About The Shaper

At age 5 he caught his first wave, and has been hooked on surfing ever since.

Nigel’s gravitation towards the ocean led to his first job maintaining boats, hull design and fibre glassing, followed by a stint working as a carpenter. Throughout these early years, he discovered a talent and passion for building and creating with his hands, also developing a fascination for hydrodynamics and laminar flow.

Around age 16 he shaped and sanded his first surfboard. It must have turned out ok (for a first attempt) because it led to a fulltime job offer at a leading glassing company. Over the following years Nigel learned every aspect of board production. After hours he would sneak into an empty shaping bay and work the night away hand shaping boards, gradually understanding and replicating the beautiful curves he was so heavily influenced by during the day.

His shaping talent soon caught the eye of Luke Short of LSD Surfboards, who offered him a full time position shaping. Jumping at the chance, he was soon hand shaping countless custom and stock boards for Australia, Japan and Europe, under the LSD label, all the time gaining invaluable shaping knowledge and experience.

A year or so later he started shaping for Webber surfboards as well, forming a very close working relationship with Greg Webber, a free thinking creative genius at the forefront of surfboard design, drawing inspiration from Greg, and continually refining his shapes.

Over the years various brands have since employed Nigels designing and shaping skills such as Channel islands, Lost, DHD, Simon Anderson, Byrne, JS and Chilli to name a few.

Following shaping stints in WA, Lennox head and Bali and the Sunshine Coast, Nigel now calls Sydney home. Due to the international demand for his designs and shapes, Nigel is regularly travelling overseas fulfilling board orders, but can be found most days on the shaping room

Although Nigel enjoys shaping boards for some of the world’s most talented surfers, their feedback constantly pushing him to respond to the highest demands of performance surfing, he still designs and shapes every board personally, typically other shapers reserve this service for the pro’s or an elite lucky few.

Due to Nigel’s focus and 2 decades of shaping experience, he is able to understand and create beautiful and functional shapes to suit surfers of any skill level and style.

Our ultimate goal is to bring Nigel’s high level of innovative surfboard shape, intuition and knowledge of construction, determination and communication to you the surfer. Whoever you are, and wherever you want to take your surfing, Annesley surfboards has the perfect shape for you.