Earlier this week, Dick Brewer passed away after a long illness. He was 85.

Despite three decades of computer shaping, of identical boards cut from digital files, that, in an age of cut and paste, could be created by any anonymous user or any generic company, surfers still defer to The Shaper. That we infuse arcane wisdom into binary files speaks to our powers of veneration. Computers may have gotten in the middle but we’re still willing to worship the creator, even if these days they’re playing it straight.

For a more pure take on the relationship, cast your mind back to the time before computer shaping came along, when shapers occupied a position that was one-part tradesman and three-parts shaman. The best of them even played the role of mystics - McCoy, Fitzgerald, van Straalen - but none sat so comfortably at the top of the totem as did Dick Brewer.

Brewer is…was the archetypal guru shaper. Even uttering his surname causes a visceral reaction in the speaker, not unlike the resonance of a religious chant.

“Brewer.”

Born in 1936 in the American Midwest, Richard Brewer’s early life provided a few clues of what he’d become but only if you take Kierkegaard’s advice about looking at life backwards. Both his grandfather and father were engineers with young Richard inheriting their traits of diligence and analytical thinking, applying those to any passion of his.

At first it was model airplanes. He came third in the West Coast stunt championships - the Brewer clan had by that stage moved to California - but his mechanical interests evolved with age, eventually falling in with the California drag and hot rod scene. Jesus may have been a carpenter but Brewer was a pretty damn handy machinist.

Richard Brewer, 1956

Surfing entered his life when he was sixteen. It was 1952, Gidget and the Southern Californian surf boom was still a few years away, and Brewer roamed the sparsely-developed Southern Californian coastline, mixing between the nascent surf scene and his drag racing friends who lived inland. Surprisingly, while Brewer could operate any tool in a machinery shop, it’d be many years before those same DIY tendencies spilled into his surfing.

In 1959 he shaped his first board, tracing a Quigg outline on an early foam blank bought from Harold Walker. It was 9’10” and Brewer rode that board at Waimea on his first trip to Hawaii, upon which his life quickly set out on a new arc. The California drag race scene would spawn its own heroes such as Ed Roth and George Barris, but by the time they were exalted by Tom Wolfe, Brewer was occupying a similar station but in the surfing world.

In short time Brewer established himself in Hawaii, opening Surfboards Hawaii in the winter of ‘60-‘61, and becoming a sought after shaper through application of his mechanical and methodical approach. At the time, the dead ahead style of Pat Curren and Greg Noll was manifesting itself in guns that were long and low-rockered - what might be considered unrefined, nature abhorring a straight line and all.

“The reputable part of Curren’s trip,” Brewer told Drew Kampion in 1998, “was the razor rails and a dead-flat bottom, but I went into concaves with soft rails and natural rocker.”

Brewer and Buzzy Trent in the shaping bay, taken from a 1965 ad for Hobie Surfboards

With his shaping stock rising - in 1961 Buffalo Keaulana won a Makaha comp riding a Brewer shape - Brewer had the first of what was to become a recurring incident in his life: the business bust up. In 1964, after three years of success, the name Surfboards Hawaii was bought by a Californian, effectively kneecapping Brewer’s ability to capitalise on mainland sales. Rather than fight it, or even compromise, he ditched the label and moved on, working as a shaper for hire, first at Hobie, then Harbour Surfboards, Carbonell Surfboards, and finally Bing Surfboards where he began working on pocket rockets - shorter, low-area guns for riding tighter in the curl.

The label-hopping might suggest a gypsy shaper, yet while he didn’t have a home he had a loyal family: the Brewer surf team followed him through each move, testament to his magnetic personality and shaping chops, while demand for his big wave guns remained high irrespective of the rice paper under the glass. In 1967, at the height of the acid era, he was fired by Bing and split for Maui, opening Lahaina Surf Design (LSD). Its doors were only open for a year but LSD put him in the right spot for the much storied visit by McTavish, Young, and Witzig.

