My name is Ashton Pickle and I'll start with I have an amazing family consisting of my wife (Blair) and 3 kids (Hendrix, Giovannina, and Bo).

 

I also love surfing and shaping surfboards.

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Ever since I was a young kid, I loved building things with my hands. It's something that is special to me and is something I thoroughly enjoy.

 

This led to handshaping my first surfboard 9 years ago as a sophomore in college. I've kept this mentality and still shape all my surfboards in the same manner. Always handshaped.

 

I first started shaping because I wanted to be able to build surfboards that were specific to my own creative ideas and how I surfed. When I was younger, enamored with art, I tried my hand at painting, drawing, photography, etc. Tried a lot of these artistic hats on and none quite fit. Honestly, most of the drawing, painting, etc. was tragic. After I shaped my first surfboard, I realized I found a good space to convey my creativity.

 

After college, I went on to earn my Doctorate in Physical Therapy. I didn't plan on supporting my family shaping surfboards. After finishing Physical Therapy school, my love of surfboards led me to leave Physical Therapy 4 months into my first job and continue pursuing the path of playing with foam. Thankfully, I learned a lot of concepts in Physical Therapy school that made me a better shaper. The most important was the analyzation of movement patterns and how each individual moves (surfs) differently. Movement patterns in everyday life vary so much between individuals. By knowing how someone surfs, it becomes easier to make a board tailored to the individual's movement patterns.

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I spend most of my time these days trying to maximize the amount of joy others (and myself) can obtain from riding a wave.

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Where my passion lies for shaping and surfing is in twin fins. For the past several years, it's been exciting exploring the different ways to make the most versatile, high-performance twin fin surfboards I can. This includes ankle-high, big, hollow, windy, slabby, gutless, very big waves, and everything in between. Why I often use asymmetry is to accomplish this goal. I believe that in a wide range of waves being ridden frontside and backside, it is possible to build a twin fin that adds greatly to your surfing in terms of speed, fluidity, hold, and versatility while not taking any performance aspects away by surfing with two fins.

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I still enjoy making boards other than twin fins and know these other designs based around more or less fins hold so much value for certain conditions, but my passion is for exploring how far a twin fin can go.

 

Remember that no single board design is going to work for the entire mass market. Everyone surfs differently. There are so many different ways to ride a wave depending on what type of equipment chosen. For me, it comes down to riding different surfboards so that something as exciting as surfing does not get individually stale. Doing my best to keep others (and myself) intrigued by something that should never become dull.

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Surfing is fun and should be treated so.

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In short, I love surfing and would be doing this regardless of whether or not this was my occupation.