Australian shaper Dain Thomas was in town for New Years and stopped by for Coopers, ice cream cones and cold watery discourse. Instantly professing his love of local band Vampire Weekend and inquiring whether they were playing, already with tickets for Patti Smith the following night. His music interests reflecting his approach toward shaping, one keen on contemporary developments while having a sense of history and where thing comes from.

This interview was conducted on a sunny and crisp windy December morning.

Michael Machemer: When did you start shaping?
Dain Thomas: I shaped my first board in 1999 at age 19. I started off cleaning the factory at McTavish, sweeping the floors and was always keen on shaping as a grommet. My old man was a super keen surfer/skater and vintage board collector. We had what you'd call "Old Mals" in Oz, vintage longboards. He had a great collection so I'd always be surfing these old McTavish’s, Woosley’s, Dale’s and Hayden’s, beautiful mid-60s blades, a real treat to surf at perfect knee high Noosa.

MM: Did you learn to surf on one of those boards?
DT: My first board was an 80's thruster, but I rode longboards a lot growing up because we lived near Noosa and my old man was a longboarder. It's just what you do in small waves on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Longbarding was always part of it. I was riding for McTavish doing some log contests and then moved to Byron Bay where he's located. It's also the epicenter of board-building in Australia. I hung around the factory and eventually got a job sweeping the floor. I was just hanging around the styrene fumes watching Bob shape and he kind of took me under his wing. I started there and worked my way through to rubbing out rails, and then finally got a job as a polisher. Not long after that I started hacking out my first boards.

MM: What was your first shape?
DT: A 7'0" pintail…70's semi-gun single fin. 7'0" by 19.5, kind of what Nat rode in Morning of the Earth. Shaped it, laid the fin, glassed it, sanded it, pinlined it and botched my way through to get my experience up. I kept making boards and you know the first one hundred or so boards are pretty much dogs, so I made them cheaply for myself and my mates.

I was polishing fulltime for McTavish, five days a week in the factory with gum boots and apron wet-sanding and buffing longboard after longboard. Pretty mind-numbing work but after-hours I'd use Bob's shaping bay and he'd help me out along with a couple other shapers there. He had two other handshapers working for him; Phil Murray who's a good underground Aussie shortboard shaper/surfer and John Harris another hardcore Bali/Aussie surfer/shaper. So these guys were helping me out with tips and templates, etc. I kept plugging at it for 3 years and then McTavish got a computer and started using the machine to shape his boards and I got a job scrubbing out the machine shapes.

MM: Which machine?
DT: "Abro". It didn't shape the bottom rail in. It left it square so you had to have a bit of little bit of skill to finish them properly. I landed a job scrubbing out computer shapes and because I was always leaning toward traditional longboards and fish they eventually got me handshaping their traditional longboard models. They have a model called the Noosa '66, which is based on what Bob was riding at the time, and a noserider model - I was hand-shaping those and then doing a portion of the machine shapes.

MM: Was Bob still shaping many boards?
DT: Yeah he was shaping full-time, he’s still very hands-on today.

MM: How did Sea Surfboards develop?
DT: Sea was basically born out of my hobby of shaping, out of what I was building for myself and for my friends. Eighteen months ago I finally opened my own shop in Byron and had the chance to build my dream shaping room. Basically it’s a showroom/shaping bay and art gallery called Sea Cell. My old man's a chippy (carpenter), and he offered to come down and help build the pit which is located in the middle of the space.

MM: Visible to the public?
DT: Yeah, there's a viewing window right in the center. It's sound and dust proof. When we have art shows we clean the shaping bay out and use it as a projection room. People can see through the viewing window and I can use the exterior walls to hang art.

MM: You're strictly hand-shaping?
DT: Yeah, all hand-shaping, 100 percent.

MM: What about glassing?
DT: It's all done at the McTavish factory with people I've worked with for six or seven odd years. We oversee all of the color work, under the art direction of Paul McNeil.

MM: Who are some of the guys?
DT: Bill McLean is the laminator. He does all the color work and is an absolute master. I've always thought to myself how hard he works on my boards to make them what they are. Sure I shaped them but without his work they just wouldn’t be the same. His laminations totally bring my boards to life. I shudder to think if I had to do it myself or if he wasn't around. It'd just be awful!

MM: He's been with McTavish since the late 60's?
DT: He started in the early 70's at San Juan in Byron and has been around here on and off ever since. I just had a decal made up for him with his name to put on the boards, and give him some props because he's the one working until nine o'clock at night waiting for the bottom to go off so he can trim the lap. He works crazy hours five days a week; starts at ten and works until ten at night. And that's because he has to, there's no other way. He can't leave the boards there. If he starts eight boards, they have to be trimmed, fillered and finned before he leaves. If you're a shaper you can shape half a board, then just fuck off, go for surf and clear your head. It's kind of easy, kind of soft. It's easy to bail out, just skin a blank and think 'Ahhh, you know what I can't be fucked, the surf's good.' But laminators are chained to the squeegee. Not to mention the fumes.

MM: Not as glamorous as shaping…
DT: No way!

MM: What have u been shaping lately?
DT: I've been building hulls. I guess there's a bit of buzz about them largely down in Oz because of Alex Kopps. Also years ago Jimmy Gamboa came down and was riding hulls incredibly well. There's something very elegant about someone riding a hull properly. People look at them and they think 'Wow, that looks so fun.' When you see a proper hull they have such an aesthetically pleasing outline and feel, you put them under your arm and they just feel sexy. But they're so hard to surf! I always tell people who ask me to make them a hull, 'This is a very difficult board, don't kid yourself.'

MM: Are there many Liddle’s down there?
DT: Not really many at all.

MM: Anyone shaping hulls?
DT: People are dabbling for sure but you can count them on one hand, Ahhh...on two fingers.

MM: Tell me about your hull model?
DT: The Sea Biscuit. It's totally derivative, completely unoriginal on my behalf. It's basically my version of a Greg Liddle hull. I keep the tails really wide and keep the rails really bladed and put lots belly under them. I try not to tame that original concept too much because to me it's just defeating the point. If you have a hull in your quiver don't try and bend the rules so you can ride it when the waves are bumpy or pull the tail in and put modern rails on it because then all of a sudden you have a mini-Mal on your hands and that doesn't interest me at all. I try to keep them fairly true to original displacement hulls, for better or for worse…

MM: What sizes?
DT: 5'6" – 6'10"

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