Surfing
Surfing
Meet the young Aussie surfers behind a backyard board-shaping revolution
Young Australians are increasingly rejecting mass-produced surf craft in favour of something a little more bespoke, and it's driving surf culture into new realms of exploration.
The most innovative period of surfboard design was arguably the late ‘60s to the early ‘70s. This was the height of the ‘Shortboard Revolution’, which saw board lengths plummet from 10-foot to 7-foot (and below) and completely redefine surfing in the process.
The second most innovative period of surfboard design? Right now. And you need look no further than the backyards of surfers up, down and around Australia’s coast for proof.
Backyard surfboard shaping is certainly nothing new. This creative pursuit has a rich history, and can trace its roots right back to the invention of surfing itself. After all, the world’s first surfboards certainly weren’t made in factories – they were made by hand.
But modern techniques (and social media marketing tactics) mean that this next-gen of backyard shapers has a much larger audience to tap into than ever before.
Dan Johnson slays on a homemade craft.
© Max Zappas
Dan Johnson’s musical knowledge runs deep. Lead singer of a band called ‘Smoking Hot’, he’s an expert in combing the ages for forgotten gems, many of which I have to look up on Shazam as we drive along the south coast of New South Wales, checking the ludicrous amount of surf spots as we go.
Originally from Sydney, Dan spent most of his childhood in the idyllic surf town of Crescent Head on New South Wales’ mid-north coast. Another sea change led him to his current home on the south coast, where he’s been living since early 2020.
Dan’s a surfer, first and foremost. He’ll ride anything and everything, though he’s primarily drawn to longboards. He rides a log like an ironed-out Alex Knost, the kinks smoothed on one of the most famous point breaks in Australia.
Dan Johnson grafting in his workshop.
© Max Zappas
There are plenty of good surfers in Australia, but not many who can ride this type of left-field craft as well as Dan. He makes all of his surfboards by hand, under the moniker ‘Snarly’. When he was younger, he and his dad shaped three boards at his grandparent’s farm, and he was hooked. “I just liked riding weird boards and no one really made them around where I was growing up,” he says.
I’ve always liked things that let you start at the beginning and see through to the end.
From there, he became a sponge – loitering around the local craftsmen and soaking up all the knowledge he could. “Most of them were happy to pass on the information actually,” he replies when I ask whether the local shaping gentry minded a frizzy-haired blonde grom buzzing around their factories. “I think they were just stoked that someone young was taking an interest in making things by hand.”
For most people, the act of surfing itself – a famously difficult pastime that can take someone decades to reach even a basic level of competence – is enough to contend with. Let alone the prospect of learning the design and manufacturing processes, laboring in a cloud of dust and chemicals, and ending up with a craft that might not even be as proficient as one you can pick up in a shop. But Dan’s not ‘most people’.
Dan settles in to a shift.
© Max Zappas
It's all about the details.
© Max Zappas
“I’ve always liked things that let you start at the beginning and see through to the end,” he says, “I used to breed fish and sell them, I had like, 12 fish tanks in my house. I used to get called Fish Boy at school.”
‘Fish Boy’ is now 81 boards into his shaping odyssey. Dan’s boards look and feel lovely, and they go pretty well too, as I can attest from a weekend spent riding one of his tripped-out logs in Crescent Head.
By his own admission, Dan’s in the fledgling phase of his shaping journey. He gets a few orders and makes a little money, but it’s very much a side hustle that he hopes will lead to something more stable. “I’d rather be in the shaping bay than on a building site,” he says, playing down the fact that, as well as surfing and shaping, he’s also studying a communications degree at university via correspondence.
Dan Johnson holding one of his creations.
© Max Zappas
Travel a little further along the backyard-shaping path and you’ll find Josh Keogh. Josh is on the cusp of 30, and his beautiful creations have garnered an almost cult-like following. I’m one of them, having ridden nothing but Josh’s boards for the last three years, experiencing the best moments of my modest surfing existence on his designs.
All these guys are on totally different journeys in terms of what they are making, but it’s all pretty inspiring to see.
