All quotes before are from a series of emails between Tom Parrish and Matt Warshaw, in 2021


Brewer’s guns were his forte but his smaller boards were better than most other shapers, too. Michael Ho rode a 6’5″ Brewer out at Sunset incredibly well when everyone else was riding 8-footers.


Over the years there has been a lot of back and forth over who was the first to transition from longboards to shorter boards. It always seemed like that was missing the point entirely. McTavish always made beautiful longboards but the early shorter vee-bottoms he made didn’t even work. They spun out as soon as you got them into any kind of situation. The Brewer miniguns, on the other hand, worked so well that they are basically as functional today as they were then.


Merrick was really good in that middle-of-the-road way. His boards were clean and functional. Nothing wrong with boards that work. Those early tri-plane bottoms were so much better than the erratic concave bottoms we have today.


Ben’s regular [non-sting] boards were great; Larry Bertlemann ripped on those boards. But I never saw anyone ride a sting well except Ben himself. Larry was way better on Ben’s conventional boards, compared to the stings. Ben was a big guy and the sting seemed to work well for him in small waves. Buttons [Kaluhiokalani] and Mark [Liddell] just sort of slid around on them with not much control. That’s not meant as a swipe at those guys. They were both so talented, even sliding around pretty much rudderless.

Funny side note. One day I had two brand-new guns in the back of my old beater station wagon. I was on the way to deliver the boards to customers. As I passed by Laniakea I saw how good the waves were and, against my better judgment, stopped to go surfing. Of course, when I came in the boards were gone. Some years later I saw Mark at Pizza Bob’s in Haleiwa, and he kind of sheepishly told me how it was he and Buttons who broke in and took the boards, not knowing it was my car. I never held it against them. I knew what Buttons was like, and what his upbringing had been like. And Mark was always a sweet kid who was just caught up in Buttons’ trip. I was appreciative to know what happened, finally, and thought it was big of Mark to tell me.


The bonzer was a beautiful variation that seemed to work very well. Although it had an interesting and seemingly functional bottom contour it still used a rocker developed by Brewer.


Gerry’s boards were unique and beautiful, especially for ultra-hollow waves. So immaculately done and always so functional for the way he wanted to surf.


Putting the nose where the tail should be and the tail on the nose was really a step backward and severely limiting. His normal boards were good, maybe a little on the pudgy side but well done.


Charlie is an example of what surfers and surfing could have become. Humble to the point of being unfairly overlooked, his boards are simple, elegant and functional. From Jaws guns to noserider longboards and everything in between. He made me a Maurice Cole reverse V design, one of the best boards I ever had.


Brewer did a tri-fin before Simon but doesn’t get credit for it. Yes, it was a different setup but still the same idea, add thrust and grip. Simon's version did change surfing a lot and made it possible for boards to become much more versatile. Watching Simon ride them that first year in smooth, flowing arcs illustrated this vividly. MR gets credit for the twin but he also wasn't the first to do it. Corky had Hobie twins way before and they looked as jerky and disjointed then as now. Again the setup was different, but the design goes all the way back to Simmons—whose boards were awful compared to Quigg's, sorry to say. MR's thrusters and singles are perhaps slightly overshadowed by the twins but they are really nice.


I don’t know who I would label a true guru, if I had to, besides Brewer. People do cultivate the guru thing, though—boy, that is an understatement. Self-hype and self-serving revision of history is so rampant.

Hynson gets credit for turning the rails down but I am not sure he was the first or only one to do that. Seems like Tom Gaglia and the Downhome crew were in on that. And at first they were so hard and edgy that they didn’t work very well. I do love Gerry’s unique style of boards. He’s definitely a surfing and lifestyle guru, and he sure shapes clean. Maybe Pat Curren and Joe Quigg were kind of gurus. Phil Edwards was very well-versed in water flow and is the one I looked up to the most. The guy who taught Brewer, Bob Shepard, was really good too. I suppose Skip Frye is a guru of the gliders.

Anyway, it’s over now. The computer is the only guru! But it seems worthwhile to remember how they got the numbers they plug into the computer to make their clone boards.


The computer can do things that we [hand-shapers] could never do, in terms of controlling variables. I would, however, add a caveat, especially when thinking about the competitor types. They don’t get exact reproductions using the machines. What happens now is, they find a board they like and get, say, 12 of the “same” board, then ride all 12 and keep maybe one or two. So you’re looking at way more toxic waste. You could also argue that the ratio of okay boards to magic boards is only a little higher these days than it was before the machines. And let’s not forget that, with the machine making it so easy to get a dozen boards, they glass them extra light knowing that breaking one is not a big deal. So that compounds the toxic waste. And finally, the blanks have to be made considerably thicker to accommodate the machining of the computer shapes, so compound the toxic waste some more. Hardly the enlightened environmental stewards that once helped define what was a real surfer.

All that said, getting a magic board from a hand shaper is probably more difficult than getting a machine-made board, especially if it’s your first one from that shaper. But guys who can shape well can usually get it dialed in by the third board, and from there on, in my experience, the surfer will like almost pretty much everything he gets from that shaper.


