Gone fishingIt’s a big leap from a backporch in Florida to a shaping bay at Moonlight, but under Rich Pavel’s tutelage,
DJ Kane has made the transition. Famous for his performance fish, on a recent trip to Portugal he explained the origins of the Swordfish, and why he’ll never be cruising on a hull…
You're originally from Florida, where it can’t have been hard to lay your hands on a board – why did you start shaping?Growing up in Florida, you have one surfboard that you basically ride in whatever conditions the ocean throws at you. When I was about 14, there was a big resurgence in old boards – Channel Islands had just started making their singlefins and people were starting to look back towards fish. I didn’t know anyone who had one, and I couldn’t afford to buy one, so I decided to make them myself. My parents have always been super supportive of everything I've done, whether it was sports, or schooling, or surfing. I was really fortunate – they were cool enough to let me take over their back porch and ruin it with resin and paint and track foam dust into the house. When I go back home nowadays it's cool to see my old workplace all cleaned up and nice.
What about that first board? Did it work well?My first board was a copy of 5’8 BAT shortboard that I was riding at the time. It turned out alright. Looked sort of symmetrical. I’m not sure how it rode, actually, because I sold it to a friend before it was finished so I could make another. I came home after school in my 9th-grade year and shaped them for hours and hours. Then I convinced my mom to loan me some money to buy tools and fibreglass and stuff. The next summer I worked as a labourer for a friend’s construction company to pay her back.
A few years later you moved to California. Did Florida not offer as many opportunities for a shaper?California is the epicentre of the surfboard industry. I decided to move here a few months before I graduated high school. Sure, I could have stayed in Florida and shaped boards – my parents would probably been happier with that – but I had an opportunity to go, and a place to stay, and seeing that I had already been out here a couple of times and seen the guys at
Moonlight do their thing, it was a no-brainer. So I filled my truck with all my stuff and drove across the country a week after I graduated high school.
Where did you start?I didn’t have any work for the first month after I moved here; I just surfed and rode around with my roommate learning all the different spots and poking my head in all the different factories. My first job was at Global Glassing – quality control and finishing boards. Shortly after I was working at Moonlight as well, going to Moonlight in the mornings and Global later. It was really cool to be working on boards for some of the biggest names in the world. Everything was new and fresh. The industry was booming and Global was making 100-125 boards a week, so I was very busy. Moonlight has never been about numbers, more about putting out one-of-a-kind beautiful boards.
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Thanks DJ
