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This "House of Paipo" board turned up at my glasser's for some ding repair work. Fin is odd because its plastic, not fiberglass...added later? Owner says it came from Newport Beach.

What are the dimensions? Have you got a photo that shows the fin?

Rod and I have made a few attempts to find out more about who made these Newport boards. Seems that shapers worked for different companies at different times and companies produced boards for other companies. Some of this information is found in the interviews we've done (Jim Pomeroy, Mark Richards & Ron Romanosky). There are guys like Bud Hulst who'd know more of this story who we've tried to contact. It's not a straight forward tale.

That looks like one of the small ones. I had one that was three feet or less. Definitely meant to be a bellyboard, or maybe the 3 foot leftover from a nine foot blank. I seem to recall they came from the Frog House, but I can't remember who told me that. Rasta Colors??

House of Paipo was owned and run by Bob "The Greek" Bolen. According to Bolen, he owned the store that was co-located with Greek Surfboards, in Huntington Beach, and owned by him. The shop also contract shaped for El Paipo. They principally built boards for kneeboarding but for awhile also shaped prone boards. [Personal conversation with Bob Bolen, 10/17/14.]

Rod,

I went back and checked your paipo builder site.

Did you ever find out anything about Dynamic Industries or Al Hertz Enterprises? Farfor, Shane & George Rice are Australian. Farfor is the only dedicated paipo builder. I took some photos of a 60s Rice kneeboard on the week-end. You probably saw the Dextra information on Swaylocks a while back.

Wasn't there also a Huntingdon paipo as well?

Bob

In the Snake's History of short surfboards at Huntington, he talks about how the Blackball led to an increase in kneeboarders. And that led to short boards for stand up riders. Interesting stuff:
http://surflibrary.org/evolution.html

It would be nice if a qualified person could write the bellyboard History of Huntington before the mass market stuff like Jacks arrived on the scene. What inspired bellyboarders before the blackball? Before Gidget?

I dated a similar looking board to ca. 1970, based on a number of characteristics.

Snake may have also confused kneeboards and paipo boards, and most of the evolutions was from bellyboarding to kneeboarding until kneeboarding became a critical mass and that name was in common use.