by Kevin Cody
Surfboard shaper Pat Rawson is the least locally known, and best globally known of the 2026 Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame inductees. That’s because the year after graduating from Westchester High, in 1972, against his parents’ wishes, he moved to Hawaii.
Over the next decade Rawson emerged as the most prominent shaper of big wave “guns” in the world, with the possible exception of his mentor of five decades, Dick Brewer.
“At one point 13 of the top 16 were surfers riding my guns during the Hawaiian Triple Crown season. Guys like Mark Richards, Mike and Derek Ho, Gary Elkerton, Damien Hardman and Bobby Owens, Tom Carroll and Tom Curren and many others” Rawson told surf chronicler Sam George in a 2021 Surfline interview.
Rawson’s move to the North Shore of Hawaii coincided with the shortboard revolution, which might also be described as the tri-fin revolution.
During this period shortboard shapers almost universally incorporated three fins into their designs because three fins are faster and more responsive than single fins. But established shapers of single fin big waves “guns” were “slow to make the turn to three fins,” Rawson said.
In 1982 Grubby Clark, owner of Clark Foam, which owned 90 percent of the surfboard blank market, asked Rawson to design the plugs (models) for his big wave blank molds.
“When the tri-fin came out, it seemed obvious to me it would work in big waves, as well as small waves. When people didn’t believe me, I told them, ‘Watch Tom Carroll at Pipeline.’” Non-believers were finally silenced after Carroll won the Pipeline Masters three times on Rawson three-fin “thrusters,” in 1987, 1990 and 1991.
Carroll’s “Snap heard ‘round the world,” a 180 degree pivot off the lip of a double overhead wave at the 1991 Pipeline Masters, could not have been executed on a single fin.
Upon his retirement in 1993, Carroll called Rawson “the best shaper of all time.”
Rawson’s return to Hermosa Beach on his birthday, Saturday, April 25, for induction into the Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame, has prodigal son quality to it.
Rawson grew up in Playa del Rey, under the LAX flight path. He learned to surf in Junior Lifeguards on lifeguard paddleboards. One day JG instructor Dick Orr told Rawson’s dad, ‘Get the kid a surfboard before he kills himself,’ Rawson recalled.
“The D and W jetty and Ballona Creek were good surf spots then. Ballona Creek was a half mile ride until they put the rocks in,” he said
He made his first board in the family garage at 13, inspired by his neighbor Mike Doyle (SWOF 2013). Dole the runner up in the inaugural, 1964 ISF World Surfing Championships in Manly, Australia, behind Australian Midget Farrelly.
“It was maybe ’65 or ’66. I was about 11, and I heard this strange sound coming from a neighbor’s garage. I went over and there was Mike Doyle shaping a surfboard with a Rockwell planer. A little voice in my head said, ‘That’s gonna be you, someday,’” he told George in the 2021 Surfline interview.
Rawson bought blanks and fiberglass at the Greg Noll factory in Hermosa Beach from its young manager Eddie Talbot (SWOF 2003), who would open ET Surf and become a lifelong friend.
“Eddie always smiled. He’d sell me a reject blank for $6 and I’d sell the boards for $50,” Rawson said.
In high school, he began pinstriping at Rick Surfboards On Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach. Rawson was shaping for Blue Cheer and Wilken in Santa Monica.
His main influences were Tom Overlyin, a shaper and manager at Dewey Weber Clear Light and Phil Becker.
“Phil could shape a perfect blank in 15 minutes. He was a master of what artists call ‘the bold stroke.’ He could take off half an inch of foam with his Rockwell planer in one pass and be almost done after seven or eight cuts,” Rawson said.
Becker hand-shaped over 130,000 boards in his nearly five decade career, without a shaping machine, though CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines were in common use in his later decades. He retired in 2006.
Rawson sounds ambivalent about shaping machines.
“They are kind of cheating,” he acknowledged. “But it all comes back to does the board ride well.”
Rawson plays piano and has perfect pitch, which he compares to having a shaping machine.
