Steve Barto

Barto started his shaping career as an underground custom surfboard shaper in 1977. In the beginning he was mostly shaping for friend and friends of friends but the lifestyle afforded him the opportunity to surf blacks and other breaks around San Diego, and then to travel to surf destinations like Hawaii, Mexico, Fiji, and France. In 1982 he started shaping for Rusty Preisendorfer (Rusty) and continued to hone his craft there over the next 20 years becoming one of his top ghost shapers. In 2002, after building over 10,000 boards for Rusty, he left to concentrate on building his own brand of boards. “Surfboard shaping is to me...an art form... and after all of these years it’s something I still find extremely fulfilling."