Drew Kampion's profile on Tom Parrish ran in the December 1976 issue of Surfing. This version has been slightly edited.

Picture, if you will, the annual onslaught: the world's finest surfers converging in a swift no-nonsense manner for the winter festivities on Oahu's North Shore, almost like corporate honchos on a whirlwind business tour with definite aims and limited time. With the increasing sophistication of the professional surfing circuit (more contests, more locations, more money), the whole scene has changed. Now, when the Australians, South Africans, Californians, and East Coasters all hit Hawaii for the November-through-January duel-for-dollars, there is little time for the laid-back Polynesian tropical-tradewind pineapple lush green golden sand beach coral reef warm water splish-splash toke in the hammock chug on the porch ray soakin' pace of yesteryear. Now you need to have a place to stay lined up in advance; you need to have your entry forms in on time; you need to have transportation set up; and you need to have the right equipment.

The equipment bit is especially tricky. It is hard, almost impossible, to have it ready ahead of time. You're not sure what people will be riding this year. You're not sure if there has or hasn't been a new breakthrough. Since last time on the Rock, you've competed at Bells, the Coke, the Gunston, and your own surfing has changed.

Now here you are in Hawaiian, looking for that perfect personalized quiver, asking the same question as 30 or so other red-hot visitors. “What's happening? Who's hot? How long will it take?" As for the "who" question, the answers can change year to year. Way back when, Diffenderfer was the guy. Then it was Brewer. For the last couple of years, the answer has been Tom Parrish.

At 25-years-old, Tom Parrish has been shaping for almost eight years. He started back in Newport Beach during the first year of the shortboards. "Since I had no teacher in the beginning," he tells me, "and only bought reject blanks, it took me quite a long time to even become an average shaper."

Tom moved to Hawaii in 1969 and worked as a glasser for Jack Shipley at Lightning Bolt in Honolulu, where he became well-known among surfers for his meticulous finish-work. After a while, Shipley began to give the kid a few boards a week to shape.

"After I had lived in Hawaii for a while I was fortunate enough to share a shaping room with Danny Callahan (cofounder of Plastic Fantastic Surfboards) and it was at that point that my shaping really began improving. When Danny was into it, before moving to Aspen, he made beautiful boards: super functional, and beautiful to look at. As we became better friends, he turned me onto better techniques and methods."

By 1971, Tom's glassing skills and his fast-improving shaping ability caught the attention of Jeff Hakman, who was everybody's pick as the #1 pro back before there was an official rating system. Hakman at that point was coming off of Mike Eaton's boards and looking for someone in the Islands that he could work to provide him with equipment that was loose enough to maneuver freely, yet firm enough to hold into steep, choppy, big Hawaiian surf.

With Jeff's help, Tom's boards soon developed into something that could be taken seriously by the best North Shore riders. "For the past few years, working closely with Jeff on a daily basis, I've come to learn the value of communication in the shaping room. To work with Jeff you must be really flexible, as his designs and ideas are always changing. So it becomes incredibly important to be able to interpret different designs without becoming negative or trying to impose my trip on him."

Tom's rise to the top of the shaping hierarchy is a credit to his innate characteristics of patience, determination, and high standards of excellence. Many of the top shapers first made their names as surfers (Reno Abellira, Gerry Lopez, Barry Kanaiaupuni, Ben Aipa, George Downing, etc.), which meant their success was practically assured because they were so well known. It is a rare occurrence for an unknown shaper, like Tom, to be shaping the boards used by the best surfers in the world.

"He's a really excellent all-around athlete," says Hakman. "He's a hot skier, good at riding bikes, and a really good surfer. But surfing doesn't occupy all of his life like some other shapers. He didn't have a 'name' to rely on like Hawk or Owl or BK. I think, because of that, Tom knew to be very polite and mild-mannered. He's sharp, too, and has a lot on the ball—not the normal surf troll. On top of all that, he just works super hard."

In the beginning, Jeff and Tom had some differences to work out: Tom likes his boards straighter, as he rides more off the tail. Jeff likes to lead with the nose, so he wanted more curve. They made it work, although things really came together last year when Tom started shaping from the 8'1" Brewer blank, which comes with more curve in it. According to Hakman, 75% of the boards Tom has made from these blanks have been " A" caliber.

