Jim’s boards are rumoured to possess “a certain magic”.
Jim first started shaping in 1971 at the age of 12. As the 70’s progressed he developed a range of 70’s single fins with clean classic lines were necessary for surfing fast and deep in the most critical parts of Cronulla’s unforgiving powerful reef breaks.
These designs proved to be right at home for his early trips to Bali wher he further developed his board’s ability to ride the long fast walls and deep barrels of Indonesia.
Subsequent trips to Hawaii throughout the late 70’s and early 80’s expanded Jim’s knowledge of what was required for riding large, powerful waves. This combined with exchanging ideas with legendary shapers like Tom Parrish and Wiamea thruster pioneer, Chris Lundy led to further development and refinement of his designs.
In 1981 Jim created the first pintail thrusters despite the general consensus that the thruster had to be a square tail. Double page magazine spreads of Jim surfing the first pintail thruster in Hawaii later that year captioned, “Jim Banks setting the North Shore on fire”, confirmed the design. With the pintail thruster now a standard surfboard design, Jim’s design insight has been well validated.
Bailing from the poor quality waves of the pro tour in the early 80’s, Jim hit the road to seek out the most remote and challenging waves he could find to pit himself and his boards up against. This led to the creation and fine-tuning of his legendary Hit The Road series of pintail thrusters. This series of boards became the benchmark for travelling surfers throughout the 80’s and 90’s.
It was these trips that really deepened Jim’s understanding of critical waves and completed the development of his already finely honed shapes into boards that could be relied upon to be able to handle whatever the ocean was going to throw up, especially when things got serious.
These waves required boards that could move out, hold a line and ride deep in the barrel. Jim’s hit the road guns and semi guns were the perfect boards for the job |
