Bill "Shros" Shrosbree
Spanning a career in the surf industry of over 45 years, the legendary “Shros” is as prolific a shaper as they come. He has shaped for and with an incredible collection of surfing’s most notable names. Many would argue that he is one of the top “ghost” shapers of all time.
Shros started surfing in Pacific Beach in 1959. Two years later he began his surf industry career by doing surfboard repairs for himself and friends. This evolved into renting boards out of the back of Gordon & Smiths woodie with Fred Rieman and Butch VanArtsdalen and then repairing boards for G&S. He then moved up to Hermosa Beach where he became the repair guy for Greg Noll. In 1964 he moved on to sanding boards for Bing and then shaped his first board in 1965 with George Lanning and Wayne Land helping. In 1966 after looking at one of his shapes, Greg Noll told Ricky James, “he has a really good eye…nice shape”. Greg Noll then lured him back to shape his Mickey Dora “Da Cat” models.
Over the next few years he built signature models for Con Surfboards, Bing, and then back to G&S. These models included the Steve Bigler Model, the CC Rider Model, The Ugly, the Lotus, the Step Deck David Nuuhiwa, The Pintail, and others. Moving back to San Diego in 1971, he shaped for Sunset Surfboards for the next 12 years building a wide array of surfboard models. In 1982 he shaped for Rip Curl building the Wayne Lynch models and also started shaping for his own labels, Shros and Fresh Pineapples as well as Hansen’s and Surfboards Hawaii.
In 1986, Mickey Dora had Shros build a board for him. After surfing it Dora said that it rode “1000 times better than my other board”.
In 1987 he began an 11 year stint with Bill Stewart doing many of his top models including the Hydro Hull, the Colin McPhillips model, the Jeff Cramer model and more. After that it was shaping for Sunset Surfboards again and Dewey Weber Surfboards. This was followed by working with Dale Velzy from 1995 to 1997. In 2000 he began shaping Joel Tudor longboards where he shapes today in addition to working on his own label.
When asked what he enjoys most about shaping and why he has stuck with it all of these years, he just laughed and said, “It’s a real challenge to do as a living but I just enjoy creating nice boards and always improving …I love it!”