It is interesting, too, to learn how a shaper relates to a hot surfer who uses boards like most people use paper napkins. Says Parrish: "Hakman get surfboards the way some people buy clothing. He knows exactly what he wants and if it isn't a perfect fit, the board is discarded within hours. He has almost a sixth sense for what does and does not work, just from the sheer number of boards he's ridden over the years. He's the only guy I've ever seen that will get feelings from a board just by paddling it. By the time he reaches the lineup he's halfway to knowing if it'll work or not. I've seen Jeff take a board out in two-foot Kammieland mush and come back an hour later with a whole rundown on not only how it worked there, but how it would work at ten-foot Sunset. And nine out of ten times his impression is right on!"

Because of Jeff's reputation as a surfer (with a contest record to support it), Tom Parrish was quickly sought after by other top pros, including Peter Townend, Shaun Tomson and Michael Tomson. Then last year, the whole Aussie entourage ran straight to Parrish for their quivers: Mark Richards, Mark Warren, Ian Cairns, Wayne Lynch, and Rabbit Bartholomew. Ditto for South Africans Mike Esposito, Paul Naude and Dave Hanson. Same thing with nearly all of the women pros: Margo Oberg, Becky Benson, Laura Blears, Linda Davoli.

Suddenly, for Tom, the biggest problem was, and remains, keeping up with the demand. "Trying to keep everyone's ideas separate becomes pretty hard," he told me. "You have to remember, too, that a lot of the pros are themselves shapers."

I asked him about the jump in performance the previous winter [1975-'76]. "Yes, much more so than in any of the previous winters I've seen personally, there was an incredible advancement in the caliber of surfing here on the North Shore. Having observed over the past few years how things were beginning to stagnate, it was really a treat to watch the progression. The new attitude seemed to be that anything goes, at any spot, at any size."

What did it mean for Tom's workload? "Things had been a little slow [the previous summer] as far as my business was concerned, but then in Fall the invasion hit with 20 to 30 pro surfers each wanting at least two or three boards and things became really hectic. Furthermore, everyone had design ideas of their own."

To make truly personalized equipment takes a lot of time and effort. As a graduate of the Lightning Bolt Production Shaping school, Parrish is quite capable of knocking out a high-quality standard shape-job in about 45 minutes. But to do a really good, personalized board, says Parrish: "I like to turn up the headphones and allow myself a good two or two-and-a-half hours.” He usually shapes about 15 boards a week, but "there are exceptions when you do three times that many, like before leaving on a trip."

I asked Tom for a brief rundown on current board design, and here's what I got. "There seems to be a popular trend over here now that when there is any weird feeling in a board the blame falls on the tail rocker, which, of course, just isn't always the case. Each spot dictates different curves and rockers, as well as plan shapes and thickness distribution. In Hawaiian waves, especially, nose-entry rocker is so critical, and yet the importance is frequently overlooked. Too much will push water and prevent entry. Worse, too little nose rocker, combined with excessive tail rocker, will make the board sticky and squirrelly at the same time, instead of skimming nicely on top.

"Thickness distribution is also a major concern; again, each spot requires subtle differences. The balance and trim points, which are highly affected by the thickness distribution, are critical in all boards, but especially in boards for larger surf. So it may seem okay at the time to have a thick nose on your big-wave board, thinking it will paddle so much better. But by upsetting the balance and upsetting the foil and flow, that same thick-nosed boards will likely become erratic and unpredictable.

"Plan shapes—same story. By constantly refining and separating the differences, each board becomes more personalized for each person and each spot. I realized the importance of this more than ever with the boards I had in Australia last year. They worked well here, but once down there, things were so different. In Hawaii, you derive the speed and power a great deal from the waves. But in Australia, the waves lack the juice and you have to compensate for it by building speed and power into the board."

Being a shaper is a gratifying way to live for Tom Parrish. It gives him the personal freedom and income necessary for the travel and experimentation necessary to keep developing in his field. "I like to be exposed to different influences," he says. "Life on the North Shore can get routine." Traveling brings him into contact with different shapers and surfers with their different design preferences. Already he's been to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, New Zealand, Samoa, South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, and, of course, downtown Huntington Beach.

"North Shore boards work unreal on the North Shore," he says, "but that doesn't mean that they'll work anywhere else. Each board should be tailored to fit the area where it will be surfed. Traveling helps you to better relate to people who want boards outside of Hawaii."

The surfers who come to Tom Parrish for boards comment that he can almost see into their future; that he has the ability to generate what they need for what they want to do by the time they need to do it. And in the contest-fevered North Shore season, such talent is at a premium, if available at all.