Josh’s journey began in much the same way as Dan’s, and he attributes time spent with master surfboard makers like Terry Glass, Wayne Roach, Greg Brown and Maurice Cole as key to his shaping development. “I feel extremely fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time, and to have been on the receiving end of those small pearls of knowledge,” Josh says. “The shapers that have come before are the keepers of the flame, and I think as a young shaper there’s a responsibility to honour this knowledge to the best of your ability.”
Josh Keogh rips on a homemade board in Hawaii.
© Chris Grundy
When it comes to the finer points of building a following, Josh credits Instagram and word of mouth for getting the job done. It’s a curious mix of old and new, but social media allows people like Josh – and increasingly, Dan – to carve out a niche for themselves without having to rely on retailers.
Importantly, it also enables young shapers from around the country to connect and share ideas with each other. The broad reach of social media is reflected in line-ups all over coastal Australia, where boards locally-made and shaped by hand far more visible than they were a decade ago.
“Living on the far south coast of New South Wales, I’m pretty isolated in terms of building strong relationships with other young shapers,” says Josh, “but there’s lots of really great stuff popping up on the internet and social media. I'm most inspired by the friends I have met along the way that I see doing really well in the industry such as Max Stewart, Shyama Buttonshaw and Ellis Ericson. All these guys are on totally different journeys in terms of what they are making and their methods of construction, but it’s all pretty inspiring to see.”
Josh reckons it’s a good time to be an Australian surfboard maker. He credits the ‘communal consciousness’ of the surfing community as a key factor in this, and thinks surfers are generally becoming more open-minded, and less heavily reliant on the “whitebread” surfboards of the early 2000s. “It means low-volume shapers like myself can get somewhat of a small foothold in the market without being crushed by the massive brands,” he says.
Max Stewart is the 29-year-old shaper, glasser and director of Eye Symmetry, and another case of a surfer who began shaping at a young age and couldn’t put the planer down.
Max Stewart in the workshop.
© Chris Grundy
While Max is more interested in technological advancements and making boards that perform at the highest level, his career and thoughts mirror those of more bespoke board builders like Josh and Dan – right down to his marketing strategy. “My business is based on word of mouth, and a good reputation,” Max says.
It's like tennis. If the average punter buys a tennis racket for a weekend hit, they’re going to have a lot more fun with a softly-strung $50 racket than with a $300 Roger Federer model.
For Max, shaping is all about making surfing more enjoyable for his customers, and it’s something he thinks he has a bit of a knack for. “From a construction and manufacturing point I've always felt that I had an edge – attention to quality and detail is something that comes naturally to me, and I try to create one-off pieces that are unique, that people will love."
Making surfboards is a dirty, time-consuming exercise, and overheads are high.
A blank board sets Dan back $100, and depending on variables (such as glass-on fins), getting a board glassed might cost between $300 and $350. Dan sells his finished products for around $850, which is around the same price that mass-produced boards sell for off the rack. And that’s without Dan factoring in time spent shaping – which generally entails a full day of sawing, planing and sanding – plus the cost of tools and rent on whatever backyard shed he’s posted up in.
Dan Johnson hangs ten.
© Max Zappas
Still, Dan is already making ripples in the shaping world.
“I’ve been doing it for five years now, and it’s only recently that I’ve started getting consistent orders,” Dan says. “It was actually mum who pointed it out the other day and said, ‘Jesus you’re shaping a lot of boards!’ And then I realised that my bank account was slightly healthier too.”
One thing that ties all three of these young shapers together is the desire to put people on boards that maximise their enjoyment of surfing. Australian surfers will always buy the big-name boards, but there are at least now plenty of options out there for people seeking something a little more bespoke.
“It’s like tennis,” Josh says. “If the average punter buys a tennis racket for a weekend hit, they’re going to have more fun with a softly-strung $50 racket with a large head and a large sweet spot than they are with a $300 Roger Federer model with a carbon frame, elite string tension and a sweet spot the size of a 10 cent piece.”
