I built my first workshop when I was 16 years old.
Not a corner of the garage with a single saw — a real workshop. I built the workbenches myself. The shelving. The whole setup. It went up in my backyard in Tampa, Florida, and it was the first thing I ever built from scratch that I was genuinely proud of.
I'd been skateboarding since I was young, but woodworking was always the thing I kept coming back to. Skateboarding was physical and expressive — but woodworking was deliberate. Patient. And the results lasted.
The First Cut
One of the first projects I took on in that workshop was making rings from old skateboard decks. I had boards lying around that were too cracked and waterlogged to skate. One cross-section cut across the nose of a deck — and what came out stopped me cold. Seven layers of hard maple, stacked with teal and red and raw wood between them. The first thing I thought was: that needs to be a ring.
Selling in School
I started making them and selling them in school. Nothing complicated — just handmade skateboard rings that people actually wanted to wear. That was the first proof that this was real. Now Bayshore Rings is the company I always wanted to build. Every ring is still made the same way: one board, one maker, one ring.
Why Recycled Jewelry Matters
The philosophy behind Bayshore Rings is simple: materials that already exist deserve a second life. A skateboard deck is seven layers of hard maple — an extraordinarily engineered piece of wood. When it's done being skated, throwing it away is a waste. We make recycled jewelry not as a marketing angle, but because it's the right thing to do. Every ring we ship started as someone's board. We're not adding anything to the supply chain. We're redirecting what's already there.
— Clayden Manley, Founder, Bayshore Rings · Tampa, FL