Brother Surf Crafts: Making Surfboards a Family Affair

DRIFT wants you to know the story behind your surfboards. Lately we’ve been collaborating with Brother Surf Crafts. Dave and Tom Bracht are a sibling team hailing from Ocean View, Delaware, a small coastal town with a tight-knit surf community. They want to be the go-to shapers for surfers who want a board that is 100% shaped and glassed by hand. 

Dave (left) and Tom (right), the team behind Brother Surf Crafts. Pictured with their signature Pro-Fish surfboard.

Dave and Tom Bracht of Brother Surf Crafts began making surfboards only a few years ago. But thanks to a combination of expert mentoring, talent, and dedication to the craft, this family team is now shaping and glassing full-time, and have developed nine distinct board shapes to fit a wide range of surf conditions and abilities. Many of their boards are now on the rack at DRIFT.

​This October, amidst a solid fall swell, Tom and Dave passed through Rhode Island to drop off a few boards—including a custom Pro-Fish for Rob (similar to this one). After a day’s worth of surfing overhead waves and strong offshore winds at Matunuck, we all made the trek up to Pawtucket for dinner. Over dumplings and noodles at what might be *the best* Chinese spot around, Dave and Tom gave us the story of how they started shaping and glassing boards, who’s influenced their work, and where they want to go next with their craft.

The Origins of Brother Surf Crafts

Dave and Tom are lifelong surfers, but neither intended to actually create surfboards for a living. In fact, it was a cruel twist of fate that initially led Tom down this path, with Dave soon to follow. As Tom tells it:

I fell. I used to skateboard a lot. Like pools and stuff. And I fell and broke my hip. To the point that like, I didn’t know if I’d surf, skate, skim, walk… It was bad. And it happened right before summer. And uh, I needed something to keep me feeling like I was like in the water, even though there’s no chance. And we had a blank on our front porch…

Dave had bought Tom that surfboard blank- a plain white block of foam. He knew that his brother would be out of the water for a while (he was out for more than six months) and would need something to keep his mind occupied. The only problem? Tom didn’t know anything about how to shape a surfboard. But he was intrigued and had time to learn, so he sought out help from someone with experience. As luck would have it, such a person lived right in their small surf community: veteran shaper Brent Clark. In all, he’s got more than 40 years of surfboard shaping under his belt, including years shaping for Gordon & Smith Surfboards, and Innerlight in Florida. Tom explains:
 
I took the blank, went over and was like Would you teach me?And surprisingly, he said Yes! And Brent, what he would do is, he would tell me a step. I’d do the step, then I’d come ask him again, So, alright, what’s the next thing?And he’d be like, alright do this. And then I’d do it and... I just bugged him every so often. But he was so nice, ‘cuz he had this workshop at his house, and he would just leave it unlocked and you could go over and use his shaping bay, use his tools, like, whenever you wanted. And then after my first board he was like, This is something that you need to keep doing.  

It wasn't only Clark who took notice. Dave was actually incredulous that Tom could’ve shaped such a nice board on his first try. Says Dave: “So, Tom shaped it and I was expecting it to be like pretty bad. And he… brought it to [the surf shop] where I was working and I was like Nah... you didn’t shape this.” Tom asserted he shaped the board. Dave recalls, “It was actually good. And I was like, Dude, I actually think you have a talent.”

Tom in the shaping bay working on his very first surfboard.

​Glassing was another challenge. Tom took his first board to a nearby glasser, but the wait and the cost were both prohibitive. Meanwhile, both his brother and Clark were encouraging him to keep shaping. With a humble pride in his voice, Tom recalls that Clark in particular was pushing him to develop his talent. “He was telling people…You gotta meet this guy Tom, he’s better than me after three boards.” Tom kept honing his skills. But as Dave explains, “When you make a board, you wanna ride it, to learn.” That is, it’s not just about the fun of surfing your own board, but seeing how the board actually rides, so you can improve the next one. Access to quick and cost-efficient glassing became imperative. The solution? Dave took up glassing, and the two have been working as a team ever since.  

Learning to glass like a pro was not easy. “I’d done it once before and the fumes were so bad,” Dave recalls. Rookie mistake—he wasn’t wearing a mask. “I had a headache for like a week.” The first boards Dave ever glassed, he admits, were rough. “We still have one and I wanna burn that thing so I don’t have to look at it. It’s so hideous.” Dave glassed literally hundreds of boards before he felt confident in his skills. Today, he’s developed not only his skillset but also an aesthetic that is classic and refined.

