Meet: Dane Reynolds’ new favorite shaper!

Come meet Dane Reynolds' new sweetheart!

Stab’s Stab in the Back is the most exquisitely staged surf drama putting Surfer Poll and Fantasy Surfer to shame. Did you watch live? I didn’t but we had our own J H there in the room live Tweeting. If only I had checked my damned Twitter we could have brought to you, even before Stab, the fact that Hawaiian shaper Jon Pyzel is his new favorite! 

I spoke with Jon on the phone many years ago and just this moment uncovered the story! Should we learn about Dane’s #1?

Duh!

Jon Pyzel shapes surfboards for the world’s hottest surfer and he has been since the world’s hottest surfer was six years old and, really, that is all you should need to know to fill your quiver with Pyzels. But, in a fabulous twist, Jon Pyzel is as pure a craftsman as can be all by himself so maybe, just maybe, you should fill your quiver with Pyzels even if you never even heard the name John John Florence.

Born in Santa Barbara, young Jon could think of nothing finer than surfing. He lived it. He breathed it. And while he didn’t necessarily have the chops to become an out and out sponsored pro, he was good enough to be taken under the wing of Rincon Designs Surf Shop owner/shaper Matt Moore. It was there that he became interested in shaping himself. “I would go into the shop when Matt was shaping my boards and, I guess I got interested in shaping because Matt was such a cool guy. He had a rad life. He just wanted to surf so he’d go shape, glass, then go surf. Consciously, I didn’t think, ‘I’m gonna shape surfboards.’ I just thought, ‘I want that life.’”

Jon gave shaping a try a few years later. “I suck at art. I can’t even draw a circle but I thought I should give shaping my own board a try and so I bought a blank and went to work. I shaped a 6’4 or something, a little step up size, airbrushed it, glassed, sanded…and, you know, it worked pretty good. It wasn’t perfect but it was good enough.”

He moved to the North Shore in 1992 to surf even more and started hanging out with guys that got their boards from master gun builder Jeff Bushman. Bushman, like Matt Moore, took Jon under his wing. Like a true artist, Bushman would not let Jon use the shaping machine. He had to do everything by hand and he did. He fixed dings, glassed, hot coated, laminated. He did anything he could to surf all the time. “I didn’t move to Hawaii to work” was his attitude.

But work he did. One day, Alex Florence waltzed into the shop trailed by three little ducklings and asked for a board for her eldest, six year old John John. Jon had no idea how to shape a board so small but he gave it a shot and the rest is history. “It has been crazy. We’ve literally grown up together. My shaping has grown with his surfing.” And if John John’s surfing is any indication, then Jon Pyzel is one of the best in the world alongside greats like Matt Biolos and Maurice Cole.

But P.S. real quick…do you think the global media cabal sabotajed the C.I. offering? Get your conspiracy on here!