Wahl Surfboards
Shaper: PJ Wahl
Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
About: Born and raised on the Central Coast, PJ Wahl represents this coastline’s open minded, slow paced, breathe free attitude. A shaper for over 40 years, Wahl has come to be known as one of the best performance surfboard shapers on the Central Coast. As the story goes, Wahl began surfing early, at age twelve. When he was fourteen, his treasured ten foot Yater Spoon was finally damaged beyond repair, and this became the turning point in Wahl’s life. PJ decided to go on a little mission with that board, stripping the glass and reshaping it into an 8’6”.
A deep love for shaping surfboards would become his life long passion, and that Yater Spoon would be the last board he ever had shaped for himself by someone else.
After graduating high school early, Wahl was a surfing pioneer who left for Kauai in the spring of 1971 where he learned to ride the Hawaiian Juice. Later that year, and before surf travel became the craze and obsession of the modern surfer, he began a ten-year surf mission from Panama to Canada, and almost every place in between that was accessible.
Twice he drove through Central America, scoring un-crowded waves in front of local beach residents who had never in their lives seen surfing. As for shaping and learning how to make the best surfboards of the day, Wahl’s career careened upon both the opportunity to make mistakes as well as an opportunity to think outside the box.
PJ Wahl is a custom surfboard builder! Every board embodies his signature, and every board soils his skin with white foam dust. When you order a PJ Wahl custom surfboard, it is as advanced to progressive surfing as the sport today. It is an art which is being challenged heavily by Chinese pop-out shapes, but with a cool confidence.
Wahl explains why the best surfers in the water, and anyone who is passionate about surfing their best, continue to order their hand-shaped customs from Wahl.––
“Let’s put it this way. When all these guys make pop-out surfboards in China, there is a price everyone pays…and it’s not just the ecological price. First and foremost, supply and demand control prices, so to pop-out boards at competitive prices, these companies have to order an excess number of boards to make the pricing worth it. Well, then these boards come over here and sit in warehouses for a long long time, waiting for a spot somewhere on a shelf. Meanwhile, as a year or two goes by, that once intriguing shape becomes outdated with the style of surfing that evolves. A surfer who wants to get the most out of his/her surfing experience deserves the latest intricacies of curve and flow that continue to evolve in the industry, tailored to the waves they ride. With social media and 40 years of friends in the surfboard industry, I am communicating with top builders and surfers about how minor particular details can help modern surfers continue to progress as the styles of surfing are pushed. From this, my stoke comes from knowing that even after making someone a magic board many times, I can still make them “the best board they’ve ever had” most every time they come back for their next custom shape. This more than anything, and is what continues to give me the drive and satisfaction to be proud of the profession I’ve chosen after all these years. The details and fine tuning it takes to make the most high performance shapes for each and every individual can be the difference of a just couple passes with just the right grit of sandpaper in just the right spot on the board. Pop-out boards become quickly stagnant in their shapes, where hand shapes run the curves of evolution up the very minute a customer shakes my hand with an order and my planer mows another round of foam.”
