Shape Shifters

The Maverick 

Steve Piacentine has two sacred spaces he retreats to when life gets hectic. One is the ocean, off the beaches of Puerto Rico or Montauk, where he can ride waves with his brother Tom away from the crowds of tourists. The other is his blue-walled board shaping room, located in a West Cape May garage he converted to accommodate his business, and where he spends hours working on custom designs. 

“My wife lets me know when I get too grumpy,” Piacentine said. “Then she sends me surfing or I come out here and shape. If surfing is like a religion, then this place is a sanctuary.”

Piacentine grew up in Cape May and began surfing at the age of 11. He went to college in Florida, but admits he spent more time at the beach than in the classroom. 

The 62-year-old said he was a “halfway decent” surfer, but he decided to stop competing because he didn’t like the idea of being judged. 

“You could say that I was, and I guess I still am, a bit of a pain when I’m out there,” said Piacentine. “I just like to be out in the water doing something I enjoy. I really don’t want to deal with crowds. I want my space.”

His reputation in the water earned him boards from local surf shops, championship titles, and the nickname Sea Hag. The name stuck, and Piacentine now uses it on his custom-made Hag Surfboards. 

He started shaping his own boards because he wasn’t satisfied with big-name brands.

Piacentine credited Mike Sciarra with teaching him how to shape his first surfboards as a teen. 

“Everyone shapes differently. The way I’d teach you how to shape wouldn’t be like anyone else, and then you’d add your own style to it,” he explained. The combination of mathematics, artistry and innovation resonated with Piacentine, who’s continued to shape boards for 45 years. 

In his opinion, the rise of professional surfing has caused a decline in the spirit of the sport.

“Big companies aren’t big on innovation. That’s not where they throw the money into,” he said. “That’s why there’s room for us backyard shapers. That’s where the creativity comes from.”

When Piacentine starts working on a blank, it takes him about two hours in the shaping room to form it to his specifics. 

“Unless I’m working on something custom for someone, everything I shape, I shape for me,” he said.  

After the boards are shaped they move to the glassing process, Piacentine’s least favorite step. If he had his way, Piacentine said that he’d love to be paid to just shape every day. 

When the boards are ready, Piacentine takes them for a test drive. 

“I ride them and then I sell them,” he said. “Sometimes I ride them and know that changes have to be made.” 

Regardless of their style or their ability, Piacentine suggests that anyone serious about surfing learn more about their equipment. 

“What they are really paying for is knowledge,” he said of a hand-made board. 

When asked what additional advice he would give to someone new to the sport, Piacentine said with a sly smile that they should take up tennis because the water is too crowded. 

The Patriarch 

Steve Mitchum grew up around water.  He has a Coast Guard parent, has been in the Coast Guard himself, and learned to surf off beaches near Guard bases throughout the country.

Mitchum, 50, of Lower Township, said he started shaping his own surfboards as a teenager, mainly because the prices of mass-produced boards were too expensive.

“For me, shaping was born out of necessity,” he said. “The price on some of the fiberglass boards can be very high. And for that price you get a board that’s been stamped out on a machine, everyone else has the exact same thing, and it doesn’t do exactly what you want out in the water.”

The skill of creating a handmade board is something he taught himself, starting simply with a blank laid out over two sawhorses in a back yard.

“I’ve been surfing for over 36 years, and over time I’ve been able to figure out what works and what doesn’t,” he said as he traced out a template. “Pretty much everything I do, I figure out the process on my own.”

Mitchum makes his template shape out of cardboard scraps. When the shape is to his satisfaction, he takes it into his shaping room where he’s modified woodworking tools to be better suited for shaping surfboards. 

The shaping room looks like the aftermath of a snowstorm as Mitchum saws excess material from the blanks and planes a curve. The light blue color of the room and the lights at waist height highlight any imperfections.  

The shaping process, he said, allows him to get creative and have a bit of fun with the custom designs. In one corner of the shop, a board with a unique batwing tail was created using a beer bottle in a cozy. 

“Not a lot goes to waste here,” he said with a laugh.  “In a factory, each step would have its own person or team of people working.” 

Mitchum said he’d shaped on and off for years, finally deciding to devote more time to his creations when his kids began to get interested in surfing. With seven kids, Mitchum joked that it was definitely more cost efficient to make boards than to pay retail. 

The work started in earnest when his daughter Tessy wanted an eco-friendly surfboard to hand paint for a project at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. 

Working on his business, Mitchum Surfboards, is his stress relief. 

“When I come out here, I have a creative outlet,” he said gesturing to his shop. “I just like doing it.”

While a good portion of Mitchum’s business is repairs, he said he’s seen the trend of handmade surfboards beginning to grow. 

“Every surfer should know about the process of making a board,” he said. 

“Making your own boards is definitely a skill I want to pass on to my kids, or to anyone who wants to learn,” he said.

The Entrepreneurs 

Jordan Stiefel, his cousin Dave Lawson, and good friend Ryan Toler grew up surfing together, getting their first lesson from Mike Johns, Stiefel’s uncle. Years later, “Uncle Mike” was one of the first to order hand-shaped surfboards for his grandchildren at their blossoming business, Found Creations. 

Stiefel, 20, of Lower Township, had been considering starting a furniture-making business before opting to focus his attention on his passion for surfing. 

Lawson, 20, of Cape May, also works with his hands, as a culinary arts student at Atlantic Cape Community College and in the kitchen at the Jellyfish Café in Wildwood Crest.  Toler, 25, of Lower Township, was an avid boxer with plans to become a corrections officer before he was derailed by a motorcycle accident. 

“I didn’t have a plan or direction,” he said of life after the accident. “I was literally lost, and now I’ve found what I wanted to do.”

Combining their knowledge of surfing and specialties in mathematics, business promotion, design and carpentry, they decided to open up shop together. Stiefel joked that they actually came up with the idea for the surfboard business in 2013, but decided to wait until 2014 to launch it.  

“I figured we needed all the luck we could get, so why start with a year that has a 13 in it?” he said. 

The three friends worked through one of the most brutal winters to ever hit Cape May County, converting backyard sheds into a workshop, ordering their first set of blanks and shaping tools in January. 

Most of the work came easily, said Toler. Anything they didn’t know, they researched and tweaked until they got it right. 

The trio’s first line of handmade boards didn’t go to customers; instead, those first boards traveled with them to Puerto Rico where they were taken for their first ride.

“If we were going to mess up, we wanted to mess up on our own stuff first,” said Toler.

They breathed a collective sigh of relief when the test drive went smoothly. 

“When I first rode the board I made myself, it was a great feeling,” said Lawson. “Of course I’m picky and there were little things I was noting to correct later, but the overall feeling was one of pride and accomplishment.”

Stiefel said the strong connection surfers have to their board is important. 

“With boards that are mass produced, you don’t get something uniquely made for you, and you don’t get exactly what you want,” he added. “Surfing doesn’t have to be that expensive. People don’t realize that a handmade board can be cheaper and to your specifications.” 

The group has plans to hit the ground running this summer, reaching out to local surf shops to gauge interest in carrying their products. Stiefel said the group has started to promote themselves with t-shirts and stickers, and are contacting local artists to collaborate on the surfboard artwork. 

Perhaps their best way of getting the word out about their business is letting the boards speak for themselves. 

“We take them out all the time,” Lawson said of using their own boards. “It’s like a floating advertisement.”

The trio isn’t concerned that the stresses of running a business will hurt their friendship, saying their motto is collaboration, not competition. 

“Besides, we’re doing what we love and getting paid to work on surf boards and go surfing for a living,” said Toler. “This is exactly the sort of thing you want to be doing with your friends.”