The result, of course, is that Parrish often works into the night and keeps his planer nearly glowing red-hot. Something for Ian Cairns, maybe: "Ian's design theory is easy to understand if you watch him surf. He doesn't believe in ever going straight; he believes that the power here in Hawaii will make him go plenty fast, so he puts all his emphasis on maneuverability, whether in three- or thirty-foot surf. All his boards are designed along the same lines: round pins with the wide curvy outlines, plenty of bottom tail rocker and nose rocker and fairly thick, 'cause Ian's thick."

Peter Townend is a different story. "PT is a small guy who surfs really smooth and polished. His boards reflect this: fairly thin with soft curves and no bulges or flat spots anywhere. Being smaller, PT does not have the weight to stuff the rail in on turns, so he wants as much volume eliminated as possible, which makes the boards more manageable. The bottom curve is the same as Hakman's, and he likes all his foils very tapered, with thin tails."

And what about Shaun Tomson? "Shaun needs boards that give him full confidence to put everything he's got into a turn, with no skittering or drifting. To help with this, Shaun's boards are all very similar to one another so he can interchange them with the least amount of adjustment. All at the moment are round tails, and narrow in the back end. He likes a tighter feel to the water, so I don't put much roll in the bottom until just ahead of the fin, where a moderate vee will start and continue to the back of the fin where it disappears again. For his Sunset boards, we use a little tighter rocker in the tail while still loosening up the nose to keep it out of the water."

What about his famous pinkish Pipeline board? "That's the most interesting board in his quiver. It's a Spider Murphy board, made in Durban. The planshape is very similar to the boards I've made for Shaun, but the rocker throughout is incredible. There is so much tail lift that the board actually looks broken. But after watching Shaun ride it at Pipeline, you see how he makes it work so well. The rocker makes a dragging, slowing effect, which in a way sounds wrong, but it actually enables him to stick almost like a fly to those extra steep parts of the wave where a conventional-rockered board would just come unstuck. I've actually seen Shaun fit the curve of that board into places where only goofyfoots have been able to ride."

This brings up an interesting point, about making boards differently for regularfooters and goofyfooters. "That's right, at Pipeline the goofies all use a tighter rocker, and that shows that not only does each spot require a different design, but it also matters a great deal whether you are facing the wave or surfing backside."

Last but very much not least, I ask Parrish about Wayne "Bugs" Bartholomew. "Rabbit really doesn't fit into any category, on land or in the water. He just seems to rip on anything. Although Rabbit likes his boards thick, wide and curvy, like Ian, his favorite eight-footer was one of Hakman's back-ups. Since he weighs about 50 pounds less than Ian, it's hard for him to convince shapers that their tastes in boards are in fact very similar. The result is that he ends up with variations most of the time, and the funny thing is that it doesn't seem to hurt his surfing. He just adapts and rips." Most of Rabbit's boards are round pins, and a 6' 10" I made for him worked so well that he rode it in anything from two-foot to 12-foot, and then took it home to Australia."

You just never know how things are going to play out. Tom Parrish began shaping only because he wanted to make his own boards and he's ended up as the most in-demand shaper of the decade. There were always plans to do something else for a living. He was three years into college before he realized that the people he related to best, the people he liked being around, were people who were into the ocean and the snow. And he found that he was relating less and less to college: "near the end, I was just taking up space," he says. "So I quit and put all my energy into shaping and haven't regretted the decision at all."

One of the outcomes of Tom's decision is that he has himself become a hot surfer by anybody's standards. "I don't think you can be a tuned-in shaper unless you surf quite a bit and can pick up on other people's feelings in relation to their boards. You have to know those feelings for yourself too. So, although I put in a lot of hours shaping, I'm still into surfing and like to go as much as possible.

Is there any conflict between Tom Parrish the surfer and Tom Parrish the shaper? "As a surfer, I wouldn't mind it if they held all the pro contests on the South Pole because of the crowd situations here. But as a shaper, the contests stimulate new designs and keep my job from becoming an 8-to-5 grind."

Hot from his work-surf visit to Durban for the recent Gunston 500, business at the moment continues very good for Tom Parrish. The ups and downs continue, as always. After going through countless eight-footers, Hakman finally got one he was satisfied with, only to have it stolen off the beach on the morning of the Smirnoff. Tom went home immediately and began shaping a duplicate (Jeff rode a borrowed board in prelims) and stayed up that night to glass it. They called it the Red Eye Special and it was ready the next morning. Hakman liked it better than the first. Four days later at Laniakea, it snapped in half.

[Photos: Jeff Divine, Lance Trout, John Witzig]

"THE MAN WITH THE RED-HOT PLANER," TOM PARRISH PROFILE BY DREW KAMPION (1976)

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