Second Time Lucky: JS Board #31 Ticked All Of Dane Reynolds’ Boxes

If Stab In The Dark is the main event, then please consider the Shaper Series as special features.

Presumably you’ve already watched our 36-minute film, in which Dane Reynolds takes 13 of the world’s best (unbranded) surfboards to South Africa for 10 days of rigorous and unbiased testing and flexing.

In the Shaper Series, a joint with our pals at SWELL, we delve a little deeper on the other side of the coin; we step into the shapers’ bays and syphon their thoughts and reasoning around their art, and the board they shaped for Stab In The Dark 2016.

So, what did we tell our shapers? Boards to be delivered by June 1 in either LA or Sydney. Surfer is 6’0” and 190 lbs (86 kg), but will remain anonymous. Shoot location, South Africa. Surfboard must be 6’0” but width, thickness and volume all open to interpretation. Oh, and blank, blank, blank. Completely void of all branding or recognisable features like unique carbon patches. This is not a paid-for board guide – our readers are too savvy to make informed decisions based off that. Yes, there will be honesty. Every board will have positives and conversely, every board will have negatives. And, there’s a chance the board could break first wave, first turn, first air. If it does, apologies, you’re out.

“It’s all about making people have a good time – with a performance board.” – Mr JS, Jason Stevenson.

“After reading the brief, I felt the ‘Monsta 6’ model would be the one I put forward,” said the craftsman behind board #31 Jason Stevenson. “It’s the easiest, most user-friendly model to ride in our Performance Series. It has full-ish and soft rails, single to double concave and rocker that fits most, if not all types of waves. Whether he’ll be surfing beachbreaks or points, I felt that this was the best board for the competition.”

South Africa is a rather ideal location to test boards, as it offers all kinds of conditions. Dane knew how to get the most out of them all.

After a little getting used to, the JS board turned out to be a hit in Dane’s books. It’s worth mentioning here that Jason’s submission for last year’s Stab In The Dark didn’t survive the rough performance testing of Julian Wilson, snapping rather early in the challenge. This time around the board had a solid opportunity to prove itself. Dane’s scoresheet scribbles suggested the board’s perks were spread rather evenly across the metrics, apart from a little unexpected release that held back figures in the ‘feedback’ and ‘twitch’ department. It’s also interesting to note that Dane incorrectly believed the board was the work of Matt Biolos of Mayhem.

“It fest like a good board,” he remarked. “It carried speed well and didn’t do anything weird. Just a basic, white bread, good board. At first, I would bottom turn and it would get ahead of me a little bit. After I figured it out, I started liking it.”

Why not run your eyes over our SITD shaper logo tees? – head here if you’re in Aus, or here if you’re in the US.