This board is a WM (William Morton) Tracker. It was shaped by Vic Elliott. WM Surfboards was located at 58A Cumberland Road Auburn Lakemba NSW 1967 to 1969. William Morton was glasser and shaper. He was previously employed at Ron Surfboards with Geoff McCoy. They later formed M and M Surfboards, Auburn NSW. The rest is history. The dimensions are 7'8" x 19 3/4" x 3'' The nose is 13" and the tail is 8"@ 12"
The board was in a bad way when I received it. To most people it would be rubbish, after all that is where it was found, on a garbage pile. An eight-inch section of the nose was missing and three inches of the tail was also missing. The original fin box was still in the board but somebody had crudely bonded a fin into the box with resin. The deck had a number of areas that had delaminated and it was covered in dents and dings. The whole board needed to been sanded to prepare for the ding repairs. Once sanded, the nose and tail areas were prepared for the new foam. The old fin box was removed and the resulting hole was filled with foam. The nose and tail were reshaped and everything was glassed. As the board was going to have a full colour job all the dings needed to be glassed to stabilise the dinged areas. Then they could be filled with a 75/25 mix of Q-cell/ Aerosil. The next process was to sand and fair and a layer or 4oz applied over the filled areas. The rails were in such poor condition that after being faired two layers of 4oz was applied to the entire length or both rails. The delaminated areas in the deck were removed and the areas re glassed, filled and faired. The section of glass with the shaper’s logo on it was cleaned up and reglassed into the board. The dents in the deck were filled with a wet mix of chopped glass and resin and two applications were necessary to fill all the dents. I had not tried this before and I will certainly use this method again as it worked well. It does add some weight, but as this board is going to be a wall hanger the added weight is not a major consideration. Normally if there are a small amount of shallow dents to fill I’ll use straight resin. But because of the amount and the size of the dents and the amount of camber in the deck, something with a little more substance was needed. Q-cell / Aerosol was another option but I thought it would be a good opportunity to try the former method on this occasion.
The paint used was thinners based auto acrylic. This was thinned 1:1 and the TCC was thinned at 1.5:1 The gun used is an Oldfield’s 60T electric airless. It is pretty basic, but it did the job. Any orange peel or overspray dry spots easily sanded out.
The bottom was painted first. One light coat was applied, left for ten minutes to tack off. Then three wet coats were applied allowing time to tack off between coats. The board was left for a week to cure. Then the deck colours were applied. Same method as above, the white first then the middle. Again the board was left to cure. The board was sanded with 600 wet & dry and masked for the black pinlines. Once sprayed and cured the board was sanded with 1200 wet & dry and glossed. Acrylic Topcoat clear was used. Applied the same way as the colour coats. The fin was sprayed separately one side at a time with the board on its rail in the stands. Again the board was left to cure. Topcoat clear is very easy to get a gloss with. But it is very soft and easily burns when polishing. The board was sanded with 600, 1200 wet & dry then polished with “Farecla” G3 regular grade compound paste. Then finished with “Farecla” super fine polish. Using a lambswool-buffing pad.
A new fin had to be made. This was constructed from 10oz-boat cloth and surfboard-laminating resin was used. The template is from a “Hohensee” tracker that I own. This was glassed onto the board.
This is the first major painted restoration that I had undertaken. I normally do full pigment restorations. There does seem to be a growth in the interest of the boards from the late 60’s into the 70’s and people are asking for painted restorations.
The original stringer was in good enough condition to reuse. Only a small section at either end had to be replaced.
Due to exposure to the elements for some years, the foam on the bottom of the board has eroded away. Leaving a 10mm deep void along the length of the board needing to be rebuilt. Two pack expanding polyurethane foam was used to fill the void
As with most old logos, this one was also delaminated. There was also a ding that needed repairing under the logo. You can see the damage to the logo between the S and the A. After the ding was repaired and the edges around the perimeter of the logo were cleaned up, it was re bonded to the board.
A pinline was applied to highlight the logo. The area damaged by the ding was touched up with a water based Posca pen.
The fin was originally set into the board. As it had been removed prior to restoration. It was cleaned up and reset.
