I've been chasing waves for years. Not casually, but obsessively, the way that takes over your life if you let it. San Diego waves mostly, beach breaks and reef alike, the kind that demand something from you and from your equipment. Somewhere along the way I became a student of how water moves, how a board needs to hold a line through a bowl section, what it actually means for a board to work.
That last question is what led me to shaping.
In 2022, I took a shaping class at UCSD, where I was studying Applied Mathematics, and something clicked immediately. Not just the craft, but the intersection of art and physics happening right there in the foam. Every decision a shaper makes is essentially an applied math problem. How does this rocker distribute speed through a bottom turn? How does this concave channel water flow under pressure? How does this outline translate to pivot and drive on a steep reef wall? I had spent years thinking in those terms academically. Shaping gave me somewhere to use it.
I learned under a mentor who taught me to do things right. Then I bought some blanks and tried it alone. I destroyed six of them. Didn't bother glassing a single one, just set them aside and started over. The seventh came out well. Every board after that came out better. Now I shape a board from start to finish and know exactly how it's going to perform before it ever touches water.
That's not confidence for confidence's sake. That's the math.