Much has been written and said about the shortboard revolution, claims and counter-claims made, but whatever contributions Brewer made to the development of the shortboard it remains only one part of Brewer's CV with his work on big wave guns, pocket rockets, modern fin templates, and tow boards sharing equal billing. The influence Brewer had on surfboard design, subsequently ran in all directions.

Matt Warshaw says that “refinement rather than breakthrough” was Brewer’s lasting contribution, however he has spent time at the vanguard of design. For example, in 1970 he shaped a number of tri fins for Reno Abellira, arguably one of the first shapers to put three fins on a board. (Bob McTavish, however, would argue the point as he claims to have done it in ‘66 though has no photos to show for it).

Post ‘67, Brewer’s shortboard refinements were being tested by Abellira and Gerry Lopez, the two hottest young Hawaiian surfers of the day. A 1968 portrait of the trio with Brewer sitting full lotus, Lopez and Abellira each side doing headstands may appear a visual summation of the peace lovin’ surfer, however Brewer was unyielding in his vision and highly intolerant of criticism.

Jeff Hakman relays a story that illustrates the point. “RB made me a beautiful 9’6″ gun for Waimea,” Hakman told Drew Kampion in 1998. “It took a long, long time to get a board from him in those days, though the Brazilians could get ’em cause they had coke. So I came into the shaping room, and Brewer says, ‘Here it is, what do you think?’ And I looked at it and said, ‘Nice, nice,’ and then I said, ‘The tail seems a little bit pulled in, don’t you think?’

“‘A little pulled?’ he asks. ‘I can fix that.’ And he got a saw and cut a foot off this perfect board, and the pintail just dropped on the floor. ‘How’s that?’ he asked me. ‘Is this better for you?’ That’s when I realised he was very sensitive on design.”

In 1969, Brewer established his most enduring business - Dick Brewer Surfboards - opening with the now-iconic plumeria lei logo. He moved his operation to Kauai and would over the next few years teach and mentor several noted shapers, among them Gerry Lopez and Mark Richards, who in 1976 extended his Hawaiian season to soak up Brewer’s shaping knowledge.

Stability, however, eluded Brewer with a spiral into heroin addiction, another business bust up - like McTavish he lost control of the business rights to his own name - and the death of his son in a car accident all happening over the next decade. Meanwhile, the surfing world moved on, to twin fins, Thrusters, quads, as Brewer remained on the fringes - though perhaps underground is the better term - shaping guns for similarly underground surfers such as Roger Erickson (“It’s a brand new Brewer, man.”) plus sailboards and longboards too.

When tow surfing arose in the early to mid-90s, Brewer was again cast into the spotlight, sought out by Laird Hamilton, Darrick Doerner, and Buzzy Kerbox to refine improbably short craft for as yet unridden waves. Brewer had been making modified shapes for Vetea David to ride at Teahupoo when it too was an underground wave - full concave bottoms, reduced fin size - and he applied the same concepts to the tow boards.

Almost immediately they hit the mark, with the only significant changes being the size: the boards started at 7’3” and reduced down to 6’4”, even as the waves the trio rode increased in height. Thus did Brewer become the unlikely go-to shaper for the first wave of tow surfers. He was aged in his mid-fifties by then, a time when most shapers are reaching their heritage years, trading on their own history to make throwback models from their glory days, yet Brewer was entrusted to machine craft for a new and dangerous offshoot of big wave surfing.

In 2004, Bruce Irons won the Eddie Aikau on a Brewer, while in 2011 Garrett Macnamara rode what was then the largest wave ever, a Nazare beast measured at 78 feet by the Guinness World Records, while riding a 6 foot Brewer tow board. By this point, Brewer was vibrating at a frequency few shapers had before, proficient in almost every type of wave craft, with an unimpeachable pedigree that had him present through many of the major moments in board design - particularly big wave board design.

Bruce Irons astride a Brewer on his winning wave at the '04 Eddie (Podoski)

Despite the allegations around the shortboard revolution and who should take the credit, it’s his big wave equipment that Brewer will be most remembered for, because just as riding a big wave requires drawing upon a full surfing life, so too does shaping a big wave board - and Dick Brewer lived a rich surfing life.