The Skate-Inspired Rhapsodic Surfboard Beauty of Beau DiFiore

And they led you on a shaping journey, too.
That board was super fun and pushed me to build a shaping room at the studio we were renting just off of Venice Boulevard. What’s funny is that a lot of the material I built that structure with was this beautiful old-growth Douglas Fir salvaged from a couple of different buildings in LA, which were gutted for remodeled restaurant buildouts. My pal Jaxon Dobson was overseeing the buildouts and helped me secure the material. I also salvaged a bunch of plywood from businesses that were boarded up on Abbot Kinney during the Pandemic. So the whole thing was rooted in salvaging and making do with what I could find. 

There are a handful of rad people making fins out of skate deck material. Danny Diccola, pro skater for $lave Skateboards makes incredible fins. He’s a super-talented shaper and has been making them longer than I have. Also, according to Bird’s Surf Shed shop owner and historian, Eric “Bird” Hoffman, Larry Gephart’s first set of keels he made for Steve Lis were cut out of someone’s old Sidewalk Surfer skateboard.

How do you keep a steady supply of decks—or are you using other materials?
At the moment, I’m pretty much only using skate decks when I make fins for a board. Because the shape of most contemporary pressed decks is convex on the bottom and concave on the top, certain fin designs work better than others. This limitation has led me to make mostly three-fin "Bonzers Runners” and twin-fin sets, and then build the shape around the fin design and placement. There is a nice Orson Welles quote that has always inspired me: “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” Boundaries can create a nice framework, and then freedom can come from expressing all possible outcomes within that framework. The curved aspect of the inner foil, termed "turbo fins,” creates suction, which increases water flow, adding lift and speed, while the outer curve of the fin provides drive and control. 

[“One thing we do know,” as DiFiore quotes fin experimentalist Jim Robertson from The Surfer’s Journal (December/January 2006-2007), “is that they go really good on wide-tailed fish boards.”]

As far as material goes, I’m grateful that Transportation Unit supports my skating efforts and gives me decks to ride. I always recycle my decks for fins when they are ready to “kick the bucket.” I’m also lucky to have my neighborhood skate shop in Santa Barbara, Lighthouse, supplying me with used, discarded decks; they save them when customers get new setups. Friends also give me boards they are done with. It’s special when you know the skater of the deck your fins came from. That energy then gets saved and put in a magic set of keels or runners, glassed onto a shape… and boom, you’re off flying! 

What’s on the horizon for you in the surfboard-making realm?
I truly love the process of foiling fins. The color-dyed maple veneers foil out so nicely, and as I mentioned, the glues being used are often better than standard marine plywood adhesives. I do make boards with Future boxes for testing different things and for customer requests. Down the road, I’d be psyched to have a set available that is Futures compatible, that uses some of the concepts and aesthetics I have come to love in the glass-ons I’ve made, but that’s still in the inception phase.

And you’ve continued shaping boards, tailored to the fins you’ve been putting out?
My first experience with surfboard building came in 2016 in Charleston while watching and assisting my pal Malcolm Knight as I mentioned earlier. His hotwired, low-rockered twin fins made smaller waves so much more enjoyable than pretty much everything else on offer board-wise in that zone. We glassed a couple boards together and I watched him make some fins. We also built skateboards together. Those wide planning shapes are still at the root of my designs, but I didn’t shape my own stick until 2019 at 26, at my first apartment in Venice. As I mentioned, the fins came first, and then the shaping followed.

I am super grateful to have had a few people in my corner throughout this early part of my board-building beginnings—the Mollusk LA guru, Dave Osborn, who hired me and has believed in me since day one. Jon Mangiagli glassed my first 20 boards in LA, and Josh Stern helped me dial in the lamination process for my skate deck fins. Now that I’m up in Santa Barbara, I am building the boards more start-to-finish thanks to the mentorship from Legendary Goleta Craftsman Jeff Svoboda at his glass shop, Surfers Delight. Last but not least, the biggest influence on my latest designs is Kirk Putnam. He has encouraged me a bunch to keep pushing these round boards and has even helped me with a special curve or two. He has been a part of surfboard building for so many years, and I am super grateful to be a part of that lineage.

Do you shape exclusively for Mollusk?
Since I work at Mollusk, the boards definitely end up on the racks there, which is such a blessing to be alongside incredible legends of the craft. I’ve also been doing boards for a shop in Japan called Casa 9. And some customs here and there. 

And now you’re at the new Mollusk shop in Santa Barbara?
So stoked on Santa Barbara, wow. My lady and I came up here two years ago, when Mollusk asked if I wanted to move from the Venice shop to the new location up in SB. Now she and I sorta run things together at that shop. It’s a family company, which rules, and the new Santa Barbara space is unreal. We’ve done some insane art shows and events. The building at 208 Gray Ave was originally built in the early ‘70s by the Castignola family for Renny Yater to build surfboards. It then housed many other talented craftsmen like Marc Andreini, Wayne Rich, Kirk Putnam, Clyde Beaty, and I’m sure more that I don’t know of. So for us to be in there is such an honor, and it's such a privilege to carry on the tradition of selling magical surfboards in such a charged spot.