In the era-defining Echo Beach days of the 1980s, Lance Collins was a surfboard god. Shaping under his Wave Tools label, he helped usher in a movement in surfing that’s still reverberating today. Sadly, Collins has passed away at the age of 77.
For more than five decades, Collins shaped boards, surfers and, perhaps without ever setting out to do so, a significant piece of Southern California surf culture. His story is the subject of Shaping the Future, the feature documentary directed by Robert Helphand and Tony Gentile. The film chronicles Collins’ life and the influence his designs had on a generation of surfers, particularly around Newport Beach in the early 1980s.
The Sound of Echo Beach
Collins first started building boards in 1969 while the Shortboard Revolution was at its zenith. He eventually started shaping under his own Wave Tools label, which was headquartered on Placentia Avenue in Costa Mesa, where it remains today. By the end of the 1970s, Wave Tools was synonymous with progressive surfing in Newport … and the revolution would be televised.
By the early ’80s, the epicenter of talent at 56th Street turned Wave Tools into something bigger than a surfboard company. Danny Kwock, Jeff Parker, Preston Murray, and a young Richie Collins were among the surfers pushing the limits of what could be done in Newport’s notoriously fickle surf. Twin-fins, swallowtails, wings, exaggerated outlines, and bright airbrushed graphics set Collins’ boards apart from the pack.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Kwock, along with Bob McKnight, was riding Quiksilver’s wave of popularity, which in America was rooted in the Orange County scene. And the surf media of the day also played a huge role, with high-impact, high-def photos from 56th Street printed in magazines around the world. Suddenly, the bright colors, radical shapes, and aggressive surfing of Newport became a visual shorthand for where surfing was headed.
More Than a Surfboard Shaper
Collins’ path to that moment was anything but easy. At 17, he lost a leg in a boating accident, an injury that effectively ended his hopes of pursuing surfing in the conventional way. Rather than walking away from the ocean, however, he found another way into it. He began shaping surfboards, building Wave Tools with his wife, Terralea, and turning what started as a garage operation into a lasting Southern California surf brand.
There was an element of stubbornness to Collins’ approach. He didn’t simply copy what everyone else was doing. In a 2025 interview, he described his approach to design as a form of experimentation and research, influenced by his earlier interest in racing cars and boats. That willingness to experiment became one of his signatures. And perhaps that’s why the Wave Tools boards of the era still resonate today. They weren’t designed to look rad, although they did. They were designed to go fast.
A Generation of Surfers
Collins’ son Richie became one of the defining surfers of the ’80s. Riding Wave Tools equipment, Richie helped turn the raw, frenetic surfing of Newport into something that could compete on the world stage. He won the 1988 O’Neill Coldwater Classic and 1989 U.S. Open and finished No. 8 in the world in both 1989 and 1990.
But Richie wasn’t the only one. Collins’ shaping room became part of the ecosystem that produced a generation of surfers and shapers. Bob Hurley, Cheyne Horan, Kwock, Parker, and others are woven into the story of Wave Tools and its influence. In 2022, Collins was inducted into the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame, recognition that formalized what Newport surfers had known for decades. The legacy he leaves behind is indisputable.
Collins boards allowed surfers to try things they couldn’t do on earlier equipment. And once those surfers began pushing, Collins pushed with them. That feedback loop, surfer to shaper, shaper back to surfer, is how surfing evolves. Newport in the 1980s was loud. It was colorful. It was occasionally chaotic. And it was relentlessly creative. And more than 50 years after he first put the Wave Tools logo on a board, those shapes, and the surfers who rode them, remain an important staple in our collective surf culture and community.
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