Words & Video by Nick Shields. Photos by Reuben Barrack.
When Dominic Mabile’s favorite board shape became unavailable to him he didn’t do what most of us would and just move onto another, he decided to recreate it himself. He got his hands on some uncut blank boards and made the skateboard he wanted with tools he already had in his garage. Three years later and Dominic is over 800 boards deep in his own custom, hand-made, skateboard company Sea Rat Skateboards. Electrician by trade, lots of late nights and early mornings are spent in his garage shaping boards with his dog Wiggles nearby to supervise. Dominic has since started making the boards 100% on his own starting with buying hard rock maple veneers from the cabinet shop, gluing them together and pressing them himself. He has sent boards all over the world and shows no sign of slowing down.
Dominic recently just bought his first house and is in the process of moving the Sea Rat HQ to his new homestead. The company that was born out of the tiny garage in Pacific Beach, as seen in this video, is about to flourish in a bigger space with more room for more boards. Dominic doesn’t have any goals for the company to go a mass produced route, for now he enjoys having complete control and knowing that every skateboard is made correctly. Keep an eye out for Dominic and Wiggles, buy a board from them with a sick shape, and go slappy some curbs with your dawgs, or umm, dog.
Keep up with Sea Rat and order a board in their DMs on instagram.
Find more music by Isador Kaufman on Bandcamp.