I received an email this week looking for additional photos or information about Abel Gomes, a 20th century cabinet maker and woodworker who became a well-known surfboard shaper, and his son, Allan Gomes, a well-known surfboard maker in his own right.

Along with the note came three photographs. Click on any photo for a larger verion.

The first shows Abel as a young man with a friend on the beach in what is probably Waikiki.

I found more information about Abel in the profile of surfer Paul Strauch, Jr. from the Legendary Surfers website.

Half Hawaiian, Paul Strauch‘s Hawaiian name is Kalakimau, meaning “The Lucky One.” He started surfing when he “was about seven years old,” he told Chris Ahrens. “My dad was a very good surfer, and he grew up right in Waikiki, two blocks back from the beach. I think that he had one of the first balsa boards that was ever made in Hawaii. It was made by the father of Alan Gomes, who was a woodworker, in 1919. They put a veneer [a thin layer of finer wood covering the surface of chaper wood] over the top and varnished the board. I still have that board.”

Abel Gomes, Alan’s father, was “an accomplished Honolulu craftsman,” a 1997 obituary on Alan described, “was renown for building sought after wooden planks for Alan and his friends, as well as canoes and paddles.” Wally Froiseth made sure I knew, after I had written an article on Tom Blake‘s development of the hollow board, that Abel had actually been the one who built the first Blake hollow boards. Blake would provide the specifications and Abel put it together. “Tom Blake didn’t actually make those hollow boards down there,” Wally told me. “This guy Abel Gomes made the boards. He was a woodworker. Tom wasn’t that much of a woodworker. But, he had the ideas, you know. He knew what he wanted.”

The second photo shows a much older Abel Gomes shaking hands with another man alongside the Waikiki Surf Club’s canoe, Malia. Note the scoop-shaped canoe paddles, an innovative design that Gomes developed for the WSC. The photo appears to be taken along the Ala Wai Canal.

The other man might be 1940s Waikiki beachboy Buddy Young, standing in the background in a 1943 photo published here earlier.

A third photo is a lineup of young surfers in Waikiki, date unknown, probably in the early 1950s.

According to the caption provided by the Gomes family: “…probably taken in 1950-1956 at waikiki beach. 4th boy from the left is Pat Gomes (Abel’s other son). 5th boy from the left Kala Kukea(?).”

Any help identifying others in this photo would be appreciated! Just email me.