Cort Gion

Cort Gion has signed an agreement giving us exclusive manufacture and distribution rights to his shapes. 

So far we have the following Gion templates available:

- 9'2 Performance Long Boards

- 6'3 Grease Slapper Short Board

- 6'0 Fish Slapper Twin FIn

SHAPING UP.(Business)(A former professional surfer has mastered the art of surfboard shaping)

The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) July 24 , 2005

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - It's midafternoon on a sunny, blustery day on the Oregon Coast. Too windy for surfing, which means there's a good likelihood that you'll find Cort Gion sporting a resin-stained T-shirt and swim trunks, dancing barefoot in a foot-high pile of polyurethane foam dust in a warehouse tucked at the end of a driveway off U.S. Highway 101.

His eyes peer out above a surgical mask, never straying from the surface of his latest creation: a surfboard.

A 35-year-old Skil 100 planer sending vibrations up his bulky forearms, Gion leaps back and forth around the foam slab that's perched atop a carpet-covered rack in the center of the room. He's grinding, mowing away at the "blank" with such speed and frenzy that you might mistake his technique for carelessness.

You'd be mistaken.

Gion has just flipped off the overhead fluorescent light, so he can rely only on the lights that sit waist high, beneath the shelves that line the side of the room, casting shadows that guide his efforts. These shadows, explains the world-class surfboard builder, will reveal every flaw; every groove that needs straightening; every curve that is too steep; everything he needs to make a perfect board.

Actually, Gion doesn't make or build surfboards. He shapes them, the term surfers use for crafting boards because of the way they're whittled down from the larger piece of foam, "like a bullet from a shell casing," as Gion puts it. When he turns 50 in December, Gion will have had 40 years of practice at this art form, having worked with (or tutored) some of the most elite shapers in the business for 25 years on Hawaii's hottest surf spot, the North Shore of Oahu.

Gion, whose pictures once graced the pages of surf magazines, moved to Florence in 2000. The former professional surfer was content to become an "old-school" memory after his wife, Cindy, demanded that he leave Hawaii's big pipe behind. The broad-shouldered Santa Cruz, Calif., native had broken his back surfing Backdoor Pipeline - a shallow, hollow wave that breaks in two directions, allowing wave-seekers to take off on the front or back side of it. Cindy knew he'd be right back in the water again if the couple remained in Hawaii.

So they wound up in Florence, where the icy water, unreliable conditions and formidable gusts that blow the tops off of good swells aren't nearly as addicting as the glassy surf in Hawaii.

Gion relies on his fading notoriety, word-of-mouth and reputation for quality to keep his one-man show afloat, while Cindy handles the business end of things.

"They sell like hotcakes," says Ossie's Surf Shop manager Keir Thomas of Gion's boards, eight or nine of which line the Newport shop's shelves at any given time. "The thing with Cort is, he's a real craftsman. He really pays attention to detail."

Gion grew up in a Santa Cruz house overlooking one of the country's best breaks, Pleasure Point. He was surfing by age 7 and shaping by 10.

He was inspired to join the "shortboard revolution" that had taken hold in surf circles, when surfers who'd learned on boards up to 10 feet long discovered they were far more agile on boards closer to head-high.

Before long, Gion was hooked on the notion that he could ride all kinds of different boards simply by changing the shape. By the time he was a teenager, he'd begun to cobble together a good living for a youngster by shaping boards for his friends.

So good, in fact, that when his parents split for Southern California, 15-year-old Gion rented a one-car garage from some friends for $15 a month and "shaped my way through high school."

But he grew jealous watching the boards he made depart for the legendary breaks on the North Shore. So Gion, at just 17 years old, threw his tools in a bag and headed for Hawaii.

For the next 25 years, the young surfer and shaper built his reputation in the water and out, honing his craft, relying more and more on his instincts to shape thousands of surfboards and carve thousands of big waves.

See the Hawaii Shaper Tree here: http://theshaperstree.com/tree/hawaii.asp

Free Surf magazine publisher Mike Latronic remembers looking up to Gion as a kid growing up in Hawaii.

"Back in the day, Cort Gion was a pretty well-known name around these parts. If the North Shore of Oahu stands for anything in surfing, Cort Gion was a mover."

Then, on one typically stellar Hawaiian afternoon in 1990, Gion's career in the water took a header.

"I got in a big tube ride," he says, moving brusquely through a story he's told a hundred times. "It didn't stay open. It slammed down on me, slammed me through my board and broke my back."

Three surgeries later, he requires a regimen of pain medications and his movement is confined largely to his 900-foot warehouse - though he still enters and wins local surfing competitions on a regular basis. His workshop is chock full of big-wave boards, small-wave rippers, mini-tankers, channel-bottoms, swallow-tails and fish, in various stages of production.

The most critical part is the "rough," which Gion whips out in a matter of minutes, once he's stenciled in some measurements and sawed off the nose, tail and sides.

His dog leaves the room at the sound of the high-pitched squeal of the planer, and Gion starts carving, or "mowing foam," as it's called in the shaping business.

What makes a Gion board unique is just that - every board is unique, hand-shaped, laminated by Gion and decorated with his own original artwork; not designed by a famous shaper, cut by a machine and then fine-tuned by someone else, as many factory boards are today.

"The guy whose name is on the board may never even see it," he snorts.

But the real reason to buy one of Gion's boards is to have it made for the surfer and the conditions the board will face, his customers say.

Gion says he can watch a surfer ride waves for a few minutes, or ask some key questions about the surfer's riding style, and figure out what kind of board will work the best. He also knows boards built for the Oregon Coast must haul surfers in wet suits as thick as 5 millimeters, thanks to the water's 50-degree temperatures. That's why Gion's "roughs" are thicker than others.

To have a board custom shaped also allows the buyer, in some cases, to watch Gion work, sweating as he glides back and forth across the foam like a surfer cuts up a wave, his hands and face chalk-white with dust, Bob Marley singing in the background; and listen in on the philosophy that governs his craft.

"A good board you'll be able to get right on, and think about riding the wave. A mediocre board, you get on it and have to ride the board," he says. "A good board you don't have to think about. It's just a part of you."

In the same way, Gion says, good shapers rely on their instinct, not computers and measurements, to create surfboards.

"My mind thinks it, my hands do it," he says.

Too much thinking, however, and he's liable to fall behind in production schedules maintained by his wife, who strolls back as he finishes the blank to check on his progress, with a stern reminder about a youngster who's expecting to pick up his custom board the next day.

"Crack that whip," he chuckles.

"Love you," she says, and strolls back out.

Winston Ross can be reached at (541) 902-9030 or rgcoast@oregonfast.net.