55 Years of Foam: Rusty Preisendorfer on Shaping Surfing’s Past, Present, and Future

From Surfer Magazine:

"Few people in this vast realm of surfing can say they’ve had a hand in shaping the sport (quite literally) for more than half a century. But legendary La Jolla-based board builder Rusty Preisendorfer is one of them.

From his early experiments with asymmetrical boards amid the Shortboard Revolution to founding one of the most recognizable surfboard brands on the planet, Preisendorfer has been both witness to and architect of nearly every major design leap in the past five decades. And has worked with icons the likes of Mark Occhilupo, Taylor Knox, Josh Kerr, the Hobgoods and Noa Dean, just to name a few. If you’ve ever paddled out on a R-dot, you’ve felt a piece of that legacy under your feet.

Now, as he marks 55 years of shaping, Preisendorfer shows no signs of slowing down. He’s still as obsessed with shapes, foils, materials and, perhaps most of all, fins as ever. We recently called up the data-driven craftsman to talk about shaping his first board, the influences that shaped his craft, why fins are the “F-word” in his house, and why, even after producing tens of thousands of boards, his favorite design era is the one he’s living in now."

Read the Interview HERE