​In concert with Tom, Dave created a color palette for each stock board they shape. For their Pro-Fish, for instance, they like to stick to a deep, warm color palette (as seen in the header photo and here, here, and here). For mid-lengths, Dave prefers subdued pastels (see here). The theme running through all Dave’s glasswork is uniform: minimalist and sophisticated. “We try and do stuff that’s just simple, classy, won’t go out of style ten years from now.”

Rob with a 6'11'' custom mid-length from Brother Surf Crafts

​Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

If the brothers’ boards are top notch today, it’s in no small part due to expert mentoring, not only from Brent Clark but also from other industry greats. Both Tom Dave have built relationships with experienced board builders who have influenced their shaping, glassing and overall process. One of them is Lynn Shell from the Outer Banks, who has hand shaped more than 30,000 surfboards for HIC, WRV, Superbrand, and his own line, Shell Shapes & Designs. Shell, whom Dave and Tom consider a close family friend, offered to take Tom under his wing and teach him his way of shaping. Tom remembers, “I spent like a weekend working with him. It was like, everything was so much better. My accuracy was so [much better]. I could make two boards exactly the same. And so, I credit a lot to him.”

Tom was mentored by veteran shaper Lynn Shell: "We built what is now our Cavern Model, a board designed for barrels and step up waves."

​Tom and Dave also credit Joey and Tianna Mattos of Maker Surfboards with teaching them tricks of the trade. Joey shapes and his wife, Tianna, glasses the boards they build out in Maui. They’re a “sick team,” says Tom. Dave agrees: “The same passion that we had, is what they had”. Since connecting a few years ago, Tom or Dave have been on the phone with Joey on a near daily basis, exchanging ideas and learning from one other. He’s “been like a long-lost brother” to us, says Tom fondly. Over the years, Joey and Tianna have shared little tips here and there, things that might seem like not so big a deal, but, in Dave’s words, have been “a total game changer”. Simple things that the best shapers and glassers do, that make all the difference. And of course, those are secrets the brothers hold close to the chest.

Boards Made by Hand, Start to Finish

A key factor that sets Brother boards apart from a lot of what’s out there is that they are made by hand from start to finish. They make all their own board templates, starting off with chalk drawings in front of their house. “There’s these little kids that live down the street, and we have more sidewalk chalk drawings than they do,” jokes Dave. From there, Tom starts with a raw blank, cuts it out by hand, shapes it with a planer, and punches the fins. No machines here. From that point, Dave does the glassing and then either of them might do the sanding, plus some ‘secret’ final steps. Being brothers keeps them extra accountable for the resulting product: they’re hard on each other and don’t mince words. Dave has no problem telling Tom if a board was poorly shaped. And Tom remarks that for years he was “…pulling my hair out because I was really hard on Dave.” ​

The first step to developing a new surfboard, chalk templates. Says Dave: "There's these little kids that live down the street, and we have more sidewalk chalk drawings than they do!"

Of all the boards they make, which ones really stand out? Though they’re up on trends, Tom and Dave simply look to produce original boards that are fun to ride. Tom acknowledges, “…the fish and alternative stuff is definitely in style right now. But for us… we’ve ridden fish, but we never liked fish.” Dave adds, “I actually hated fish.” (Truth: Dave and Tom are shortboard devotees). Yet today, the Pro-Fish is now their most popular selling board, arguably not just because fish shapes are trending, but also because Tom and Dave developed their fish shape into something that they and their local army of board testers would really want to ride. Same thing with the “Mind Expander” mid-length: they didn’t want to make a funboard or a mini longboard. “We wanted to make something that… you could actually turn,” Dave explains.

Gerry Lopez asked to take home one of their mid-lengths at Surf Expo. "That moment was crazy, really unexpected and just gave us confidence that we were on to something", says Tom.

Fish shapes and mid-lengths may be popular, but the brothers try not to compare themselves to others. “My thing is,” says Tom, “it goes back to, just focus on yourself. Don’t worry about anyone else. Just do your own thing, and you’re gonna be great.” Those words could ring true for just about any creative or entrepreneurial venture. But perhaps they’re easier to follow when you have a genuine passion for your craft. Says Tom, “we never thought ‘we’re gonna make this a business’.” It just evolved over time. Today their goal is to provide surfers “the nicest boards that we possibly can,” always 100% made by hand. 

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Interested in a board from Brother Surf Crafts? A few of their boards are available online, but if you’re local, definitely come by the shop and see them for yourself. For more info: www.brothersurfcrafts.com