![]() On one trip over to Bolinas sometime in 1968 I saw this home made “short board” which at the time was anything shorter than a “longboard.” I took a few looks at it and said to myself “I could do that.” So I took my mom’s car down to Santa Cruz not long after that and bought a blank (surfboard foam), a gallon of resin and a few yards of fiberglass from O’Neil Surf Shop (O’Neil used to make boards too) and came back and turned one of the bedrooms in our apartment into my shaping room. We started making trips to Santa Cruz and over to a spot called Bolinas which is north of the Golden Gate Bridge. I quickly found that it wasn’t THAT cold and I also met a few surfers at Berkeley High. In the late summer of 1967 we moved to Berkeley in northern California (we were living in southern California at the time) and I assumed that my surfing career would be over because of how cold it was up there. I made it (glued up the wood and shaped it) during the first semester of school that year (late 1965) and took it home and glassed it during the Christmas vacation. So for the next two years, through 7th and 8th grade all I could think about was surfing and getting to 9th grade so I could make that belly board. To my surprise, the shop teacher told me that it would be much too big of a project for a 7th grader and that I had to wait until 9th grade to make something that size. Next year I was going into 7th grade and in 7th grade the students could take wood shop and my plan was to make myself a belly board (boogie board) out of wood that year. I made two of those since the first one turned out so well. I cut out one of the top brands’ logos from one of John’s Surfer Magazines and put it on under the glass to make it more authentic looking. I don’t know why making surfboards interested me at that time but somehow or another, I can’t remember, I got a hold of a small piece of foam and some fiberglass and resin, most likely from the “hobby shop” as they were called back then, and made a little scale surfboard that was about 10” long. So naturally my other older brother Dave and myself got into it too. My oldest brother, John, who was 14-15 years old at the time had just gotten into surfing. I first started playing around with foam, fiberglass and resin when I was 11-12 years old and in the 6th grade. My boards, whether they are surf, kite, stand up or foil, fit on the water more naturally and with less effort of the rider than many other brands’ boards because of that GOLDEN RATIO that I get in each and every one of my shapes. When all these curves blend and flow together you get the GOLDEN RATIO and I’ve been able to come up with that GOLDEN RATIO a lot more often than most other board makers.Īll of these shape factors determine not only how a board goes through the water, whether it’s riding on a wave or cruising across a lake or plowing through choppy waters. Those being the outline, the rocker line, the deck line and thickness flow, the bottom shape, the deck shape and the rail shape. My shaping style is to do functional designs, and that involves a flow and blend of all the curves and contours of the shape. Some shapes evolve but they don’t just disappear from the line because of the fact that I don’t do gimmick shapes just to get the publics attention and fool you into thinking I’ve got something that’s going to make everything else on the market obsolete. They will do what they’re made to do just as well today as they did when they were first introduced. ![]() ![]() Some shapes in my line are not going to change. I don’t do “new” shapes each year for the sake of selling more boards. I do all of the prototypes and plugs for production myself. I don’t have a staff of “designers” in charge of putting out new shapes for each season. Not only do I shape, but I can build any of these boards from start to finish, doing all the steps in the construction process. ![]() I’ve shaped surfboards, windsurf boards, kiteboards stand up boards and now foilboards, there isn’t another shaper on earth who’s had the same success in all of these different sports that I’ve had. I started out shaping surfboards in 1968. I’ve been shaping and building boards for over 50 years now. ![]()
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