"The Foam Man: Dave Sweet's Story," by Steve Pezman, ran in the June 2006 issue of The Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited and shortened.

My parents had a summer home at the base of Topanga Canyon at the rodeo grounds, in the '40s, six blocks from the surf. So, you know, living close to the beach, I got started. Dick Hunt, Jack Quigg, Fred Harrison were other kids surfing down there at the time. I was on the beach when they bombed Pearl Harbor. Then I progressed to Malibu. The great people were there: Matt Kivlin, Joe Quigg, Dave Rochlen, Buzzy Trent, Leslie Williams, the Cole brothers.

That was just a little later. Hap, Dewey, Dale, that was after the war, about 1945-’46. I remember the day the Flippy and Walter Hoffman showed up, with Ted Crane.

Right, we called them the Hollywood boys. We didn’t want them around.

Well, we basically hated the [San Fernando] Valley. I’d gotten hurt when one of those guys jumped off his board and it hit me.

I learned at Topanga, which wasn’t the easiest wave. At first, I borrowed a Pacific Homes board. Then I got my own. Then shortly afterward, Bob Simmons built me a board. It weighed a ton. It was made of redwood strips with inlaid balsa where you kneeled. The nose was Mexican primavera, a hardwood. That was probably 1946. After that, I bought Bob’s personal board, which was balsa and fiberglass, the very beginning of surfers using that material. That was about 1948.

What about those foam-core Simmons was making?

Yeah, then he came out with those horrible boards. I think Matt Kivlin might have helped him. They were Styrofoam and plywood. To bond the foam to the wood, they had to first coat it with white glue, but then the boards would eventually delaminate. You'd go out surfing, come in, stand your board up against the fence, and [indicating an explosion, laughing] it would just sprong apart in the heat of the sun.

How did you get starting making foam boards?

Balsa boards were the best things we'd even had, but you get a ding and they’d soak up water. You know, capillary action, and the water would spread out from the ding itself. I figured there had to be a way to use a different material. So in 1945, I built a Styrofoam board. Extruded Styrofoam, no beads. It was a dense material.

I had to order it from Midland, Michigan. Dow Chemical.

Was that the same material Simmons was using for his foam core boards?

So, this was independent of anything Simmons or anybody else was doing?

Yeah. I just wanted to prove that a foam board was possible. I used epoxy resin and colored it during the glass job so nobody knew what it was. I surfed it one winter at Rincon and, I think, for maybe a year-and-a-half at Malibu. It worked fine.

Yeah, around then. The problem was you had to use epoxy resin, which was very expensive. For years, I investigated all these chemical companies and built miniature molds. I ran across a company named NOPCO, out of New Jersey. Grubby [Gordon Clark] probably never heard of them. They sold me kits and I started pouring test foam in my basement using the miniature fiberglass clamshell molds. Eventually, my first big surfboard mold weighed 2,000 pounds. The shell was two-inch-thick fiberglass with steel ribs. It was a monster.

No. Hobie [Alter] and Grubby were afraid to mold a one-piece blank. That’s why they did halves. They poured two halves on edge, rail down, and the foam would try to rise to the top, which was the middle of the board. That was one of their biggest downfalls. I read your article where you interviewed Yater, and I was surprised he knew that was Hobie’s fatal mistake. Foam will not rise against a surface. It drags—it's gummy. When it starts dragging, it gets stretchy and loaded with bubbles. Anyway, for financial reasons, I went into partnership with a company called Techniform, and we built the [first full-sized] mold together, and it cost me about $12,000. This was in a shop on Balboa Boulevard in Van Nuys. For a year-and-a-half we kept pouring, pouring, and pouring.

Nineteen-fifty-four. And Techniform finally gave up. They said, “Take the damn mold and get it out of here!” Then I got on the phone with all these chemical engineers from Reichold. I was desperate! I had the mold, but I couldn’t make a good blank.

Did you have an educational background in this?

So was it just aptitude and curiosity driving you?

Did you have an idea that the market would justify this work?

No. In fact, my parents told me I was wasting my time. You’ll sell boards to a couple of friends and that will be it.

When did you finally get it figured out? 1956?

Yes, in mid-1956 I actually started perfecting the foaming process and was selling boards on the beach. I had a tripod on the sand with a board on it [to get the word out]. I didn't have a shop yet.

Where were Hobie and Grubby in their foam process at this point?

This was a year-and-a-half before they had it. Grubby says, and I think it’s probably right, that they came out in 1958 and actually sold some boards. But it started taking off, for me, before that. The next thing I knew, I had to get a shop. That was ’57. In the meantime. Dale [Velzy], he’s a great salesman [laughing], had people thinking foam boards are nothing. 'They're terrible," he'd say. Dale wouldn’t make one. But every evening the phone would ring and it was Dale, “Dave, I need some blanks.”

