In The Mix The Magic Carpet- MEZ talks

In: In The Mix by philgallagher 5 Comments Wed 26th May '10
Tags: NMD , Nick Mesritz , Dave Winchester
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  • Winnie
  • Winnie_vert_gallagher
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Master shaper to the stars Nick MEZ Mesritz has been hard at work perfecting his next leap into advancing board design for his NMD label.

If you missed the amazing performance from team rider Dave Winchester in Chile a few days ago, He scored a 19.75 out of 20 in the final to win the Arica Chile Challenge. Yep, you guessed it he was riding a secret weapon.

I fired off some questions to Mez to try find out what this new shape and design was and how it works. Just like the advancements before, channels, stringers, nose bulbs and contour decks, could Mez be onto something with his PARABOLIC CORE?


What is with the new design that Winny rode to victory in Chile? It looks to have a channel
running the full length of the board?
Winny's board is an experimental parabolic "flex rail" design. The centre of the board is PP and
the outer edges are PE. I've been studying the use of parabolic stringers in surfboards and designs
like the Firewire's, where they use a balsa rail to add stiffness to the board. I got to thinking that
bodyboards work the other way. We need a certain amount of flex in the rail to hold an edge
and to turn. I then figured out a method to vertically fuse a PE rail strip to a PP centre. Its not rocket
science, but its super labour intensive and this is what gives the board the ridge you see on the slick of
Dave's board (its on the deck too).

What does it do?
The idea behind the design is that the PP center gives the board stiffness, but the PE rails still
enable flex where its needed i.e. on the outer 4-5" of the board. Like I said before, its
experimental and I've been building a few of them for a year or so now. There is only a handful of guys
that have ridden them, of which Winny is one. All the feedback I have received has been super positive and they
all say its the fastest board they've ridden, though I can't explain why they seem to be faster than
other boards? Looks like it did the trick for Winny eh, although that guy would rip on a McDonalds tray

Is there anyone else ridding them?
I just made Ben one a month or so back, so I'm waiting to hear what the maestro thinks of it.
Apart from that I have French mate, Silvio, who lives in Bali and has been ridding them for a year
solid. He's my test pilot and he tears the bag. He's addicted to the design and its been his continued
positive feedback that convinced me to build more of them. A few other mates in the industry
have ridden them and they were all blown away.

Could this be a notable design step forward or a flash in the pan like the mach 8TX?
I don't really know at this stage. What I do know is that the guys that ride it love it.

Will we ever see these for sale in a retail sense?
I am planning to build 12 boards for Aus in the next month. Why only 12?

  a) they are straight-up hard to make and are all hand-shaped.                                                                                                                                         b) Each board uses a full PE blank and a full PP blank, so 2 cores per board. This, coupled with intensive labour, means that they are expensive to make and will be equally expensive by the time they reach the stores, thus limiting its numbers. Hopefully in the future I will figure out a way to produce them in a more economically viable method, which would bring the price down, but for now its up to the good old hands and eye.

 

Thanks Mez, 

 

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