Surfing’s Tools, Vol. 3: Gary Larson and the Block Plane
Inside the Hobie Surf Shop in Dana Point, California, a window looks directly into a shaping bay. Customers drift through the retail floor while, on the other side of the glass, Gary Larson shapes surfboards by hand. Customers can stand among the boards on display and watch a surfboard take shape. Most people pass and pause for a second, but every so often a kid stops and really, properly watches.
Gary notices those moments because he used to be that kid himself.
The Education of a Shaper
Gary grew up around the Dana Point surf scene and found his footing at Infinity Surfboards in the mid-1990s under legendary shaper Steve Boehne. He wasn’t shaping right away. He swept floors, finished rough outs, and studied closely.
“I think he just noticed that I was interested, and always watching him shape,” Gary says about Boehne taking him under his wing.
At 14, Gary shaped his first board from a cheap second-quality Clark Foam blank. After six hours of work, he looked at it, hated it, and snapped it in half.
You got to start somewhere.
What followed was a proper apprenticeship, the kind that has largely disappeared from the surf industry. Steve had Gary finishing roughed out boards for at least 6 months, getting the feel of the tools, bottom and rail contours, and the satisfaction getting a board to a glassable finish.
Then, the planer was slowly introduced, and eventually the whole process became his. By the time Gary Larson left Infinity in 2005 to join Hobie, he had spent a decade under one of Dana Point's most respected craftsmen.
Only two months later, Clark Foam shut its doors, collapsing the supply chain that most of the surfboard industry depended on. Gary had just stepped into a new chapter while the industry beneath him shifted entirely.
Don't worry, he kept shaping anyway.
Hobie x True Ames
The Room Behind the Glass
The shaping room at Hobie isn’t hidden in a warehouse or tucked behind closed doors. It sits directly beside the retail floor because Hobie has always believed the making of surfboards should remain visible.
That philosophy goes all the way back to Hobart Alter, founder of Hobie Surfboards, who opened the original Hobie shop in 1954 and helped establish Dana Point as one of surfing’s foundational communities.
More than seventy years later, Gary carries that same spirit forward every day. He walks into the shaping room, flicks on the tools, and hand-shapes boards the same way generations before him did.
In an era dominated by machine-cut imports, that visibility is a differentiator. Customers can stand a few feet away and watch Gary work through the foam from start to finish.
Passing It Forward
A young woman named Abba works in the Hobie retail store. Over the past several months she’s been spending time in the shaping room, taking notes, asking questions, and learning from Gary.
There’s no formal apprenticeship agreement. No curriculum. Just proximity, curiosity, and repetition.
It’s the same way Gary learned under Steve Boehne.
Surfboard shaping has almost always been passed down person to person, across board racks and workbenches.
Steve taught Gary. Gary teaches Abba. The torch is passed down.
And in today’s surf industry, where so much production happens in a vacuum, there’s something meaningful about preserving that process in plain sight.
The Tool
Among the tools Gary relies on most is a simple block plane.
When lowering a stringer - the strip of wood running through the center of a surfboard blank -precision matters. Foam is soft. Wood is not. A clean transition between the two is one of the subtle marks of an experienced craftsman.
Gary uses a trick he learned from Steve Boehne nearly 25 years ago: two pieces of tape placed on the outside edges of the plane blade. The tape slightly lifts the outer edges so the center of the blade cuts deeper than the sides.
The result is simple but effective: the blade trims the stringer cleanly without scarring the surrounding foam.
“It’s been one of my best-kept secrets,” Gary says.
At Hobie, details like that matter. The goal is a perfectly even surface where the wood and foam meet seamlessly before glassing. A good (and caring) shaper does their best to set the glasser and, eventually, the sander up for success.
That attention to detail is part of the lineage Gary inherited from craftsmen like Steve Boehne and longtime Hobie shaper Terry Martin.
The Wood
Gary prefers cedar stringers for their consistency and straight grain. Straight grain allows the blade to move cleanly and predictably. Knots and uneven grain create resistance and increase the chances of mistakes.
Sharp blades matter just as much.
A dull blade slows the process down and forces extra passes, which creates more opportunity for error. Gary approaches shaping with what could be called surgical economy, the fewest tool applications necessary to achieve the cleanest result.
That philosophy extends beyond craftsmanship. Flex, strength, and responsiveness all begin with the relationship between foam, fiberglass, and wood.
Believe it or not, the stringer matters!
A Living Room
The shaping room at Hobie Dana Point carries the weight of history without feeling frozen in time. The tools on the wall, the foam dust in the air, and the quiet rhythm of shaping all connect directly back to earlier generations of California surfboard builders.
What the window makes possible is something simple but increasingly rare: witnessing craftsmanship in real time.
Someone pauses. They watch Gary’s hands move across the blank. Maybe they don’t fully understand what they’re seeing yet, but something registers.
Sometimes it’s a customer.
Sometimes it’s the next shaper standing quietly at the window.
Gary Larson shapes surfboards at Hobie Surf Shop in Dana Point, California. True Ames is a proud partner of Hobie Surfboards. Watch the full conversation with Gary in Episode 3 of Surfing’s Tools on the True Ames YouTube channel.
