Size Does Matter: Dane Reynolds On Timmy Patterson’s Cleanskin Surfboard

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.

“I want performance in everything, doesn’t really matter what shape it is to me really,” states Mr Patterson.

“I used the Pat O model (Pat O’Connell) that I’ve used for over 20 years now for all the top guys who ride my boards,” said Timmy Patterson on his submission. “It’s the board I start guys off on and is the base design for my riders. The model is a medium-full shortboard that can be enlarged or shrunk to fit any sized surfer. It’s had the best all-round results out of all my models.” 

“I don’t know what the tail measurement is, or the nose. I just kind of did what I do. I didn’t want to get all technical and start measuring rockers, I wanted it to come out natural.” 

Harnessing speed on a board with little volume is never ideal. But for a guy like Dane, it’s clearly easier than for most. Despite being smaller than he would prefer, the Timmy Patterson board pleased Dane in its overall responsiveness.

Despite Dane believing the board was perhaps shaped a little on the small size, he did give merit to its responsive abilities (exemplified with those blow tail attacks above).

“I can’t say it’s a bad board,” he said. “I think it’s a Pyzel, but it seems like it’s meant for someone a lot smaller than me. It’s meant to be 6’0” but feels 5’10”. A lot of its curves are in the back. It was really turn. I had some fun waves on it, but it just didn’t feel great for me.”

In case you missed the memo, we’re giving away all of the boards submitted for this year’s Stab In The Dark. Flick over this way to exercise your SITD knowledge and take a shot at winning a priceless piece of foam.

Though Pyzel won in the end, we’ve noticed that our audience has expressed an interesting range of opinions on which board looked better under Mr Reynolds’ feet. So, we decided to run a poll to compile the thoughts of our readers, go here to share yours.

And, one more thing, you can run your eyes over our SITD shaper logo tees, right here: