If the brothers’ boards are top notch today, it’s in no small part due to expert mentoring, not only from Brent Clark but also from other industry greats. Both Tom Dave have built relationships with experienced board builders who have influenced their shaping, glassing and overall process. One of them is Lynn Shell from the Outer Banks, who has hand shaped more than 30,000 surfboards for HIC, WRV, Superbrand, and his own line, Shell Shapes & Designs. Shell, whom Dave and Tom consider a close family friend, offered to take Tom under his wing and teach him his way of shaping. Tom remembers, “I spent like a weekend working with him. It was like, everything was so much better. My accuracy was so [much better]. I could make two boards exactly the same. And so, I credit a lot to him.”
Tom and Dave also credit Joey and Tianna Mattos of Maker Surfboards with teaching them tricks of the trade. Joey shapes and his wife, Tianna, glasses the boards they build out in Maui. They’re a “sick team,” says Tom. Dave agrees: “The same passion that we had, is what they had”. Since connecting a few years ago, Tom or Dave have been on the phone with Joey on a near daily basis, exchanging ideas and learning from one other. He’s “been like a long-lost brother” to us, says Tom fondly. Over the years, Joey and Tianna have shared little tips here and there, things that might seem like not so big a deal, but, in Dave’s words, have been “a total game changer”. Simple things that the best shapers and glassers do, that make all the difference. And of course, those are secrets the brothers hold close to the chest.
A key factor that sets Brother boards apart from a lot of what’s out there is that they are made by hand from start to finish. They make all their own board templates, starting off with chalk drawings in front of their house. “There’s these little kids that live down the street, and we have more sidewalk chalk drawings than they do,” jokes Dave. From there, Tom starts with a raw blank, cuts it out by hand, shapes it with a planer, and punches the fins. No machines here. From that point, Dave does the glassing and then either of them might do the sanding, plus some ‘secret’ final steps. Being brothers keeps them extra accountable for the resulting product: they’re hard on each other and don’t mince words. Dave has no problem telling Tom if a board was poorly shaped. And Tom remarks that for years he was “…pulling my hair out because I was really hard on Dave.”
