Felipe Siebert

Felipe Siebert is a Brazil­ian surf­board maker who cre­ates his shapes in wood. Choos­ing to be a part of the long­board com­mu­nity sets him apart from the rest of his fel­low surfers. Felipe explains what it means to pur­sue his pas­sion and cre­ate a dif­fer­ent cul­ture.

What was it like grow­ing up in Brazil?
I had a good struc­ture, both finan­cially and with fam­ily, so it was eas­ier for me to develop myself. I began prac­tic­ing sports like foot­ball and only really started surf­ing at 19 years of age. In this period, I was doing a tech­ni­cal course which helped me a lot in the prepa­ra­tion for doing surf­board projects. After I grad­u­ated in bio­log­i­cal sci­ences, I steered in the direc­tion of wooden boards.

When did you get your first surf­board?
I made two or three exper­i­ments in foam. In 2004, inspired by Grain Surf­boards and Tom Wegener, I decided to make a long­board (9’0″ and hol­low) to see if it was pos­si­ble. It worked. It was very thick—but I surfed a lot with it.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
When I was young, I was able to stand on body­boards. But the big event for me was the first time I stood up on my first wooden board. It felt amaz­ing to work for so long on a project and then to be able to enjoy it.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young boy?
In my youth, I only knew foot­ball. My idols were the play­ers. Then I took a dif­fer­ent path that took me to some inter­est­ing places. Orig­i­nally I surfed short­boards because where I live every­one surfs short­boards. Long­boards hardly existed and were only used by begin­ners and peo­ple with poor phys­i­cal con­di­tion­ing or those who couldn’t surf a short­board. Later I began to surf with long­boards and tried to mar­ket them in my area, but there was much con­sumer resis­tance. I ended up sell­ing to all of the other areas of the coun­try who appre­ci­ated the cul­ture and other forms of surfing.

What inspired you to own your own shop?
After doing my first long­board, I made some for some other friends, and so it began. There is noth­ing bet­ter than work­ing on some­thing that brings joy to peo­ple and noth­ing bet­ter than work­ing on what we like to do—making boards the way we think they should be done. I just can’t work sit­ting eight hours a day wear­ing a suit in an office.

What is your process for shap­ing a board?
The boards are made with dif­fer­ent types of low den­sity wood in dif­fer­ent col­ors. The project starts on CAD soft­ware. All the boards mea­sure­ments are defined: thick­ness, width, rocker, V-bottom, con­cave, etc. The molds are then printed on a 1:1 scale. These molds are then trans­ferred to the wood which then is sawed. This stage requires the most in terms of time and hard work. After being sawed, the parts are posi­tioned and glued on a pre-leveled table so it has the desired rocker. The board begins to present it’s look and has its sides glued, finally fol­lowed by the finishing.

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out? And why?
I have not trav­eled much, but I have sev­eral trips planned for the com­ing years. I’ve been to the USA (Florida), Argentina and Mex­ico. Next year, if all goes well, I’m going to Cal­i­for­nia to some events. It will be my dream to see a region that has had such a strong influ­ence on my work. I also want to go to Por­tu­gal, Spain and Aus­tralia in the com­ing years. But noth­ing com­pares to a spe­cial place where I have a beach house. It is called “Farol de Santa Marta”.

Who/what inspires you?
I have admi­ra­tion for many shapers that led me to do what I do today: Paul Jensen, Tom Wegener, the staff of Grain Surf­boards, shapers of the 50’s and 60’s (Greg Noll, Bing Copeland, Rich Har­bour, Hobie Alter, Dale Velzy, Hap Jacobs, Dewey Weber, Gor­don & Smith) and some of the new gen­er­a­tion (Robin Kegel, Dave Allee, Paul Jac­into and others).

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
The work I do has many moments of idle­ness of mind, so I have enough free time to reflect on many things. I have lived a very quiet and happy life and I try to pass this peace and joy to peo­ple. Life is too fast to waste time with bad things. I believe that each per­son should be able to find a bal­ance for work and enjoy his time doing some­thing he really enjoys—in my case, surfing.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
No. I believe that my life is excel­lent. I have cho­sen the right path and I have devoted much time to my boards, skate­boards and ala­ias. I enjoy it because I like to see the results and I’m happy peo­ple are also enjoy­ing it. I want to be able to grow my busi­ness and I expect to do this in the com­ing years.

What are you most proud of?
Pro­duc­ing some­thing that makes peo­ple happy.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Being with peo­ple I like, in my beach house in Farol de Santa Marta, with good waves.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
There are many inno­v­a­tive surfers like Alex Knost, who, with his pecu­liar style, is admired by some and crit­i­cized by oth­ers. Joel Tudor has also done much in recent years.

Surf­ing is so much more than the WCT. It is art, feel­ings, cre­ativ­ity, exper­i­men­ta­tion with new sen­sa­tions. There are always many peo­ple work­ing in this direction—shapers, artists, pho­tog­ra­phers, writ­ers. I think the com­mon goal is to take our focus away the cham­pi­onships and the mass pro­duc­tion of prod­ucts for surf to a more per­sonal side of the trade. There are many peo­ple, either famous or unknown, who share this goal. These are the peo­ple who do things for the love.

What is in your cur­rent quiver? What is your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
I have a quiver with a wide vari­ety of mod­els: an alaia; a 5’6″ Siebert fish; some sin­gle fins (about 7’0″ from the 70’s); a 9’4″ long­board made by pho­tog­ra­pher Jair Bor­to­leto; a reg­u­lar short­board; and a 9’4″ Siebert long­board. Soon I’ll get my new Siebert 10 footer! It’s almost ready. I’m as excited as I used to be when I com­mis­sioned boards from my shaper.

What’s your favorite meal?
Basic Brazil­ian food—rice, beans, salad and farofa and a lit­tle meat (but not much). I also drink juice every day and, on spe­cial occa­sions, have some good beer and caipir­in­has! All for­eign­ers love caipirinhas!

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
A lot. I love music—Mat McHugh, Tom Jobim, Matt­son 2, Oliver Nel­son, Ray Bar­bee, White Buf­falo, Will Con­ner, Piers Fac­cini, Bedouin Sound­clash, Men­sajeros, Alexi Mur­doch, Soft Pack, Japan­ese Motors and Zee Avi. These are some of groups on my iPod. I lis­ten to all sorts of styles.

What’s next for Siebert Surf­boards?
Now that I have reached a cer­tain level of suc­cess with the boards and can develop my work at the level that I believe is good, I can mar­ket to peo­ple in var­i­ous places around the world. I want to meet other shapers and explore other pos­si­bil­i­ties because I feel a lit­tle iso­lated here in my town. We (Brazil­ians) do not have our own surf cul­ture. We haven’t devel­oped any­thing. We just buy from and give prof­its to the large surf corporations.

Any­thing else?
Surf­ing began as a form of enter­tain­ment, but it took over my life and made me hap­pier. I am often asked, “Why do you love surf­ing? Why do you spend five hours in the water?” I hon­estly do not know, but after a good day of surf­ing, it seems that life is per­fect and that I took the best path possible.

More infor­ma­tion about Felipe Siebert Surf­boards can be found here.