Astrodeck 123 Nathan Traction Pad

"Like all surfboard designer / shapers, I had always experimented with the rails, bottoms, tails and fins of my boards until I really had a quiver for all the best breaks in every condition. I then started concentrating on the surface area where my feet made contact. It seemed that there had to be a product that would allow more control than the wax that had been used for the first 40 some years in surfing.

In 1976, I started playing around with a polyurethane elastomer foam, synthetic rubber, that when the skin was lightly sanded off exposed an open cell that acted like miniature suction cups that gripped your feet. Wow, was I stoked, I had these great sheets with pressure sensitive tape that would cover the whole deck. The stoke was short lived, surfers didn’t even want to give it a try. It was difficult to apply and they were used to using wax. I started cutting it in to small dots and checks in bright colors and it caught on as a punk fashion statement. As time went by I looked at it like the last part of my shaping job by adding kicks, arches, and different surface patterns for ultimate grip and control until the designs evolved into the patented multigridllock high performance foot pad of today."