of surfboards that’s built for me, for surfers who are good surfers but who are slightly challenged these days, whether it’s through old age, whether it’s through not being able to surf as much, through having a lot family commitments, work commitments,” says Rabbit. “Instead of surrendering and having to get a mal or a mini-mal, they have more volume, Nev’s a master shaper and he’s made them modern boards. I was riding a 7’2” at D-bah this morning and wielding it around, getting heaps of waves, and it rides like a completely normal board but it’s just a bigger board.”
For Rabbit, coming back from two years plagued with injury, the Neva Surrender models have given his surfing a new lease of life. “It’s so good to be back, I’ve got a range of surfboards that works for me, I’m just really happy to be surfing again.”
In many ways, the deal with Surfboard Warehouse represents the realisation of a dream Nev harboured when he first embarked on the computer shaping journey 30 years ago–amazing quality boards re-produced precisely to Nev’s designs at unbelievable prices to enable greater performance and value. “I’m just loving it. I’m seeing guys run down the point with my boards. I’ve used my technology to design boards, the team emailed the board designs to China and they’re machine shaped to 95%. Then finished with care and skill by craftsmen. Wow. I go, holy shit, my dream came true.”
The boards will be extremely high quality, super well-priced and widely available at the surfboard Warehouse in-store and online and other great retailers in Australia, NewZealand, the UK and Europe.
The other element of the deal Nev is loving is the ability to recycle old broken surfboards for use in his other great passion, Nev House. Now, anyone can bring an old broken board into a Surfboard Warehouse outlet, and they’ll be ground down for use in the building material Nev calls CRPP–composite recycled plastic panels.
“That process is unique and it allows you to take the seven codes of plastic and granulate them, put it in a mould, with a 4 mm veneer of a bio-plastic, called lignin plastic, a natural polymer made from cellulose material,” Nev explains. Because of its bio-plastic veneer, the panels are safe, with no off-gassing of Volatile Organic Compounds, which can present a health risk in some plastic products.
“We can use anything as filler inside the mould–PU foam, fibreglass, resin. This is not a game changer for the planet, but it is something we can do to take responsibility,” says Nev. “It shows people that there’s value in that waste, and we have a solution to stop waste going into landfill,” says Nev.