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So how many boards do you have to shape to consider yourself a legitimate shaper?
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Ahmmm - well, that depends on whether you're saying 'shaper' or 'production shaper' . The terms get confused, and as is my wont, I'm gonna go on and confuse it even further. I'm not speaking as a shaper, I'm speaking as a guy who sold boards for a long time and saw good, bad and indifferent. And as a guy who has worked with tools all his life.
If we go with the first one: 'shaper', then the answer is one board. You have legitimately shaped one, for good or ill.
On the other hand, production shaping. When you want to be a Jim Phillips or a Phil Becker, somebody who can go in and do good boards all day every day....no answer to that. Some say a thousand boards, as a rule of thumb. Some never get it and the marketplace tells them. It's not necessarily revolutionary boards, it's consistancy, doing a good board every time that works.
Some have a helluva good feel for tools, as reverb said, and they get it fast. Some are fortunate enough to work for others and bounce around and get the advantage of the man-hours of experience, and there's no substitute for that. Old joke in the trades: "________ sez he has thirty years of experience, but what he has is one year, thirty times over." - if you're working on your own, you can do the same mistakes over and over again forever, if you work for somebody good they'll tell you when you're screwing up and tell you how to fix it.
Look at the real pros and you see they've worked for and with a lot of good guys before going on their own.
A nickel and dime analogy: when I broke in, fishing offshore, the skipper had decades of experience, and it was in a bunch of different fisheries and ports. Worked his way up. What he knew, and I tried to learn, was the distillation of millions of man-hours at sea in all kinds of situations, not just his but the distillation of what was learned on dozens of boats by hundreds of men.. And the rest of the deck gang, well, the greenest guy we had in my time aboard was a third ( at least) generation fisherman who was outstanding his first trip. The focus was on everybody doing all they could to be faster, more efficient, getting it done the best way possible. There was not just an incentive to learn, there was an incentive to teach.
Then I did one trip with another boat and crew when my skipper was between boats, well, the joker running it had bought the boat, done a day trip with the previous owner and that was it. He knew what he had taught himself, and most of it ( to my mind, at least ) was wrong. I had thought I was dangerously ignorant, and I was, by the standards I was used to and trained under. But this boat and crew were freakin' scary. I wound up telling the deck gang to stay out of my way and if they wanted to learn, I'd show 'em. They were unsafe, slow and unskilled and nobody to teach 'em. And my bag was packed about ten minutes after we gave up and headed for home: Mister Instant Captain was as bad at finding scallops as his gang was at dealing with them. If I remember right, I heard about one guy losing most of a hand on that boat, doing something stupid and nobody stopped him.
Other things come into it too, related experience. After my first few years offshore, well, I was doing boat work for The Old Man again. And my work had gotten a lot better, the 'tools fit my hands' better, I knew not just 'how' but I'd learned 'why' and how to look at it, think about it and make it better.
So, coming back ashore from that little detour- there's no substitute for experience, but it doesn't have to be all yours alone. Better if it's not. And this isn't the worst place in the world to get some from. That's what it's for in a lot of ways.
Do the work, make mistakes, learn from them and ask questions from those who know. Surf different stuff, think about how it works and how it doesn't work, look at the details and think about 'em. Look at work others do and ask questions of both yourself and of whoever did it if you can.
Hey, even Jim Phillips had a learning curve. I remember some of his boards from around 1970, not every one was perfect. He'd likely be the first one to say so and then give chapter and verse of what he learned from his early mistakes.
Hope that long, verbose, drawn out answer was of some use.....
doc...