He wanted to. In fact, here's another thing nobody knows, Hobie came up to see me, and we had lunch together. He wanted to buy blanks from me too, which, you know, I wondered if Grubby knew. Hobie wanted 6,000 a year! But I thought to myself, Oh God, then I’m just working selling blanks!

(Laughing) Yeah. Well, the way Grubby did it, he made a lot of money. He’s a smart guy. But anyway, yeah, foam caught on.

What kind of changes did you bring to the process as time went on?

I started with a mold that made a ten-foot blank, four inches thick. Then I got this idea. Why am I pouring a ten-foot blank to make an eight-and-a-half-foot board? That’s stupidity So I came up with a crazy thing. I made exact castings of boards that Larry Felker, Donald Takayama, and I shaped. Each half weighed about 20 pounds. They were like sleeves that fit inside the big mold, and we would blow the blank to within about a quarter-inch of what the customer ordered, and then they were hand-shaped from that point. No electric planers. Just sanding blocks. The beauty was the higher, stronger density of the foam on the skin of the board. My boards, and I'm not exaggerating, were probably 50% stronger compression-wise over any other board made at the time

Did you end up with a lot of those sleeve inserts?

Yeah, I had inserts for concaves, step decks, everything.

So you were molding specific shapes plus a quarter inch all around?

So it was almost a molded board that just required removing the skin. Why bother with the removal? Why not just mold the exact shape you want?

I wanted to offer any shape anybody wanted. I wanted to keep the custom aspect of it.

It was very good. Friable—like Clark Foam. I ended up using a formula that combined water-blown foam and Freon blown, so it wasn’t brittle. You could finish a board with just a sanding block. You could almost use your hand. It took timing, though. You needed to take the bland out of the mold as just the right moment.

How did it compare overall to the other big foam makers, like Grubby and Walker?

It was a better product, structurally far superior. The density on the surface of my blanks was probably six pounds, with a real lightweight center, while Grubby and Walker, their density on the surface was probably one-and-a-half to two pounds.

You thrived as a boardmaker, then decided you didn’t want it. How did that happen?

Ah, I didn't want to be big. First of all, I didn't have the money that Hobie had, so I never had any dealers. I sold direct, and I never had more than four employees. In my peak, I was selling 800-900 boards a year. Hobie probably did that in a month. Dewey [Weber] used to fight those guys for who was the biggest. I got a kick out of that. Did you know Dewey?

He pulled a few things on me I didn’t appreciate. Anyway, I stayed small. But I guarantee you, when I sold one board I made a profit that Weber made when he’d sold five boards. I poured my own foam, glassed, did my own shaping.

I had Donald Takayama on my boards for a couple of years, and Mike Doyle was in there on and off, and Dave Rochlen. I had Jackie Baxter. Tom Morey, he always had funny ideas. Tom used to hang around my shop a lot. He was a very fluid surfer and smooth, some people thought he was the best. Tom knows a wave. And there was Butch Linden, Jamie Budge, Denny Walner. Here's something: Miki Dora surfed my boards. All the time he’s supposed to be with Jacobs and he’s surfing one of my foam boards! Who else? Buzz Sutphin. He did well at Malibu.

The early '70s. I started building airplane wings. That turned out to be too labor-intensive. Funny thing, the airplane wing customers were just like the surfboard customers; one day it’s the squaretail, next day it’s the pintail. Then I sold Porsches in the Valley.

So you went through the shortboard revolution.

Yeah, V-bottoms, Bob McTavish—all of that. I remember it hit a point where you could not give a longboard away. I took a load to the dump. Everything! And not just the longboards I just made, but Simmons boards, Matt Kivlin boards, Joe Quigg. My molds. My big press and inserts.

The history of surfboards went to the dump!

It was worthless. That's what we all thought. Everything is buried underneath the Getty Museum now; that's where the dump used to be.

I just couldn't bring myself to start over. I hung in there for a year or two then said to hell with it. It’s done. That’s the period when Velzy became a cowboy.

You’ve been watching the whole thing now, from the 1940s to what it is today. Where is it headed?

Surftech, that method, for economic reasons, will probably take over. I'd hate to see the custom business disappear. I don’t know if it will, but there are threats to it now. Surftech is making true pop-outs. Yater thinks that boards will become hollow again, but I have my doubts.

I haven't asked him. But it appears his business is solid and that his system will prevail for as far as anyone can see. Custom is still king.

We’re friends. On the phone, he'll admit my foam was better. He had me down [to Laguna] for lunch a couple of years ago. Took me through his whole factory. It’s like a nuclear place, (chuckling) with laser beams and computers. OSHA gives him a rough time. All his men have to wear these monitors. I guess that's for the styrene in resin.

I’m back in the board business, but my price is $1,200 per board. I do maybe 25 boards a year. I use Grubby’s foam (laughing).

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