When Steve O’Donnell was eight-years-old, he found something that would form the central theme of his entire life: surfing. His older brother lent him a red balsa board and he paddled into a wave that would form his career and a lifelong obsession.
It wasn’t until 1967, however, that he began shaping. “I was very lucky,” he explained. “I had a friend named John Otton who was quite a well-known surfer and shaper. I saw him out in the surf on the Christmas holidays, and he said that where he worked needed a shaper and asked me if I wanted to learn how to shape—which was quite rare in those days. Normally in surfboard factories, you had to start by fixing dings and sweeping floors; work your way up through all the other jobs before you got to be a shaper.”
That was at Dale Surfboards in Brookvale. Otton, along with Dale Surfboards owner Les Patterson, showed him the ropes, and he took to them like a fish to water. In the beginning, as was the case with most shapers, he carved out longboards. Then, one fateful day, Bob McTavish showed up. By 1969, Dale Surfboards and O’Donnell began shaping boards of a very different sort: it was the beginning of the future of surfing. “By the end of 1968, the boards had gone down to seven feet in length,” he remembered. “It was a radical shift in the type of boards and the way you surfed them.”
It was 1974 when he packed up and moved out to San Diego, where he found work at Gordon and Smith. The next few decades found him in a slew of different shaping bays, shaping surfboards and bouncing around the U.S. By the ’80s, he wanted to start his own label. He had more experience under his belt and more foam under his toenails than most, and O’Donnell Surfboards was founded. Now, years later and back in Australia, he’s still the guy a whole bunch of talented surfers trust to create their magic boards. He knows it’s all about learning, though. “It’s one of those things that you’re probably never going to be satisfied with. It’s always changing. A lot of times, we can’t see where the designs are heading, but I know from experience over the years that they always have changed.”
A Shaper’s Tale from tristan lochon on Vimeo.
