Stand Up Paddle Surfing Magazine - EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Dave Chun (Kialoa Paddles) Part 1 or 4

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Dave Chun (Kialoa Paddles) Part 1 or 4

By: Stand Up Paddle Surfing Magazine
Thursday, 06 December 2007
We caught up with Dave Chun of Kialoa Paddles the other day at the Paddle Surf Hawaii showroom in Wahiawa, Hawaii to get some insights into the industry as many tips and words of wisdom we could possibly glean from this master paddle maker. A huge thanks to Dave for meeting with us and sharing his stoke for the sport. -Origins of Kialoa- -Laird Hamilton- -Paddle Design and Testing Process- -Why Carbon Fiber?- SUPSURFMAG: We’re here with Dave Chun of Kialoa Paddles. Thanks for meeting with us here Dave. DAVE: Oh yeah, happy to do this. SUPSURFMAG: To get started, for those who are new in the industry, tell us briefly about Kialoa and your current paddle lineup. DAVE: Ok. I’ve been building canoe paddles for 17 years. I’m originally from Hawaii. I grew up in Kailua. That's where I started building paddles. My company is currently located in Bend, Oregon. My background is outrigger paddling. To be honest, how I got started making stand up paddles was I got a phone call about four years ago from a guy named Laird Hamilton and he said, “I need a real long paddle to paddle into these waves.” And I said to him, “Ok fine. Well, why do you just get one from the guy who built the last one?” And he said, “I broke them all.” That actually got me interested because I was under the challenge in doing this thing. So, I built some paddles for him. Building is kind of a fun thing to do. I like building different things, and a friend of mine is Gerry Lopez, so that’s how Laird called me. I didn’t know if it was going to turn into anything but we decided to put a paddle into production and that’s how we got into stand ups. It just kind of evolved. We started off with a first paddle and we didn’t understand the sport at all…also working with a guy like Laird who’s just gigantically huge and strong, the blade was really big, it had an aluminum shaft on it. We thought he was going to steer more than he was going to be paddling forward. We really didn’t know what to expect. That was the first model. If you look at it now, you’d say it’s pretty crude. At the time it was pretty much state of art but you know things have changed. I think some of the things too is the boards have evolved. The boards are easier to turn. You don’t have to rudder the board around as much as you did in the beginning. So what you’re seeing is our blades are getting smaller. We primarily have four paddles in our paddle line. We have one model that still has an aluminum shaft…good price point. The aluminum shaft is really strong. Rental companies use it a lot, or people who are on a budget. That blade is going to be offered this year, 2008, with our new Shaka Pu’u Paddle. It’s kind of a downsized thing. I won’t try to describe too much to you because it would be impossible to do verbally. Just go to our website www.kialoa.com. That paddle is also offered with a carbon fiber shaft. It’s a good paddle. I worked with the guys out at Makaha developing it; also guys like Blane Chambers at Paddle Surf Hawaii, he had input into it. That’s the model we’re looking at to be probably out top model this year. We also have two other models bigger in size. If you like big paddles use them. SUPSURFMAG: Great. It seems that carbon fiber has sort of become the material of choice for many paddle makers including yourselves. Most of your paddles are made with carbon fiber. What is carbon fiber and why has it been embraced by the industry? DAVE: You know, I won’t talk about the technical stuff because… it would just make your eyeballs roll back in your head. Basically, carbon fiber is a reinforcing material in the same category as like Kevlar or fiberglass. It has properties that, at least in the paddle industry, we like a lot. One of the things is it has a really good compression strength in comparison to fiberglass and it is also stronger under tension. If you think of a piece of string, compression is, if you have the piece of string [one end in each hand] and move your hands closer together. That’s a compression movement. Tension is when you pull your hands away from each other and the string is getting stretched. Almost all things are stronger in tension. Compression is going to be the problem most paddles are going to have problems with. Carbon fiber excels at that compared to the other reinforcing materials. Carbon fiber is the black stuff. While there are lots of different types of carbon fiber, some of it made for stiffness, some of it made for more flexible applications, generally the stuff that we use in the sporting industry is a medium modulus material which means it has medium stiffness. It’s fine. It works great. It’s over-engineered for what we use. A lot of the reason why we use carbon fiber is it’s easily molded into objects. Things like aluminum and titanium, [which are] all great materials, are very difficult for the backyard guy or us small manufacturers to mold. All carbon fiber comes in a pliable sheet form like fiberglass. You impregnate it with a resin like epoxy. If you do see carbon fiber products, you want it to be made with epoxy. Vinylester and polyester resins are inferior resin systems in my opinion. And [as a manufacturer], when you’re paying $40 a yard for something, you really want to use the best resin you can because that’s the cheap part of the deal. SUPSURFMAG: We’ve also seen some paddles that are colored. Is that a tinted carbon fiber sheet or is that something that’s added afterwards? DAVE: If you’re looking at my paddles, that’s actually a gel coated finish. Basically what you’re seeing there is you’re seeing my prototype paddles. What I’ll do is, to test the product, typically we’ll design a paddle, take a mold off of it, and produce prototypes. I send them out to our test pilots and they tell me which ones they like. Usually we run the thing for about a year. Once we nail it down, we’ll send those paddles out and get responses from our guys. At the end of the year, if we think the paddle is something we need to have in our line, we’ll go to our more expensive tooling and produce the parts. We do the coloring to attract attention. It’s mainly for our sponsored riders. That’s all it is. SUPSURFMAG: Ok that makes sense. I see Blane out riding with his paddle and it’s a bright yellow tinted blade. You can see it all the way down the beach. DAVE: Our guys, a lot of them are helping us because they just like us. It’s not like we’re paying them millions of dollars. We want them to know they’re special to us and one way we can do it is by producing a custom thing for the guys that are product testing for us. They’re really are helping us out of the goodness of their heart. Also the guys that work with us, they could work with anybody else. Any paddle maker would be happy to give them stuff so it’s one of the little things to let them know that they’re special to us and that Dave Chun has hand made this paddle for them. END PART 1 OF 4 www.kialoa.com 0 Comments Write comment Welcome! Login or Register Below To Post Your Comments...

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