Brewer, to me, stands alone in just about every regard. If you go back to the early ’60s and see how advanced his designs were, then add in every single change for the better, from fixing the deck rockers, to coming up with that three-stage bottom rocker, to miniguns, full guns, and much much more—there is just simply nobody who did what Brewer did. And add to that the fact that he excelled in very small boards all the way to the biggest guns.

Brewer was a huge natural talent when it came to design. But he wasn’t all that interested in finishing his boards nicely. To be fair, it is quite possible to overshape a nice board and diminish the functionality. But contrast that with Diff [Mike Diffenderfer], who probably shaped the most beautiful boards ever made, but who perhaps did not have that kind of innate sense of board design. We’re splitting hairs, because Diff’s boards were really good too. Nobody touched him when it came to fine sanding. But if you’re talking about pure design, then it is Brewer, hands down.


All I did was offer what I hoped were nicely done versions of something between what Brewer and Gerry were doing. To put me in the same sentence as Brewer—well, thank you, but it’s not warranted.


It starts with Jeff. He took a chance. We went through so many boards for me to learn exactly what he wanted. Recently I asked Jeff why he wanted to work with a rookie like me in the first place when he was already integrated with Brewer. He said, “Because you were a blank slate. Most shapers have egos and think they know what is best. You were open to anything and everything I had to say, and you had no compulsion to do anything but that. It made it easy to work together.”

One of the things we worked on at the beginning was where to place the rocker breaks. Brewer came up with this three-stage bottom rocker which right away we knew was an essential element to a good big-wave board—or any board, for that matter. This took awhile to dial in because the blanks at that time did not have rockers anywhere near what Jeff wanted. We went through many iterations. If the rocker break in the nose was too far back, the board would be slower. Too far forward, and the board will be super fast but dig rail when you are dropping in or cutting back. Similarly, that middle planing area needs to be in the right place, which changes depending on the size of the board. And then behind the straighter planing area, you have the hinge of increased curve through the tail. Once I understood these components and placements well enough to fit them into a variety of board sizes, then we had to figure out the thickness because Jeff liked to knee paddle and it was tricky to get a nice rail on a relatively flat deck with a lot of thickness. And, of course, the more thickness you have, the more difficult it is to also have a nice foil without the board being too thick in the nose or tail.

Putting all of these things together took countless hours of working with Jeff in the shaping room. He was very hands-on, and always had constructive things to say. It was super difficult at times, but never unpleasant, and usually fun.

As Jeff’s boards got better and better, other surfers started to come around. I think PT [Peter Townend] was the first to ask for one. Rabbit and Ian [Wayne Bartholomew and Ian Cairns] were probably next. I remember PT beautifully rode a nine-footer in the 1974 Smirnoff, at Waimea—a board I made for Jeff who loaned it to PT. I have always been thankful to Jeff for not being possessive at all when he had every right to be.

THOUGHTS ON MAKING BOARDS FOR NEARLY ALL THE VISITING NORTH SHORE CONTESTANTS


Orders would come in by mail or phone. There was a process; everything had to go through Jack Shipley for approval. Also, a couple of years later, when the competitors wanted multi-board quivers, I would store them at my house so when everybody came back the next year we’d have a place to start from. Usually they’d add a board or two at the beginning of the season, and of course if a board broke we’d work on getting a replacement right away.


After Jeff, when it came to working with other great surfers, the only real challenge was adapting to them so we would have a good fit. Sometimes it was challenging, but nothing like the stuff Jeff and I had been working on. Mostly I was just scaling things up or down. For guys like Rabbit and PT, a smaller, tighter fit worked best. For a bigger surfer, like Ian, it meant a little more width and thickness. In all cases, we were doing things very much along the lines of what Jeff was riding. All the good surfers I made boards for were great to work with, each and every one of them was courteous and fun. And again—because everyone respected Jeff so much and knew how much experience he had with board design and how exacting he was, that really helped pave the way for how things went in the shaping room with other surfers. There was a built-in level of trust.

I don’t really like ranking people because it always leaves someone important out, but if I had to say who was the most fun to work with besides Jeff, it might have to be Rabbit. Not only was he the most adaptable and easiest to shape for, he also cared about me as a person. It wasn’t only about getting his boards, he would come up and play ping-pong and just hang out and be a real friend. I could tell he actually cared. It kind of blew my mind that time he borrowed one of Ian’s boards he had never ridden for a big day at Waimea. It would be like someone going into a downhill ski race on equipment that was 20 centimeters too big and which they had never even tried. For Rabbit, the unknowing was just part of the fun. Ian was also very loyal and caring.

It was also super fun to work with some of the girls who were charging bigger waves, like Becky Benson and Laura Blears; both were and still are great surfers, amazing athletes and really fun to be around. Even got to do a couple for Rell and Margo, which was also very special. Each board was a journey into friendship, not just another board.

My approach was, and still is today, to involve the person getting the board as much as possible. It starts with them being there while we do the outline. Then having them come back a couple of times to check the rails and overall progress, and then one more time at the end to okay the final product. It should always be a collaborative process.

Tom Parrish (2021)

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