Aloha and Welcome to a brief look at Southern California’s very first surfboard manufacturer: Pacific System Homes, originally named Pacific Ready-Cut Homes. It was not only the first company to produce commercial surfboards, but also the era’s most notable in terms of volume and designs.
I am indebted to Peter T. Young, of our Facebook group and an historian in his own right, for initial help with references and inspiration to expand on what I had previously written years ago. Please check out some of the photos he’s posted:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DEkDQZ9ad/
© 2025 Hoʻokuleana LLC
Contents
Pacific Ready-Cut Homes
Pacific System Homes
Meyers Butte & Surfboard Manufacturing
The Swastika Model
The Waikiki Surf-Boards Model
Pacific Ready-Cut Homes
Pacific Ready-Cut Homes (later Pacific System Homes) was a prominent Los Angeles-based manufacturer of prefabricated kit homes. The company was a major player in the early Twentieth Century kit home industry, especially in the Western United States, alongside companies like Sears, Aladdin, and Gordon-Van Tine.
Kit houses – also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses, mail order homes, or catalog homes – were a type of housing that was popular in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Kit house manufacturers sold houses in many different plans and styles and supplied, at a fixed price, all materials needed for construction of a particular house above the foundation level. The customer arranged their own brick, concrete, and masonry and had that part of the job done locally. (Wikipedia)
Pacific Ready-Cut Homes produced homes from 1908 until around 1940, transitioning in the late 1930s and early 1940s to a new name, Pacific System Homes, Inc.. By 1939, it claimed to be the largest builder of homes in the world. The company sold around 37,000 ready-to-assemble homes based on over 1,800 plans.
Pacific System Homes offered a wide variety of designs through catalogs, including Craftsman-style bungalows, Colonial and English-style cottages, Spanish Eclectic homes, duplexes, hotels, and offices. The "ready-cut" system involved precision-cut lumber pieces, which were numbered and shipped by railcar to the building site with corresponding blueprints and instructions, promising to reduce construction time significantly. The kits included everything from framing lumber to hardware, doors, windows, and paint.
Meyers Butte & Surfboard Manufacturing
The demand for kit homes waned with the onset of the Great Depression, beginning in 1929 and continuing up until the entry of the USA into World War II, in 1941. Also in the ‘30s, the renamed Pacific System Homes struggled to get Federal Housing Authority approval for its plans, limiting its market access.
When the Stock Market crashed in October of 1929, company founder William Butte’s son Meyers was at Stanford and training for the Olympics in wrestling. The economic crash forced elder Butte to bring his son back home and help with the family business. (Peter T. Young)
When Meyers came on board, he convinced his father that manufacturing surfboards would be a good way to diversify the business. Getting the green light, Meyers began to change a small part of the production of Pacific Ready-Cut Homes to surfboards.
“Little is known about the first Pacific System Homes boards, produced either in late 1929 or early 1930,” wrote Matt Warshaw in his Encyclopedia of Surfing, “except that they were made from redwood strips held together with lag bolts, and were probably [around] 10 feet long and weighed about 70 pounds. Pine/redwood boards replaced the all-redwood boards in 1932; full-length redwood-edged balsa boards, weighing as little as 45 pounds and costing less than $40, were introduced in the mid-’30s.” (EOS, 2003, pp. 440-441)
To lighten the load, Pacific System started making laminated surfboards after their initial release of solid wood. The big break came when they found a water-proof glue that would hold the slabs of wood together. This helped them combine strong but heavy wood with softer, lighter wood.
The new, lighter boards were constructed from glued and doweled balsa and redwood strips. They were 10 to 12-feet in length, 20-inches wide and a few inches thick, weighing closer to 50 pounds.
During the course of its years manufacturing boards, Pacific System employed a number of well-known surfers, including Pete Peterson and Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison. Production pay for a shaper was $100/month for 4 boards/day. By the mid-1930s, these boards were made of laminated redwood and balsa which could be milled and joined with waterproof glue. The wood was combined so that the lightness of the balsa ran down the middle and the strength of the redwood went to the stringer and rails. Varnish protected the outside.
The Swastika Model
It is not known how the company first came up with the idea of naming their first laminated model Swastikas. In the early 30s, the swastika symbol still retained “connotations of health and good fortune” and it was probably chosen in this context.
Earliest archaeological evidence of the swastika symbol dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of ancient India as well as Classical Antiquity. To this day, the symbol remains widely used in Eastern religions, specifically in Hinduism and Buddhism, and was also used by various Native American tribes. (SHACC)
“The Swastika boards were droolers,” shaper Dale Velzy is quoted as saying. “Everybody had homemades or hand-me-downs, so people really wanted a Pacific System.”
Although most boards continued to be custom made by surfers themselves, for the period leading into World War II, Swastikas became the most widely-used production board.
The rail shape was full with a square upper edge and rounded lower edge. A typical board was 10’ long, 23” wide, and 22” across the tail block. An example of a Pacific Systems Homes Swastika model surfboard is in the Surfer magazine collection, in San Juan Capistrano. It’s solid balsa with redwood stringers and rails. It features a nose piece and tail block for strength and protection. The 10’1” X 22” board is doweled for rigidity and durability and weighs 45 pounds.
As for the swastika design itself, it “was wood-burned or print-marked onto the back of all Pacific System Homes’s Swastika model boards up until 1937. The following year, after the swastika-decorated German military invaded Austria, Pacific System changed the line name to ‘Waikiki Surf-Boards’” (EOS, 2003, p. 441)
The Waikiki Surf-Board Model
“The 1939 Waikiki board came in 10-, 11-, and 12-foot models, as well as a 14-foot paddleboard model, and five- or six-foot ‘kiddie boards’. All were typical of the plank period: blunt-nosed, squared-off at the tail, with near-parallel sides. Pacific System Homes boards were made in production runs of 15 on saw-horses in a designated dust-free area of the company’s 25 acre site.” (EOS, 2003, p. 441)
The Waikiki model was “sold in beach clubs, sporting goods stores, and high-end department stores like Robinson’s and Broadway. Custom-made” boards were also available, shaped by some of the era’s best shapers (EOS, p. 441)
“Dale Velzy… remembers that the Pacific System boards were among the finest on the coast. ‘Most of us had homemade jobs or hand-me-downs, while the rich guys down there at the Bel Air Bay Club, or the Balboa Bay Club, had the Waikiki models. So we’d sneak down to Balboa and steal ‘em.’” (EOS, p. 441)
Pacific System Homes surfboards were promoted with illustrated brochures and magazine advertisements extolling the quality of the craftsmanship:
“All ‘Waikiki’ boards are precision built with modern up-to-date machinery for a life-time of service in the world’s largest home-building plant… The woods are specially selected. The Balsa wood is hand-sorted from finest imported stocks, scientifically kilned, laminated and cabinet finished by expert craftsmen under the personal direction of a professional surf-board aqualist.” (Pacific System Ad)
By the late 1930s, Pacific Systems surfboards were so popular, they were shipping 60-boards a month to Hawaiʻi. (Marcus)
“The boards had a one-year guarantee on workmanship and materials. In 1938, the Waikiki model became the official board of Honolulu’s renowned Outrigger Canoe Club. Pacific System Homes stopped producing surfboards not long after America’s entry into World War II.” (EOS, p 441)
Company founder/father William Butte had died in 1936, and his sons Meyers and Robert ran the business up until the war, then sold it in 1942 and enlisted in the military. According to Meyers Butte, his father had taken “great pride in the fact that he had pioneered the making of light surfboards.”
ENDIT
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