Hi my name is Michael Necky and since this is my first post here on swaylocks I would like to introduce myself. I have been looking to shape a surfboard for a long time now and I am finally pulling the trigger and buying a blank on monday. I have been lurking here reading the forums for the past month reading countless hours of material about all things shaping all over the internet. I also just finished re-watching Shaping and Glassing 101 for my second time and I feel really prepared. I have decided for my first board I want to make a 5’6" Quad Fish but I am not sure about width and thickness. I have been writing down dimensions for every small fish I have seen and I believe I am going to make it 17"-22"-17"-2 5/8" with a 10" wide swallow tail from point to point and a 5 inch butt crack. I am designing this board for 1’-4’ mushy NJ summer waves as I have another good small wave short board (5’11"-11.5-18.75-15-2.125) but it doesn’t really come alive until it gets to around chest high surf. My concerns about the dimensions are 22" might be too wide and not turn but I am tired of my 5’11" bogging down in every turn. As far as thickness goes I was thinking 2" 5/8" with a slight dome in the deck so it will make it still possible to push the rail into the water. For rocker I believe I am going to go with 3 1/2" nose and 1 1/2" tail being that the board is so short I think I will be able to get away with this flat of a rocker. As far as bottom contours go I was going to keep this simple and have it pretty much flat with a slight vee in the last 1/4 of the board. As for the swallow tail I am thinking 10" point might be a little small and not make the outline parellel enough but what do I know. I should probably also tell you I am 5’9", 130lbs, an average surfer and will be using a PU blank. Like every surfer I want a wave catching machine that is still very maneuverable. I am very excited to begin the shaping process and even though I am only 16 I pride myself on my craftsmen ship skills for my age and think the board will turn out very good. I hope to keep shaping boards and learn enough to be able to start contributing to the forum. Here is what I believe to be the best template I have come up with in Board CAD. If any one has any opinions to anything to do with anything I have said it would be greatly appreciated. Lastly I would like to thank the swaylocks community for all of the information I have learned up until this point
At your height/weight i think you could definitely get away going narrower (20.5 - 21in) and even pull in that nose/tail up a bit and still have a wave catching machine. How thick of a wetsuit are you usually wearing? That could come into play.
Just a thought. Try not to design a board you haven’t ridden yet. Go and borrow, rent, whatever something close to what you are thinking about. That’s your jump-off point. Think about what you would like to improve about the borrowed board. More speed, quicker turn, smoother, what ever you dream. Modify the borrowed board into the new design. Otherwise, just too many variables.
Don't listen to anyones advice or copy another board. You have desighned your board. Just go out and make it . You will learn so much from doing the whole thing yourself and it will give you a reference point as to where you want to go next. And it is 100% you !!!! Ahui Hou- Wood_Ogre
5'6" x 22" x 2 5/8".....When you get off of the computer and draw it out full size you might change your mind. I cannot tell you what to build. I would not go that wide with a board that short......but...... I shape lots of funky stuff......That's what's great about being a backyard shaper.....You need to do what feels right for you.....
......and....The more I think about it.....didn't ACE do a board like this???? ...and what about those Mini Simmons boards??
Just one more opinion for you… but one coming from a guy who’s lived, surfed and built boards for NJ waves my whole life.
For a guy your size, I’d scale the whole planshape down. I’d bring the width in to no more than 21". As jj said, 20.5 is more like it, especially for a 5’6. I think your nose and tail could come in about an inch, too. Keep your 10" tip-to-tip, pull in the width, and you’ll have a straighter rail line in the tail. The thickness is good. Keep the rail full, but not blocky… I think you’re on the right track with that. I like slightly down rails on my fish. Good bottom choice going flat to vee on your first board. Very functional and easier to do correctly than concaves.
Do all this, and you’ll have a much looser board… fin placement being key as well.
First off, I salute you for the amount of time and effort you’ve already put into the project. You’ve obviously done a ton of research on your own, not to mention downloading the CAD program and figuring out how to come up with a very usable rendering.
As a comment on your design, I’m sure that if you build your board the way you currently have it laid out it will paddle as fast as a 5-6 board can be paddled. For reference, in the book “Surfboard Design and Construction” there are a couple pages devoted to laying out the design of a 5-5 Fish by Steve Lis, who is widely regarded as one of the most influential fish shapers. That layout includes a 16.5"n x 21"w x 17"t with a tip-tip on the tail tips of 13" (straighter outline than your’s). I think your use of the narrower tip-tip will help the board turn better for you, but in combination with the 22" width the resulting curve in your template might also end up slowing the board down. I think that narrowing the overall width will make for a somewhat straighter (and faster) outline behind the wide point.