“It’s a double edged sword. I can step on stage and play without practicing. But the danger is not developing that muscle memory that comes from hours of practicing sight reading,” he said.
“Young shapers don’t learn from countless hours of hand shaping like I did under mentors like Becker, and Dick Brewer,” he said.
On the positive side, shaping machines produce consistent shapes, Rawson pointed out.
In 1984, before the advent of CNC machines, he built and sold plywood jigs that put consistent rocker in his boards.
“In science a theory needs to be repeatable to be proven. In surfboards you have to be able to recreate a design before you can improve on it. If every board is different, performance will be all over the place. I’ve been successful because I have a bunch of models that are tested,” he said.
He still hand finishes every board.
“I talk to the surfers and match the shape to them. A board Tom Carroll annihilates the wave on, Mark Richards might hate. Because you like the way John John Florence surfs doesn’t mean you should order a board shaped like John John’s,” he said.
Rawson credits his success to persistence, hard work, and showing up on time.
He moved to Hawaii, without his parents’ blessing, in the early ‘70, after he graduated from Westchester High, and the year LAX condemned his parents’ home overlooking Dockweiler Beach, along with 1,000 other Shortridge neighborhood homes.
“My parents let me build boards in our garage, but weren’t completely supportive of my surfing. They had me taking piano lessons from the time I was four. Not until the mid ‘80s when a friend of my dad’s showed him a Japanese surfing magazine with my picture on the cover did they come around,” Rawson said.
In Hawaii, he began, as he had at Rick, doing pinstriping for Gerry Lopez’s Lightning Bolt boards and other prominent shapers.
“I used Rapidiograph pens that not a lot of people were using, to draw two-tone lighting bolts. It wasn’t hard, but it looked really cool,” he said.
In the late ‘70s he helped build Local Motion and shaped boards for their top riders, including big wave riders Buzzy Kerbox and Buttons Kaluhiokalani.
“I’m making a board now for Buzzy’s nephew,” he said during last week’s interview.
About this time his Sunset big wave boards caught the attention of Dick Brewer, who moved to Hawaii from Long Beach a decade ahead of Rawson moving to Hawaii. Brewer had been a shaper for Bing Copeland (SWOF 2003), in Hermosa Beach. In the ‘70s Brewer earned the title of “Surfing Guru” for shaping coveted “elephant guns” for Hawaii’s top big wave riders.
“He’s got the magic eye,” Palos Verdes native Jeff Hackman, who became known as “Mr. Sunset,” said of Brewer.
Brewer invited Rawson to his North Shore factory.
“I ended up learning so much from him. I don’t think I would’ve made it without Dick Brewer,” Rawson said in his 2021 interview with Sam George.
Despite their personality differences, Rawson’s and Brewer’s friendship lasted until Brewer’s death in 2022.
The Encyclopedia of Surfing (EOS) describes Rawson as “even keeled and hard working.”
EOS describes Brewer as “brilliant, but moody,” a heroin addict and “highly intolerant of criticism.”
“When Jeff Hakman remarked that the tail of a new gun looked perhaps a bit too pulled in, Brewer sawed off the back 12 inches, then asked Hakman, ‘How’s that?’” EOS wrote of Brewer. Rawson’s nomination to the Hermosa Surfer’s Walk of Fame was submitted by surfboard shaper, and Spyder Surf Founder Dennis Jarvis (SWOF), and Rawson’s Hermosa Beach nephew, Charlie Nineger.
Jarvis remembers Rawson as one of his idols when he began making Spyder surfboards in the late ‘70s
“People may not remember Pat. But his roots are in Hermosa. He made Mike Purpus’ Pipeline boards (SWOF 2003),” Jarvis said. “His induction elevates Hermosa’s Walk of Fame,” he added.
Rawson, for his part, was effusive in expressing his appreciation for the honor.
“It will be a homecoming, a chance to thank Bing Copeland (SWOF 2003) Eddie Talbot, Dennis Jarvis, John Joseph (SWOF 2006) and all the people who gave me my start. It all began in the South Bay,” Rawson said. HBSWOF
