The Winning Shaper Of Rasta’s Electric Acid Surfboard Test Is…

This year’s Electric Acid Surfboard Test featured 11 flax-infused boards, each an experiment in craftsmanship, performance, and functional derangement. By now, you’ve surely watched episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4. If not, what exactly are you doing here? You craving a razor blade to the eye? 

Spoiling the winner isn’t the sin — skipping the ritual is. If you want to cheat yourself out of joy, fine, but don’t dare call yourself an adult until you’ve been properly baptised by Dave Rastovich: thumb to forehead, life lessons spilling out like blood on concrete — thick, sobering, and impossible to ignore.

Over the course of four episodes, Rasta threw himself into a chaotic dance of rejection, indecision, and second chances. The boards were tested, tossed aside, re-evaluated, and tossed again. By the final episode, only five had survived: Fletcher Chouinard, Neal Purchase Jr., Ryan Lovelace, Corey Graham and John Simon.

The winning shaper dedicated 20 hours to crafting David’s board, pouring obsessive detail into every minute. Oh, and he lives on a boat in Santa Barbara. 

The winner is, of course, Ryan Lovelace. It could only be Ryan Lovelace.

Here’s the short story: Shaper makes board for surfer, pours hours into it, maybe too many. Surfer takes it, gives it a spin. Shaper thinks, ‘he won’t even notice the blood I’ve poured into the board.’ Shaper is very wrong. Surfer doesn’t just enjoy board — he understands it. He sees every little detail, notices every kink, curve, and flaw. Surfer takes it in, appreciates it, then tells shaper what he noticed. And just like that, they sync. Shaper and surfer are a perfect collision. 

“It hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized I could shift gears and go up a notch from my usual discussions about surfboards because I could see he thoroughly understands what he’s talking about. Even just looking around his surfboard collection, it’s clear he’s surfed the piss out of all these weird boards and understands each one,” says Lovelace, affectionately talking about Dave. “The only other guy I’ve talked to who gets shaping in that level of detail is Ryan Burch.”

Lovelace also broke down his shaping process for the winning board, and it’s eerily similar to the way Rasta surfs: “I just started going. And then, when I’m shaping — especially if it’s something experimental or if I have free rein — I give myself complete freedom to flip the script and change something. If I’m cutting an outline and I see it one way but like it better another way, and it’s going to hit the mark I want, I’ll chase that instead of sticking with what I thought I was doing.”

That’s a wrap. Lovelace takes the win, and Rasta slinks back into his burrow of dirt and eternal love. I’ll give you the cliché, but don’t try to tell me it ain’t true: surfing comes out on top here. 

Special thanks to all the shapers + Patagonia for making this possible.

Final Results:

#1: Ryan Lovelace — Custom Twin
#2: Fletcher Chouinard — Mullet
#3: Duke Aipa — Modern Sting Twin
#4: Neal Purchase Jnr. — Whales Tongue
#5: John Simon — USB Chip Asym