Michael Zippi (Zippifish) is another popular west coast fish shaper and he uses more curve and narrower tip-tip in his templates than Lis did back in the day. He still sticks to the 21" range in the 5-6 lengths though. He doesn’t usually get to a 22" width until the lengths get into the 6-4 and 6-6 lengths.
Either way I think you’ll have a lot of fun on the board. No shaper ever forgets their first board.
You may have already figured this out through your own research, but I’ll mention this tip anyway - save cutting out the butt crack for last, after you’ve foiled the tail and shaped the rail. Those tips are fragile. Ask me how I know.
With that length and a 20-21" width, you could flatten out the tail rocker to 1-inch or less and still turn like crazy. Lis's fish were flat, flat, flat.
Thanks everybody for all the responses and opinionss. So new plan is to cut the width down to 20 3/4" and bring the nose and tail into 16". As far as fins go I was going to go by all of the Mckee spread sheets. I mean if you can make that large of a spreadsheet about fins, you gotta know what you are talking about haha. NJ Surfer: I would really love a tinted board but am a little hesitant to try doing cutlaps on my first glassing job, but if enough people here think I can do it well than what the hell. So what do you think, is cutlaps to much for my first board? Another question that I had was how much vee is good, I was just going to take a random guess and go with around a 1/8" to a 1/4".
Thanks Agian
and yes i do have a digital camera so i will be uploading pictures all along the way. hopefully someone else we be able to use them to there first board one day
I suggest cutlaps… pinlines… glass-ons… resin tints… gloss and polish… all on your first board. So by your 10th board, you’ve done 10 cutlaps, 10 pinlines, etc… not one. You’ll be that much further up the learning curve.
IMO your new dims are better. I'd consider modernizing your rocker, too. We've learned a lot about surfboards in the last 40 years, you might as well take advantage of it...
The McKee placements might lend themselves to more modern quad shapes, on a fish for small waves I'd suggest keeping all fins out on the rail for a more twinny feel.
Just giving an update for everyone, shaping is going great and i am just finishing it up today. Went of to greenlgiht surf supply on monday and picked up my blank. Brian at greenlight is a great guy and was super helpful with everything, his site is proving to be another great resource besides sways for shaping a first board. After I picked it up my dad and I made the racks then taped together 8.5x11 sheets for about 15 minutes to make the template(probably would have been easier to just go to kinkos)
this is the design I ended up going with
making the racks(then I just bolted them to a jetski dolly I had made previously which is why it looks so crazy)
my dad helping out
getting the template taped together
cutting template out
finished template
traced out
cutting out
maybe if i wasnt so nervous and hadn’t cut an inch out side the line i wouldn’t be doing this
i started off by removing foam from the bottom/putting in the rocker. i ended up going with 3.75" of rocker in the nose and 1.75" of rocker in the tail
1/4" of vee in the last 18" of the board
planning the stringer
after foiling which i can see takes a while to develop a good eye for
cutting out rail bands after drawing them in using greenlights railband templates
checking out the first stage of railbands using a small fluorescent light i unbolted from the top of my desk
after all bands being cut and smoothed out with screen
Unfortunately i did not get any pictures of day three but I got the swallow tail cut out and sanding down all using a piece of sand paper wrapped around a pencil. I then hit the whole board with a peice of sandpaper under a foam rubber pad. Had to do this for a little while because I had left a whole bunch of deep fingerprints from flipping over the board only using one hand(didnt realize the foam was this fragile) looks good now though. Tomorrow I will go and draw in the fin placement and sign the stringer(i didnt want to do any of this yesterday because I wanted to let the board sit so I could come back the next day and look at it agian) At this point I have about 10 hours into the board including making racks and template and I have loved every second of it. Some time this weekend I am going to pickup glassing supplies from Brian at Greenlight (just wanted to give another shout out to him because I probably wouldn’t have gotten this far if it weren’t for him)
Hey I'm 16 also and I am just about to start my first board also. I just built my rack and I'm waiting on my blank. First of all it looks awesome so far and I hope mine turns out as good as your's has so far. I'm shaping a 5'8" Quad Fish. You've given me confidence it can be done so young. Your board looks sweet.....I hope to see more pics; I am going to try to post all my pictures too. Sweet board!....so stoked to start mine!
